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  The conversation had taken a somewhat sinister turn. Nick was behaving very oddly. He really had been spying on us.

  ‘There’s Freddy,’ I pointed out, although I wasn’t entirely sure what Freddy was up to. He could be in his Rivermede quarters wired to his laptop, or he could be down the pub.

  ‘Freddy’s at the Rum Runners with Max van der Plaast and his crew,’ Nick confirmed. ‘You need to warn him off mixing with van der Plaast. That’s what I wanted to see you about.’

  ‘You’ve been spying on Freddy, too?’

  ‘It’s for his own good.’

  ‘Is anybody safe in Kerridge?’ I tried to keep my tone light-hearted. ‘Next you’ll be telling me Stella in the pub is really a Russian spy and there’s a risk we’re all about be poisoned by nerve gas. Who are the Muzzlewhites, by the way?’

  ‘Lurch and his wife, Hev and Nev. Although they could well have adopted new names. It wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Nick.’ I loitered by the front door, anxious to keep an escape route clear. Nick was acting totally out of character. This wasn’t the practical, level-headed person I used to know at all. What had happened to him? I tried to take stock of the situation. Perhaps I was I the one behaving irrationally. Why did I think I needed an escape route? Nick wouldn’t harm me. He might throw the odd insult at me, but this was Nick, the guy who was once my best friend, the man I had been going to marry. A man I didn’t know any more, but undeniably, a man to whom I still felt attracted.

  Another thought occurred to me. How had Nick made his way into the grounds? Both the main entrance and the river gate were accessed by a key code. And why was he looking like a commando in army surplus? I had too many questions. I felt so confused, wrestling with my jumbled thoughts. In fact, I felt more than confused. I felt faint, lightheaded, black spots danced before my eyes. I took a couple of steps away from the door and reached out for the sofa.

  ‘Becca, are you okay?’ Nick’s arms were around me in an instant. ‘Christ, you look dreadful.’ He lowered me onto the cushions. ‘Let me get you a glass of water.’

  I needed to breathe. That was all. Breathe. Keep a calm head and breathe. Count. Slowly, in, out.

  ‘I want you to leave, Nick,’ I said.

  ‘Leave you like this?’ He sounded alarmed. ‘But you’re not well.’

  I probably wasn’t well because he was the Russian agent with nerve gas – not Stella. Realistically, it could just be I hadn’t eaten anything all day apart from my diet ration of muesli for breakfast.

  He tilted my chin and held a glass of water to my lips. ‘There, is that better?’

  It was an awful lot better. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to kill me. He was being incredibly gentle, and something about those hands on my skin sent tiny, albeit unwelcome, tingles to places they really shouldn’t. I wanted him to hold me, hold me tight and never let me go, to make me feel safe and secure, just like the old days…

  No I didn’t. ‘Stop!’ I tried to inch away.

  ‘Hey, what are you afraid of? I’m not going to hurt you.’ Nick stared at me. ‘My God, Becca, you’re frightened of me?’ He looked shocked and bewildered.

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Was I afraid of him, or of my feelings? ‘You just don’t seem yourself. You’re talking nonsense, and why are you spying on us like this?’ I wriggled into a seated position, a little further from Nick’s clutches. ‘I mean, the jacket, the hat, the beard. It’s not really you, is it, Nick? And this…’ I could think of no other word for it, ‘this paranoia, this feeling that everyone out there is out to get us, warning me away from Rivermede, from Max…’

  Nick took off his baseball cap and unbuttoned his jacket to reveal a simple Riptide T-shirt. He looked human, normal, far more like the man I remembered. ‘I’m on a job, Becca. I’m working, that’s all I can tell you. Things happen here that I don’t want you or your family mixed up in, okay? I don’t think the marina is a safe environment for Freddy to be working in.’

  ‘Oh, I agree,’ I said. ‘I know about the accident.’

  ‘What accident?’

  ‘The accident at the boatyard, when Kenny Dimmock was killed and Jack lost his leg.’

