‘There’s a Jeep outside, but she hasn’t mentioned it in her note so I wouldn’t want to use it, even if I knew where the keys were, which I don’t. Anyway, tell me, how things are with you?’
Sighing, her mother said, ‘Busy, but not in a good way.’ She disappeared again and came back saying, ‘… so there’s no way I’ll meet my target this month.’
Joely said, ‘I don’t know why you put yourself through the stress of it when you don’t actually need to work. Dad left you pretty well off …’
‘I’d drive myself crazy if I didn’t have something to do and you know it. Did you remember to send my love to Andee, by the way?’
‘Of course, and she sends hers. Have you been in touch with Holly?’
‘Yes, she texted me this morning to ask if she could come and stay for a while.’
Joely’s heart missed a beat. ‘So things aren’t going so well in her loft?’ she said hopefully.
‘I don’t know if it’s that. Apparently Callum and Martha are going away for a couple of days and she doesn’t want to be there alone.’
Joely had to swallow as she struggled with the concept of her husband and ex-best friend on a romantic break together. For a moment she felt oddly panicked by it, as though she had to stop them, but how on earth she was supposed to do that she had no idea.
‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ her mother said ruefully.
Though Joely wished she hadn’t, she said, ‘It’s OK, I’d probably have found out anyway.’ She wouldn’t ask where they were going, there was no point doing that to herself, because if it turned out to be somewhere she and Callum had been together, or had always wanted to go she didn’t think she could bear it.
‘… are you going to do until your client gets back?’
Joely started to answer but a strange sound suddenly clanged out of nowhere and she froze in shock.
‘Joely? What is it?’
Joely turned to the servants’ bells. There was a light above one and as it rang again she stepped back as though it might spring from its base to attack her.
Realizing it was the front door, she said, ‘Someone’s here. Stay on the line while I go to find out who it is?’
‘It’s probably the postman,’ her mother assured her.
Spurred by the likelihood, Joely went back along the corridor to the front door where her bags were still parked where she’d left them. ‘Who’s there?’ she called out, putting an ear to one of the panels.
‘Florist,’ came the reply. ‘I have a delivery for Mrs J. Foster.’
Blinking in astonishment, Joely whispered to her mother, ‘Did you hear that?’
‘I did. You’ll have to open the door.’
Joely did as she was told and found herself confronted by a spotty youth brandishing a fulsome bunch of bright yellow daffodils.
‘No signature,’ he told her, and thrusting them into her hand he sprinted back to where he’d left his van.
‘Who on earth is sending me flowers?’ she said, unable to stop herself thinking of Callum. Obviously they wouldn’t be from him, he didn’t even know where she was, and anyway, why would he?
‘Is there a card?’ her mother asked.
Finding one Joely tugged it free, opened it and read aloud, ‘“Daffodils symbolize new beginnings, creativity and inspiration. Freda Donahoe,”’
‘Gosh, how thoughtful,’ her mother commented.
‘Mm,’ Joely responded, thinking the same, along with something else she couldn’t quite define. ‘I should go and put them in water. I’ll call again later if you’re not going out.’
‘I should be home by six. Speak to you then.’
An hour later Joely was curled up in one of the armchairs, snug and warm in front of a real fire and pleasantly full after a helping of Brenda’s delicious jackfruit bake. She’d have followed it with a spoonful of tiramisu if a rogue memory of sharing the dessert with Callum on holiday in Sicily hadn’t shunted her appetite into the deadening plains of her heartbreak.
She understood, she really did, why some people were driven to drink when trapped in all this pain, how the hurt and anguish of it all could send them out of their minds, because sometimes she could feel it happening to her. It had happened when her father died, although that had probably been worse for she really had lost her mind for a while.
She closed her eyes, knowing that the best way through it was to try not to think about it, consuming though it was,