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  ‘You know Dad.’

  Compassion glowed in Pavel’s eyes and Lexie looked away. Sympathy was always the hardest part of friendship to accept.

  ‘I must dash,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Good luck, darling.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  The store where Lexie was heading was at the east end of the High Street. It was part of a run of shops built in the mid-nineteenth century when Hailesbank had been at its most prosperous. Her great-grandfather had taken up the first lease, and the sign he’d proudly commissioned to run above the entire shopfront was still there.

  Gordon’s Furniture Emporium (Est. 1892)

  The elaborate letters were painted in pure gold leaf on a forest green background and the whole sign was covered in protective glass so that, a century and a half later, it still announced its presence with undimmed glory.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Neil had observed when they’d studied the frontage as part of their research, ‘that sign is probably the last smart thing left in the whole place.’

  He’d put his finger on the problem. Was there really any need to look further to discover why Gordon’s was struggling for survival?

  Lexie pushed open the heavy oak door and marched in. A man was standing by the overstuffed chesterfield, the tartan one she particularly disliked. He was around six feet tall and strongly built, with wide shoulders and narrow hips, and he was casually dressed in a rugby shirt and jeans. One of the new guys from the removal firm, probably. She hadn’t seen him before.

  Or had she? Although he was facing away from her, towards the back of the store, there was something disturbingly familiar about the figure.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said, the nagging in the recesses of her brain making her voice sharper than usual. ‘We’re not actually open yet.’

  He whipped round.

  ‘Christ! Where’d you materialise from? I didn’t hear you come in.’

  Lexie wasn’t breathing. Why wasn’t she breathing? It should be simple, shouldn’t it? She did it all the time. She’d done it all her life, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘Cameron?’

  The man stepped forward.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit. Not even the hair, I see.’

  Six years was a long time, yet it disappeared in an instant. Lexie’s lungs inflated with sweet oxygen before a sense of devastation caught the back of her knees. She was drowning in desire again, just as she always used to be. Shocked by her reaction, she forced herself to look amused – one humiliation by Cameron Forrester was enough for a lifetime.

  ‘Well, well, the wanderer returns. Have your folks killed the fatted calf?’

  ‘Nah. Mum won’t buy meat at the supermarket and the butcher’s closed since I was last here. She made apple crumble for me. I’ve missed crumble.’

  His grin was just as Alexa remembered it: irrepressible. The smile faded as he scanned her face. He’d changed. Once, he would just have flashed a wink and cracked a joke; now there was something more observant – or was it more calculating? – in the way he was studying her.

  ‘Crumble, huh?’

  The words emerged as a croak and she cleared her throat.

  Cameron Forrester had been a member of the Hailesbank Hawks until injury had put him out of rugby for good. He still bore the scars: a broken nose that gave his face a lived-in look, and a scar under his chin from where a studded boot sliced it open in a hard-fought league game. ‘Badges of honour’, he used to say, when Lexie teased him about the nose or ran her fingers along the white seam of the scar.

  ‘You’re looking terrific.’

  He took another step closer. Instinct made her edge away. How was it possible that he looked so like the Cameron she’d fallen in love with all those years ago?

  ‘Am I?’

  Her reserve seemed to fluster him.

  ‘I’ve been away,’ he said needlessly. ‘Running activities for children on a cruise ship. Children! Me! Can you imagine?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  Questions scratched at her mind like horsehair. Does he know about Jamie? Does he know I’m back living in Hailesbank? Is that why he’s come?

  ‘So how are you, Lexie?’

  He edged towards her for the third time. She clutched at a high-backed recliner, upholstered in gunmetal and steel blue chenille. The cloth felt coarse and unfriendly under her fingers, but this time she managed to stand her ground.

  ‘Why did you leave, Cameron?’

  Why didn’t you write?

  ‘I heard about Jamie,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The stock response slipped out before she could stop it. It was what she always said whenever anyone offered condolences. Damn him! Using Jamie as a personal shield was unforgivable.

  ‘What a bloody waste,’ he blurted out.

