“If they are, I haven’t been listening,” Daniel said softly. “Idle gossip isn’t for me.” He paused, then asked, “Can I sit next to you?”
Ellie nodded, her gaze fixed on the corner where it had happened. “He skidded around that corner too quickly,” she said, pointing. “A woman who was crossing the road from the direction of the school just about managed to move, and she survived by inches. She said he looked like he just couldn’t stop.”
Daniel exhaled slowly. “I… I remember,” he said. “We have assemblies about it every year at school, what with him being a local lad and the bench being so close. Good to teach them road safety...” He trailed off, then added, “It’s something good, but it’s nothing really.”
“No, it’s good,” Ellie insisted, her voice barely above a whisper. “Maybe if he’d heard a story like that in school, he wouldn’t have driven that fast.” She swallowed hard, fighting back tears, the old questions unanswered tormenting her as they bubbled through the bench and into her. “Luke knew this village and these streets... but he’d only had the motorbike for a week. He bought it two weeks after I called off our wedding.” Ellie’s hands trembled in her lap as she continued, “We were kids, and I realised it at the last second. Second to last second, but I always thought we’d work it out one day. Get older and look back and understand why it had to happen. But...” Her voice broke. “I didn’t get that, and he got nothing, and I was always left to wonder, did the domino effect of me ruining his life lead him to buying the bike because we were together for three years and he never once mentioned wanting one.” She clenched her eyes. “I went back over every conversation I could remember and the first time I could remember Luke and motorbike in the same sentence was when I heard about…” She looked at the corner, the bench the only hint of what happened there to any passerby. “What if…”
Ellie looked up and saw her mother rounding the corner, Duchess pulling on the lead at the sight of her. She couldn’t tell how much Carolyn had heard. Her mother approached, explaining, “Duchess was restless, and so was I.” She eyed Ellie and Daniel’s soaked clothes. “Why are you soaked?”
Before Ellie could answer, a familiar voice rang out.
“Yoo-hoo!” Sylvia cried, marching towards them from the direction of the green. “I just heard the fire alarm was going off at the school and volunteered to come down and check before—Oh my, you two are wet!” She shook her head dismissively. “Oh, Ellie, I hear you were at Blackwood House when Emma… you know…” She cleared her throat, clasping her hands tightly. “What’s your take on what people are saying about this sculpture?”
“The one that hit Emma?” Ellie asked, that portion of the evening already feeling like a distant dream.
“The very same. I heard it was a monstrosity,” Sylvia said, her eyes gleaming with disgust.
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You did?” Sylvia leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “So? Who did it look like?”
“I need to get Duchess back,” Carolyn interjected, but she remained rooted to the spot, her face a mask of horror.
Sylvia, oblivious to Carolyn’s discomfort, pressed on. “That’s what people are saying. That creepy James Blackwood was going around the village asking women to pose nude for his sculpture, and people are only talking about it now after hearing that it was involved in such a cruel attack.”
“It wasn’t nude!” Carolyn cried out suddenly. “Or so I heard.”
Ellie’s eyes darted between her mother and Sylvia, a sinking feeling in her stomach; she didn’t like the picture that was forming.
“Mother... you didn’t...” Ellie began, her voice trailing off as she struggled to find the right words.
Sylvia gasped at the nugget of gossip gold she’d been in the right place to find, her feet shuffling excitedly as though she couldn’t wait to spread the news far and wide.
“He assured me it would make me a star in the art world,” Carolyn said, sighing heavily. “I… I killed someone.”
“You didn’t,” Sylvia interjected, “although I suppose...”
“Sylvia!” Ellie cut in, locking eyes with the eager cheese shop owner. “I like you, I really do, but I think you know you’re a bit of a gossip.”
“That is... fair,” Sylvia conceded, though her eyes narrowed as if to say ‘this better be going somewhere good.’
Ellie saw an opportunity to protect her mother and possibly gain an ally in the village in the process. She extended her hand towards Sylvia. “If you promise to keep what you just heard about my mother’s artistic endeavours a secret, if all four of us do and this never gets out, I’ll always know I can trust Sylvia Fortescue.”
Sylvia looked down at Ellie’s outstretched hand, initially appearing outraged. But then, to Ellie’s relief, she heartily thrust her hand into Ellie’s before dragging her in close.
“A woman of integrity,” she whispered, close enough so their noses were already pushed up together. “I respect that, Eleanor. You have my word.” After a moment, she said, “You have my word, Ellie.”
“And mine,” Daniel added from the bench, “for what it’s worth.”
“Quite racy of you, Carolyn,” Sylvia said, winking at her as she hurried off. “If it wasn’t for that deplorable hack, I’d almost be impressed.”
As Sylvia disappeared around the corner, Ellie turned back to her mother, who was now looking both relieved and embarrassed.
“The fact Sylvia Fortescue knows a secret about me is going to bite me in the backside one day,” Carolyn delivered gravely. “A backside James Blackwood did not see, I might add. I wore my two-piece.” She rested her hand on her midsection, cinched together by her coat’s belt. “I don’t do my pilates every day for no reason. A woman is allowed to feel—”
“I’m not judging you, Mum,” Ellie said, as gentle as she could. “How about we go back to yours and talk about it? I’m still soaking wet, and I’m starting to feel numb.”
“Me too,” Daniel said, before leaning in and saying, “Catch up once we’re changed?”
Ellie nodded that they would before he rounded the corner towards his nan’s cottage. Ellie lingered by the bench for a moment, feeling like she’d made a step but too muddled up in the mess to know what it meant.
“Let’s go and ‘talk’,” Carolyn said, letting Duchess lead the way. “Yes, I think I can do that. That would be... nice.”
Chapter 25Mamma Didn’t Raise a Quitter
It wasn’t long until mother and daughter were sipping hot chocolates in the greenhouse behind Carolyn’s cottage, with only the fighting alley cats punctuating their slurps.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Carolyn whined, her voice barely above a whisper. “James was so charming, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Going on about ego and fame and the juxtaposition of the reality of the… I’m not entirely sure, but he sounded sure, and I thought, ‘Wow! A real artist.’”
Ellie waited, knowing there was more to come. Her mother’s tendency to get carried away by flattery was nothing new, but this time it had led her into a potentially scandalous situation.
Carolyn’s eyes flickered up to meet Ellie’s. “I bumped into him at the karaoke finale last year. I should have known no good comes from those damn karaoke finales for me. What did it look like?” she asked suddenly. “Did he capture my likeness before it squashed that unfortunate girl?”
Ellie hesitated, imagining the grotesque figure revealed under the UV light.
“Not at all,” she said gently. “I’m not sure what he was trying to capture, but that lump of clay that lit up under the right light... it wasn’t you, Mum.”
Carolyn exhaled with relief, but Ellie could see the humiliation in her eyes. Her mother had always craved the spotlight, and James had played on that desire, manipulating her for his own twisted artistic vision when, according to Sylvia, so many had refused him.