  It was Nick’s turn to look completely befuddled. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I just found out today. Jack Robshaw inherited the boatyard because he kept quiet about some dodgy machinery. His wife’s brother was killed, and—’

  ‘This has got nothing to with dodgy machinery in the boatyard. Anyway, that must have all happened years ago.’

  ‘Yes, it did, but it just goes to show how dangerous these places can be, and proves Jack isn’t as squeaky clean as he seems. And then there’s this thing with Gerry Kimble not moving his boat. JJ is now threatening him because he wants the extra moorings. Oh, and he also threatened me, us. He doesn’t want this wedding to go ahead.’

  ‘Rebecca, you’re starting to sound like one of your mother’s books. You’re talking gibberish.’

  ‘Are you accusing my mother of writing gibberish?’

  ‘No, well, not entirely.’ He seemed to have regained a sense of humour. ‘Look,’ he sighed. ‘I can’t tell you what I’m doing here because the least you know about it the better, for your own safety. It has nothing to do with dodgy machinery and incidents that happened many years ago, or that old frigate on the marina, although it’s interesting to hear JJ needs the extra moorings.’

  ‘He’s up to his eyeballs in debt.’

  ‘I can believe that.’

  ‘Oh, and there is something odd about his boathouse.’

  ‘We know about the boathouse.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you. You need to keep away from the boathouse, Becca.’

  ‘That’s just what JJ said. And Max van der Plaast has his own key.’

  Now I really had caught Nick’s attention. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I saw him.’

  ‘You were at the boathouse with him?’

  ‘No, we met on the path, and afterwards I went back and took another look. He’d let himself in.’

  ‘Becca, you really shouldn’t be snooping around Max van der Plaast.’

  ‘No, of course not. Silly me. The only person allowed to do any snooping around here is you. I forgot that.’

  Nick sighed. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Becs? I’ve only got your best interests at heart. I don’t understand why you won’t believe me.’

  ‘You won’t tell me what you’re doing here, you won’t tell me who you work for, or what’s really going on. And you wonder why I don’t trust you?’

  Nick buttoned up his jacket and returned his cap to his head with a resigned look on his face. ‘Stubborn to the last. I don’t know what it will take to convince you, Becca, but promise me something at least. Stay away from van der Plaast.’

  Without another word, he headed out of the door. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or disappointed.

  I felt decidedly uneasy. There had been a tenderness in Nick’s voice, and his touch had awakened feelings I’d thought were dead and buried long ago. Nick’s concern for my welfare seemed quite genuine, but this Nick wasn’t the same Nick I knew fifteen years ago. We were two very different people.

  I still found it hard to believe that a covert police operation, as Nick implied, was underway in Kerridge, centred around Robshaw’s marina and Rivermede. On the other hand, it seemed unimaginable that anyone as level-headed and as sensible as Nick would fabricate the story. His behaviour seemed irrational, yet I knew from research I’d conducted for one of Pearl’s novels that paranoid schizophrenia came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. People in highly stressful jobs were not infallible, in fact they were very vulnerable to personality disorders. In Heartbreak in Hawaii the hero was an eminent but poverty-stricken junior psychiatrist who, while at a conference in Hawaii, met and fell in with the fiancée of another delegate – the director of a failing pharmaceutical conglomerate wh
o needed her money to keep his business afloat. I’d created a diverse selection of patients for Dr Hannover to treat along the way before the ultimate happy ever after, including a headmistress and a court judge. Nick was right – my mother could right wonderful gibberish.

  I reminded myself how Nick had behaved in the run-up to our wedding. There had been a marked change in his manner, which I had at first put down to nerves before I began to suspect he was seeing Saskia. He’d been on edge, nit-picking, avoiding me, obvious signs now of infidelity, but had his behaviour then been significant of some underlying psychotic condition?

  I’d lost my appetite for my low-calorie microwave meal, and instead made a cup of tea and four slices of peanut butter on toast. I sat down with my laptop, determined to undertake some covert research.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Perhaps I should have Googled Nick earlier. The truth was it had never occurred to me our paths would ever cross. Perhaps I was also afraid of what I might unearth.