  People didn’t usually say things like that. They tiptoed round the subject, they never trampled right through the heart of it.

  ‘Oops,’ he said, seeing her expression, ‘Sorry. Me and my mouth. But honestly, it’s true, isn’t it? Jamie had so much going for him.’

  ‘Can we leave this?’

  ‘Shit. I’m not good at—’

  Lexie swung away. She spotted a sagging cushion on a nearby sofa and grabbed it, bashing the middle to plump it up. What are you good at, Cameron? Apart from breaking hearts.

  ‘Did you want something? I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Just to say hi. And see if you’d meet me for a drink after you’re finished here.’

  ‘Meet you?’

  ‘Well,’ he muttered, dropping his head in a semblance of repentance so that all she could see was a mass of thick, sandy hair. She didn’t need to stroke it to remember how it felt.

  ‘I owe you an explanation.’

  ‘I really don’t want to hear it.’

  Liar! She really did want to hear it, but six years of hurt got in the way of admitting this.

  ‘No. Fair enough.’

  The grin was back, but wry – another new trait. Cameron had never been one for navel-gazing. He was a physical contact man. A cheerful, generous, blunder-in-feet-first-but-in-a-well-meaning-kind-of-way man. The absolute antithesis, now that she thought about it, of Patrick Mulgrew.

  ‘Take your point.’

  He ran his hand through his thatch so that it stood momentarily on end before tumbling, in the old way, down across his eyes again. When he turned to go, she was conscious of disappointment. At the door the grin reappeared, spiced this time with mischief.

  ‘It’s okay, I can see you need time to get used to me being back. It doesn’t have to be today, we can meet up tomorrow. I’ll call you.’

  Infuriated by his presumption, her spirit returned and she hurled the cushion at him.

  ‘Don’t bother! I won’t change my—’

  But it fell, softly, a yard short and the heavy oak door swung on empty air.

  Six years of silence and now he was back. Where did this leave her, for heaven’s sake?

  Chapter Two

  Catalogue number 8: cavalry boots, spurs and leather gaiters. Donor: Janet McMurray, Inverness. 'These were the boots and gaiters my grandfather wore in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, where he rode alongside Winston Churchill. Short boots with leather gaiters were more comfortable than the full cavalry boot.'

  Capital Art in Heriot Row was bright and airy. The walls of the Georgian rooms were painted in Farrow and Ball’s Strong White. Not Wimborne White or All White or Slipper Satin or any of the other near-white shades on offer, but Strong White which, in Patrick Mulgrew’s opinion, was the exact shade required to set off any work of art he chose to hang on the wall. It was not so bright that the background glare overpowered the work itself, nor so creamy that the colour balance of the painting might be affected. And within these four walls, it was what Patrick said that went.

  The floors were stripped floorboards (original, naturally) almost a foot wide and subtly mellowed with age. Discreet
wires ran along the ceiling to allow lights to be suspended. They could be slid easily from one position to another to accommodate the changing displays. Above them, the elaborate cornice told of wealth. This had been the home, once, of a rich man.

  Capital Art Edinburgh had been Patrick’s first venture into art dealing, but his flagship gallery was in London. He spent time in both cities, and was planning to open his third gallery in New York so that he could reach a wider (and even wealthier) clientele. Today he’d felt compelled to be in Edinburgh, because it was the anniversary of Jamie Gordon’s death.

  He was here, but he was in a bad mood, and Victoria Hunter-Darling was bearing the brunt of his foul temper. Victoria was twenty-three and a year out of St Andrews University, where she’d completed a good degree in History of Art. Now she was embarking on the career of her dreams. Patrick scanned the list of sales and his thick eyebrows knitted alarmingly.

  ‘I thought I left instructions that Lord Whitmuir was not to be allowed to reserve any more paintings until he’s settled his outstanding account?’

  Victoria shifted from one high-heeled foot to the other. (Patrick demanded style, but had banned anything that might mark the floor, so she spent a great deal of time searching for the perfect shoe).

