LITMIR.BIZ

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on a flight and come straight over. He had died that same day, gratified that the woman he had looked on as a daughter should have been there to hold his hand while he slipped away...

      Clemmie had flown back to the States—to her two beloved daughters and the realisation that she could no longer live in the small American town where her life had broken down so dramatically. Something was going to have to change...

      Dan’s legacy had come like a bolt out of the blue, and a welcome one. The house and enough capital to live on for a little while. A life-saver. A new beginning. A new life in England.

      Clemmie’s divorce had left her even more broke than she’d been before, scrubbing around to make ends meet in a country where suddenly, without her American husband, she was a foreigner. A foreigner, moreover, with foxy dark eyes and a curvy body. The kind of woman universally feared by other, not-so-happily-married women...

      So she had packed the three of them up, lock, stock and barrel, and moved them back to Ashfield. Back to the town where she had spent two fractured years before going off to college, her whole view of the place coloured by her ill-advised passion for Aleck Cutler. What a gullible little fool she had been!

      Part of her had wondered about coming back at all, but it had only been a small part. Women in her position had little choice about where they lived. She was happy, and grateful for Dan’s legacy, and strangely drawn to Ashfield. In spite of her youthful mistakes, it was the only place where she felt some affinity with the past. And with such an uncertain future lying ahead of her, Clemmie needed to hang onto that feeling right now.

      Clemmie boiled the kettle and made tea, then cut slices of dark, sticky gingerbread and laid them out in a pattern on the plate. The frantic thump, thump, thump of feet on stairs heralded the arrival of her two daughters, and as Clemmie carried the tray into the sitting room she gave them a slow smile of contentment.

      They looked as fresh as daisies, she thought proudly, and not as though they’d stepped off a transatlantic flight just hours earlier. They were, quite simply, the lights of her life.

      For, no matter what else she achieved in her life, she had done this—and mostly on her own, too. Produced two beautiful, intelligent and charming little girls—though she conceded that she might be a little biased! Now she had to raise them to be happy. Nothing else really mattered.

      ‘Mummy, I’ve chosen my bedroom!’ sighed Justine. ‘It’s really cool!’

      ‘Why does she always get to choose first?’ complained Louella, scowling.

      ‘Because I’m ten and you’re only eight!’ crowed Justine.

      ‘But it’s not fair!’

      Clemmie bit back the temptation to inform her younger daughter that life often wasn’t fair—she didn’t want to turn her into a cynic at such a tender age! ‘Don’t you like your bedroom, Louella?’ she asked softly. ‘It’s the one that I used to have when I lived here. It isn’t the biggest, but it has the best view in the house, in my opinion.’

      ‘It’s neat,’ nodded Louella, so that her waist-length brown plaits jiggled up and down. ‘I can see right over the wall to that big garden at the back—the one with the swimming pool. And there was a girl there, playing on a swing.’

      ‘Was there?’ asked Clemmie absently, pouring out the tea.

      ‘I waved at her—and she waved back!’

      ‘That’s nice, darling.’

      ‘So would she be our nearest neighbour?’

      ‘Yes, she would.’ Clemmie handed over a thick slice of cake and watched while Louella took a bite. ‘It’s good that someone’s living there at last—it was empty for years and years.’ And then fragments of a long-ago conversation swam up to the surface of Clemmie’s memory, and Aleck Cutler’s perfect eighteen-year-old face imprinted itself there.

      She shook her head, trying to get rid of it, wondering why the recollection still had the power to shake her. Because there could be nothing more pathetic than a woman of twenty-nine carrying a torch for a man who was married to someone else.

      And Aleck had married Alison.

      ‘It’s not really like moving somewhere completely new, is it, Mom?’ observed Justine slowly. ‘Since I guess you must still know lots of people here?’

      Clemmie shook her head. She still wore her thick, red-brown hair long, but most days, like today, she didn’t have time to do any more with it than drag it back into a ponytail. ‘Not really, honey,’ she said softly. ‘I left when I was eighteen, so I kind of lost touch. Friendships don’t thrive unless you invest time in them, and I never really had the time. I went away to college and then—’

      ‘Then you met Dad?’ asked Louella brightly.

      ‘That’s right,’ agreed Clemmie steadily, and kept her face poker-straight. It was difficult, she had decided, to be a mature and generous human being where her ex-husband was concerned, but she was trying. Oh, Lord, how she was trying! She understood that it was in a child’s nature to love its parents absolutely, as Justine and Louella loved their father. But Bill had let the girls down so many times over the years, whittling away at that love every time he did so, that Clemmie had to force herself to say anything positive about him.

      ‘And once I went to the States to live with your dad, then I didn’t get to visit very often at all.’

      ‘So you don’t know very much about Ashfield, Mom?’ asked Justine thoughtfully.

      ‘I know where the church and the shops and the schools are—but that’s about it! I’m relying on you two to find out where all the excitement is—think you could do that for me?’

      ‘You bet!’ grinned Justine.

      The three of them sat on the floor, drinking their tea and eating cake. Clemmie was reluctantly thinking about unpacking another case when there came the sound of a girl’s voice, calling, ‘Hello?’

      Justine and Louella looked at one another excitedly before springing to their feet and running into the hall.

      ‘Our first visitor!’ smiled Clemmie, as she followed them out, and then her mouth dried as she stared at the young girl who was standing on their doorstep.

      She looked about ten, the same age as Justine, but she was tall for her age, with pale hair which fell neatly to her shoulders and pale, creamy skin. But it was her eyes which made Clemmie’s mouth fall open in an unconsciously shocked reaction.

      Greeny-blue mesmeric eyes, fringed with thick dark lashes. There could not be another pair of eyes in the world which were that beautiful. Clemmie swallowed. This was Aleck Cutler’s daughter, she realised, with a certainty which astonished her almost as much as her own heart-racing reaction.

      ‘Hello,’ said Clemmie, hoping that her voice didn’t betray her shock. ‘Are you our new neighbour?’

      ‘I am,’ answered the girl politely, in a remarkably grown-up voice. ‘I live in the house at the back. I’m Stella Cutler.’

      So she had been right! Clemmie felt her nails, concealed in the back pockets of her jeans, dig hard through the denim into the soft flesh of her buttocks, while the world threatened to sway intolerably before righting itself once more. Aleck’s daughter! Here!

      ‘I’m Clemmie Maxwell. I used to be Clemmie Powers. And this is my daughter, Justine.’ Clemmie swallowed as she indicated both her daughters. ‘And her sister Louella. Say hi, girls!’

      ‘Hi!’the two chorused shyly.

      ‘We were just having a tea break, Stella,’ continued Clemmie, trying to behave as she would normally behave if a young neighbour came to call. ‘Can you stay for a while and join us? Or do you have to get back?’

      ‘Oh, I can stay,’ said Stella quickly.

      ‘Shouldn’t

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