  I’d first met Nick at university. Pearl insisted she couldn’t afford to ‘lose me’ and the uni I had chosen was within an easy commute of Battersea. Nick was from Yorkshire, exploring London for the first time. His aim had always been to join the police force. We had mutual friends and our paths crossed at various parties, and although there was no denying a mutual attraction, we didn’t date. Nick always seemed to have some girl on his arm, and he later told me I always seemed unapproachable and self-contained. In a way, he was right. I had too much going on at home, keeping Pearl on track and helping out with Freddy, to get serious about anyone. I was determined to achieve that degree and I didn’t need any additional distractions. When we graduated, he was snapped up by the Met, and we lost touch, despite remaining in the same city.

  It was only a year after graduation that I ran into Nick again at a friend’s party. For once, he was on his own. Feeling reckless, with that degree certificate firmly tucked under my belt, I made the first approach. On our second date, he confessed he’d just been accepted for a secondment to Yorkshire to be closer to his family – his father had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and his mother was not coping. His younger brother was only eighteen, so somebody had to take control. I totally sympathised; our situations were relatively similar. Of course, he couldn’t postpone his move north.

  We kept in touch, he came down to London for the occasional weekend, I went up to Yorkshire. Each time I saw him, the spark between us seemed to shine a little brighter, eventually becoming so bright it ignited an intense, passionate flame. I physically ached when we were apart. Within a year, his father was dead, and his mother was coping even less. Nick said he couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t leave Pearl and Freddy.

  Eventually, the police force came to our rescue. The Met refused to extend Nick’s secondment. He was rapidly gaining a reputation and they wanted him back in London. His mother, despite her self-proclaimed fragility – I’d met her several times by then and decided there was nothing fragile about her; she could definitely give Pearl a good run for her money – gave in to her ambitions for her eldest boy. Nick came back down south, immediately proposed, and we took a twelve-month lease on a flat.

  It was all going so well until Saskia Browning reappeared on the scene.

  Saskia was an old friend from my brief stint at the International Academy in Zurich. At eighteen, worldly-wise Saskia was already 5ft 10” tall, golden-bronzed skin, and baby-blonde hair. She was a native Texan and proud of it, with a drawl she refused to extinguish despite the elocution lessons. When I had been recalled by my mother to help with the aftermath of the Dieter situation, I waved a tearful goodbye to Saskia and told her to look me up if she ever came to London – which she did, two months before my wedding.

  The school was progressive and forward-thinking, mixed co-ed, and every now and then the inevitable relationship developed between pupils of the opposite sex. Saskia was notorious for breaking sixth formers’ hearts, whilst at the time of the whole Dieter debacle I was tentatively seeing a Canadian called Matt Unwin, whose parents, like many others in the school, were working in the Middle East. Years later, Matt, like Saskia, had looked me up on Facebook, and unlike Saskia, I had accepted his friendship request. Matt regularly posted pictures of his family and various vacations. Occasionally, we exchanged reminisces about our time in Zurich. Saskia occasionally commented on his posts.

  I’d seen pictures of her kids before, but now, if Nick was to be believed, I had to accept that any resemblance between him and Saskia’s eldest was purely coincidental. A quick delve on Facebook soon confirmed that Saskia was married to a hunky brown-eyed Texan called Ralph, and had been for over ten years.

  So, Saskia was off the scene, and always had been. I turned my attention back to Nick. Just like Tristram Markham, there was no trace of his existence on Facebook, but in a moment of true inspiration I searched for his younger brother. Jordan Quinlan had been affectionately known as Q, after the James Bond character. He’d been socially awkward, highly intelligent, and a complete computer geek. If anyone would be on social media, Jordan would.

  Just as I hoped, Jordan hadn’t followed his namesake – or his brother – into the fantasy world of espionage because he had a very prolific online presence. He took regular holidays, and although Nick was never named in any of his brother’s pictures, he occasionally popped up.

  Some people have all the best jobs, Jordan had Tweeted twelve months ago, alongside a photograph of himself and Nick on a sunny day in Paris. Off to Amsterdam again for the weekend, accompanied pictures of canals, windmills, tulip fields. Guess where we are this weekend? Sweden! Catching up with my big bro in the South of France…

  I wasn’t sure what any of the information I had uncovered proved, other than confirming that whatever Nick had been doing for the last fifteen years he had been telling the truth when he had said he hadn’t been doing it with Saskia Browning. However, he had spent a considerable amount of time working abroad, which hardly sounded like someone on active police service. So, what was he up to?