  ‘He was very insistent.’

  ‘If he’s stickered it, it’s unavailable for other purchasers,’ Patrick explained with what he hoped was patience, ‘and he owes us too much money already. There’s no way that man is going to remove another square inch of canvas from this gallery until he’s paid his bill. Got it?’

  Victoria chewed her upper lip and looked devastated.

  ‘What should I do?’

  He sighed. ‘Take the bloody sticker off and I’ll call him.’

  Victoria, looking relieved, scurried off.

  Patrick liked the comfort of money. The son of an Irish farmer, he’d spent a childhood on the wrong end of grind and poverty. When he’d turned eighteen, he’d been handed ten Irish pounds by his father and told he was on his own. That had been the day that he’d sworn a private but solemn oath that he’d do everything in his power to haul himself out of that life and into a better one.

  He gazed around. The large gallery was showing works by a well-known Scottish Colourist. Patrick had used his contacts and his considerable personal charm to coax and wheedle the current owners to put them up for sale. The profits promised to be astronomical – which was why he would not, under any circumstances, allow Lord Whitmuir the slightest leeway. In the small gallery, he was showing the work of a young artist he had been cultivating for three years. Each small exhibition had raised the artist’s standing and popularity and, therefore, the prices he was able to command for his work. In the same gallery, he had installed three glass cases to show high-value, hand-crafted jewellery. These were restocked on an ongoing basis and no item was allowed to remain there for more than two months. Unsold pieces were returned to the maker and replacements requested. Jewellers whose work declined in popularity were dropped. There was no room at Capital Art for sentiment.

  This was why Alexa Gordon’s bombshell a year ago had been so devastating – and why he still refused to forgive himself for crossing the strict boundaries he had set down for himself. Never get involved with employees or artists under contract.

  Victoria reappeared.

  ‘I’ve taken the sticker off.’

  She proved the point by extending a pretty finger. Half a red dot adhered to the end.

  Patrick muttered, ‘Never again,’ and marched off to the back door.

  Victoria nodded eagerly.

  ‘No, of course not, Patrick. Never again.’

  In the modest but immaculately tended garden at the back of the gallery, Patrick was too agitated to sit down on the picturesque bench beside the life-sized sculpture of the woman reading a book. It was a favourite spot for smokers and he’d had many offers for ‘Marlayne’, but he was too fond of the bronze to sell her – another folly of sentiment. He fumbled briefly in the jacket of his exquisitely cut Italian wool jacket for his cigarettes before remembering that he’d given them up two years ago. There were times when he craved a cigarette, less for the nicotine high than for the blessed distraction of lighting the thing, the ritual of holding it, placing it to his lips, inhaling, tapping off the ash.

  He glared at Marlayne. Was it because the figure reminded him a little of Lexie Gordon that he was so attached to it? He’d never confess to anyone (certainly not to Diana Golspie, the woman with whom he currently shared a bed when it suited him) that memories of Lexie still haunted him. He saw her in everything: not just in Marlayne, but also in the frisky gait of the terrier passing his door and in the fresh, clear skin of a baby left asleep in its buggy while its mother wandered the gallery. He saw something of her in every new protégé, only to find each fell short of the standards she’d set. Once he’d glimpsed a girl with hair the exact fuchsia pink of Lexie’s and had begun to stride down the street after her, before realising that she was too tall by a foot.

  Patrick allowed himself to scan Marlayne’s curves. The tilt of the head was similar, and the relaxed way she was holding the book, but the neck was too short and the waist too broad, and the nose altogether too hooked. Lexie’s nose turned up a little at the end.

  He found he had stretched out a hand and cradled it round the figure’s cheek. He snatched it away abruptly and swivelled on his heel.

  Enough. He strode back into the gallery.

  ‘Esther Goldwyn’s just phoned,’ Victoria said. ‘She’s excited about the piece in today’s paper. She wants to talk.’

