my father’s shop. I look up at the sign that says ‘FOR SALE’, and my heart breaks that little bit more.
I let myself in and breathe in that old, damp smell. It’s comforting. Something familiar in a world I don’t recognise.
Nothing has changed. Every single piece of old furniture is exactly where it was the last time I was here. There’s hardly any floor space to move, and no trace of walls in between the masses of clocks and paintings hanging from the bare brick. I slowly turn until my eyes fall to the bench where Dad used to sit for hours working on his treasure. ‘What are we going to do with all this junk, Dad?’ I ask the silence, shuffling through the dusty furniture.
I bend and blow a small puff of air over the surface of a reproduction Victorian sideboard, creating a plume of particles that bursts into the air. The tiny fragments get up my nose, and I sneeze as I hurry to the back room to find some tissue, but the noise of a handle shifting pulls my searching to a stop.
The shop door handle.
I whirl around fast. The sun hasn’t even risen yet, and no one could possibly know I’m back home. News travels fast in Helston, but not that fast.
‘Eleanor?’ The voice sounds distant and grainy, but I’d know it anywhere. My despondency vanishes, and in its place . . .
Anxiety.
He’s standing by the door, looking across the room at me. And he’s smiling. Smiling?
‘Brent.’ There’s no denying the shock in my voice, even if it’s tinged with fury. My muscles come to life, straightening my back and holding me up without the need for support from the worktop behind me. ‘What are you doing here?’
He shuts the door softly, keeping his eyes on me, letting them roam up and down my body. ‘I thought I should check up on you after your incident with Hunt.’
‘Excuse me?’ He’s just turned up in my hometown, hundreds of miles away from London, and he knows there’s been an incident? How?
‘You looked distressed when you ran away. I was worried.’
I back up some more, my wariness intensifying. He saw me run away? ‘You were there?’ I mumble mindlessly, trying to bully my mind back into something close to straight. Impossible. There are too many things tangling it, and now this? I’ve been nothing but a pawn in Brent’s and Becker’s exploits. A naïve, stupid idiot who underestimated their rivalry and the seriousness of the game they’re playing.
‘What on earth caused you to be so upset?’ he asks, ignoring my question. ‘What did he do to you?’
I hold my tongue, suddenly hyper-alert. He’s digging. Why? Is he suspicious of the fake sculpture that Becker tricked him into paying a stupid fifty million for? I don’t know, and I shouldn’t care either. I can’t get involved. I don’t want to get involved. I’ve implicated myself enough already. ‘How did you get in?’
Brent holds up my keys before placing them on a nearby sideboard. I left them in the lock? ‘You knew of his reputation, Eleanor.’
That statement doesn’t make me wilt like it should. It makes me angry. ‘You should leave,’ I declare, sounding sure of that. I am. I trust him about as much as I trust Becker. Not at all.
‘I think we can help each other,’ he says, coming at me, making me back up. Help each other? I’m not even going to ask. ‘Becker Hunt can’t be trusted. We should be looking out for each other.’
‘I want nothing to do with him or you.’ Unease starts to make my voice wavier in its sureness, and that alone makes me angrier. ‘Get out.’
Brent suddenly stops, his eyes widening as he looks past me. It takes a few confused seconds to realise why.
Then all hell breaks loose.
Chapter 2
‘You fucking snake,’ Becker snarls, tackling Brent from the side and sending him crashing into the nearby wall with a gruff bawl.
My stomach flips.
‘You fucking underhanded wanker.’ He has his hand around Brent’s throat to keep him in place, his body quaking with fury, constantly lifting and slamming Brent against the bricks. ‘I fucking told you.’ He hoists him up and swings him around, shoving him up against another wall, knocking pictures everywhere. ‘I told you to stay away from her.’
Every muscle in my body ceases to function, and I remain like a statue, watching Becker go bananas all over Brent’s surprised arse. My eyes could bleed. My mind could explode.