  I was more than happy to heed his warning about Max van der Plaast, but Freddy had taken a shine to Kimmi. Freddy, as always, needed protecting. I couldn’t see the harm, in fact it seemed imperative, that I accompany him to the birthday party. I finished my toast and closed my laptop. Despite my misgivings about Nick, common sense told me it would be wise to remain on my guard.

  It was little wonder I slept badly. After a futile morning’s work, I headed out for a spot of fresh-air. It was a warm afternoon and Rivermede was bathed in an unnatural aura of calm. Pearl was safely out of the way, rehearsing with the Kerridge Pops Choir, and as the Range Rover was missing, I assumed Nev and Jack were on one of their secret missions. I set off in the vague direction of the rear gardens, which was unchartered territory and lacking the manicured appearance of the lawns at the front of the house.

  Despite living in close proximity, I had seen next to nothing of JJ and Rita since I’d moved into the stable block. The rear of the house was their domain and they took little care of its appearance. Rita had an unofficial role on the marina as chief sales adviser, showing potential buyers around high-end yachts and motor cruisers. When she wasn’t looking glamorous in the sales room, she was working out at the gym.

  I took a track through an overgrown shrubbery and found myself following the line of an old brick wall. I wondered if this was the boundary of the old kitchen garden which Heather and Nev were supposed to be renovating. The wall was a good six-foot high, and the undergrowth so overgrown it was impossible to see how far it extended. Just as I was about to continue through the jungle, I heard voices and footsteps scrunching on the other side. I stopped in my tracks.

  ‘So how much longer do you reckon we’re all going to be here for?’ Heather hissed in a very thick Midlands accent. ‘We didn’t mind when it was just the old boy; he was no trouble. Then she turns up. Suddenly I’ve got to pretend I’m a cordon bleu cook while she throws all these fancy dinner p
arties. Not only that, but she then made Nev decorate an entire flat for the daughter in one weekend, and as for that son of hers, I can’t keep up with his appetite. I mean, I know the boy’s a harmless idiot, but the girl, well, she’s got her wits about her.’

  ‘Don’t panic, Heather.’ I recognised her companion’s voice instantly. ‘The boy could be useful, and I can handle the daughter. In fact, I’m looking forward to handling the daughter. Another few weeks and you and Nev can head off to the Costa Del Sol or wherever it is you want to go.’

  ‘Well, it better be soon because Lady Muck’s asked me to make the bloody wedding cake and I certainly ain’t doing that.’

  ‘What date is the wedding?’ Max van der Plaast asked.

  ‘You mean to say you haven’t had an invitation?’ Heather cackled. ‘Gordon Bennet! Somebody’s slipped up there. It’s supposed to be the 21st June, but I wouldn’t worry too much, if JJ gets his way, there won’t be a wedding. He seems determined to talk the old man out of it.’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s always nice when two people fall in love,’ Max van der Plaast replied. ‘We all need a little romance in our lives, a little diversion. I’ll write it in my diary. Could be a good day. I’d get baking that cake if I were you, Heather.’

  I crouched down into the shrubbery. Not that either of them could possibly see me, nor did I think for one minute they would come this way through the undergrowth, but just in case, I didn’t want to be discovered. It was no surprise to learn that Heather was not the housekeeping marvel she proclaimed to be, but it now sounded as if she and Nev were involved in something far more sinister. And it involved Max van der Plaast. Nick’s paranoia had become infectious.

  I wondered how willing Freddy would be to listen to any argument I might put forward for giving Kimmi’s party a miss. My brother had been in uncharacteristically high spirits since moving to Rivermede, and without a doubt Kimmi was at the root of it. To my relief, he hadn’t as yet commenced his forklift truck training, but he was building up muscles and gaining some colour on his cheeks, although whether that was from his work on the marina or sailing with Max van der Plaast, I wasn’t entirely sure.