  Patrick grunted. Esther was his latest signing. She was smart and talented, but she was not nearly as talented as Lexie. He hadn’t found an artist in a decade with Alexa Gordon’s gift for rich, evocative painting.

  ‘Tell her I’m busy, but I’ll phone later.’

  He perched on the edge of the hand-crafted oak desk and picked up the phone. He was in no mood for compromise. It was a good time to call Lord Whitmuir.

  ‘Who was that?’

  As Cameron disappeared, Lexie turned to find Neil Taylor behind her, neat as a button and thin as a pin.

  ‘No-one,’ she said, breathless. ‘Someone I – an old friend.’

  As she took in the look on his face, thoughts of Cameron vanished.

  ‘You’ve seen Dad.’

  Neil was thirty-five – too old to still be an assistant in a place like Gordon’s. Once he’d had ambition but now he stayed out of loyalty to her father.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And?’

  He shrugged.

  Lexie clicked her tongue.

  ‘Damn. I hoped we’d done it carefully enough to slip it past him. What’s he said?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  She’d always known this would be a difficult day, and it was certainly turning out that way. She stared bleakly at Neil’s freckled face and tried to control her frustration. He was capable, organised and full of ideas, and he wasn’t being given a chance. If anyone was right to step into Jamie’s shoes, it was Neil – but her father wouldn’t contemplate the thought. If they were not careful, there would be nothing to step into.

  He’s so bloody stubborn.

  She’d never say it, of course. Instead, she hooked her arm through Neil’s and turned him towards the back of the store with a cheerfulness that was far from what she felt.

  ‘Don’t worry. Rome wasn’t built and all that. Let’s try and salvage something, shall we?’

  She felt him straighten up. She squeezed his elbow and smiled at him.

  ‘Bet you a quid that Morag Toe-rag says “challenging retail climate” before the end of the meeting.’

  ‘My guess is twice.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  Lexie’s father, Tommy Gordon, had been born into furniture retailing. He represented the third generation of Gordons in Hailesbank, and each one had towed the Emporium like a stately carriage forward to the next. Somewhere in the
dusty archives, she knew, there was a faded sepia photograph of the front of the store shortly after it opened. Archibald Gordon, the founder, stood four-square on the pavement in front of the oak doors, stiff in dark suit and starched collar, a full set of moustaches making his thirty-something face look much older. Flanking him was an array of assistants and porters, clerical staff and cleaners, all proud as punch of their grand store.

  She watched her father walk across the showroom floor and lower himself into the carver at the head of the mahogany table. The sense of family had always been strong. Once this had been an asset, but now he was beginning to bow under its burdens.

  ‘We’ve got half an hour before we open and we need to do this quickly.’

  It was nine thirty and already he looked worn out. The bags under his eyes were heavy enough for wheels and his skin was stretched taut over his jaw, pulling his lips into a thin line. She knew he couldn’t have forgotten what day it was. Had he lain awake all night, thinking about Jamie, just as she had? She scanned the lines on his face, etched like deep furrows in a ploughed field, and felt a rush of protective love.

  ‘We’ll need to press on.’

  He took out his half-moon reading glasses and looped the cord round his neck, then hooked them onto his nose. His eyebrows poked out over the top like unpruned bushes.

  ‘Neil?’

  ‘I’m expecting a rep from a new supplier from Sheffield.’ Neil pushed a catalogue across the table. ‘He’s not offering anything too radical, but it’s a little more contemporary than our current stock. We need to have something for the younger buyers of the new Morrice Homes, the show house opened at the weekend and—’

  Tom flicked through the book and pushed it back.

  ‘Not now, Neil. Let’s stick with what we know sells.’

  Lexie knew she had to show solidarity.

  ‘Neil’s right, Dad. There’s a whole new market out there and we’re not tapping into it.’

  There was a doleful voice from her right: Morag Ferguson, the office manager-cum-bookkeeper. Morag, with her frizzy perm and round glasses, was a leftover from another era, a time when jobs were easy-come, easy-go and credit cards were ‘flexible friends’. She found double-dip-recession trading deeply uncomfortable.