Poinsettias and the Perfect Crime Read online

  “Apparently they’re getting divorced. Can you believe that?” My mother floated into the room with a plate of nibbles, answering my question before Charlotte could get a word in. “She won’t tell me why. But perhaps you’ll be able to get some more sense out of her…”

  “Mum!” Charlotte said in the exact same tone she’d used throughout her teenage years when she’d been dragged kicking and screaming from the local clubs in Kingston Hill. It was more than ten years later but nothing seemed to have really changed. My sister was an expert at falling from grace the very moment she finally had pole-position in my mother’s eyes within her grasp. I’d blown my ‘golden child’ status by quitting my chemistry job, but Charlotte had just beaten me to the bottom again.

  My mother threw her hands up in despair, probably lamenting that a broken marriage couldn’t be fixed by the old strategy of grounding her daughter, before she flounced back towards the kitchen.

  “What happened?” I asked my sister, my face lining with concern. She and her husband Garrett had only been married for a year and eleven months. I hadn’t known the man she’d chosen to marry well, but he’d seemed like a nice, albeit work-owned, person. He’d traded Forex for a living for a large company in London.

  “To tell you the truth, Diana, things started to go downhill right after our wedding. I know I told you that we’d planned it so that Garrett would keep working until he was fifty, and then we could both retire, but I didn’t actually realise how much that job owns him. It’s his whole life! The man can’t even hold a conversation if it’s not about Forex or his journey across London every day on the tube. It even got to the point where he was going out with the work guys over the weekend. Not to have fun, mind you, but to stalk new clients for the company by staking out golf courses. It’s utter madness! I like money as much as the next person, but I am not willing to sacrifice my happiness for it. I told Garrett that he was spending too much of his time at work, and I asked him to cut back for the sake of our relationship. He saw it as a choice between me or the job. I think you can see which one he picked.” She waggled her ring-free fingers in my direction.

  “Ouch. I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.

  She shrugged. “I think I’m better off for it, to tell you the truth. I’m certainly financially better off. I sold my ‘tell all’ story about how my marriage was ruined by a workaholic husband and made an absolute mint. You know I’m all about integrity in my journalism, but no word of a lie, that tabloid article made me more than the rest of my work for the year put together. People love reading about other people’s misfortune.”

  “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or commiserate.”

  Charlotte waved my concerns away and took a gulp of the glass of wine she’d probably procured before telling our mum the truth about her marriage breakdown. “I’m already over it. Writing that trashy article helped me to see that I picked Garrett because he was the safe option, the option I’d been told to look for. He would have supported me. I wouldn’t even have needed to work, if I didn’t want to. But I never really wanted that. I have my own dreams to pursue. I didn’t need to settle down.” She flashed me a grin. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  I nodded as I was expected to. I knew my sister was telling me a story I was supposed to relate to, and I did… if that was the real story. Charlotte had been excellent at exploiting an angle long before she actually studied to become a journalist. Whatever had really gone wrong between her and Garrett, I wasn’t convinced it was as simple as a sudden life-goal realisation on Charlotte’s part.

  To my surprise, my sister came and perched on the arm of the chair I’d picked to sit in. “Here’s the thing…” she began. I mentally congratulated myself for being correct about my observations, before wondering what I was about to be dragged into.

  “…I invited my new boyfriend here tonight. I knew Mum was going to be preparing food for four of us. I didn’t want any of it to go to waste. I thought it might actually be a good thing for Samuel to come and meet my family.”

  “You invited your new boyfriend to our family get together? How long have you been dating?” I asked, knowing there was something in this sum that didn’t add up.

  “Ummm…” My sister’s hesitation was all I needed to know that I’d been right to doubt her neat and tidy reason for breaking things off with Garrett. Charlotte hadn’t been reevaluating her life choices at all. She’d found herself a new man.

  “Charlotte…” I began, scarcely able to believe I still needed to warn her about acting rashly when we were both well into our twenties.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” she cut me off. “But Samuel is a great guy! We have loads in common. He’s actually an investigative journalist with a great reputation. Some of the pieces he’s written are something else. That’s why he’s a much better match for me than Garrett ever was. We understand one another, and…” The doorbell rang, cutting her off mid-flow.

  A silly smile popped onto her face - one that I recognised from every teenage crush she’d ever developed. Oh boy. Whoever this guy was, she had it bad for him.

  “That will be him now. You’ll see for yourself…” she said, standing up and going to answer the door.

  “Who is that?” my mum asked, stalking into the front room the moment Charlotte left it.

  “Father Christmas?” I supplied, hoping a joke would lighten the dangerous mood that had already settled over tonight’s dinner.

  It didn’t work. My mother just kept grilling me with her gaze.

  “It’s Charlotte’s boyfriend. She invited him to dinner,” I told her, caving to the pressure and secretly feeling a little delighted that my younger sister had fallen from grace again just as quickly as she’d risen above me. It was terribly petty, but sibling rivalry dies hard.

  “Boyfriend? What boyfriend? As far as I’m concerned, she is still married to that lovely man, Garrett!” my mother said at the precise moment my sister returned to the room with a man in tow.

  “Mum!” she said, looking every bit as outraged as when she’d had her alcohol confiscated as a teen.

  “It’s all right, Charlotte. I know I’m a surprise guest. I’m sorry. I didn’t have a chance to call ahead and check that it was okay for me to come, Ms Flowers. I’ve been out of communication for the past month, researching a very interesting story in India. I’m Samuel, Samuel Farley. It is a pleasure to meet Charlotte’s family.” He stretched out a hand to my mum.

  She looked at it for a second too long before shaking. “Oh. You’re a journalist.”

  “Samuel’s an investigative researcher,” Charlotte corrected. She’d definitely used the word ‘journalist’ with me, but I didn’t blame her for avoiding its use with our mother. When Charlotte had done her English degree and then opted to go into journalism, she’d automatically become the black sheep of the family. It hadn’t done a lot for my already tenuous relationship with my sister. She’d long been annoyed by my ‘holier than thou’ journey from ‘A* student’, who never ever broke the rules, to ‘chemical analyst’ at a top London laboratory.

  It had only been this summer just gone, when I’d really thrown myself into the new business and had completed my fall from grace in our mother’s eyes, that she’d wanted to meet me for coffee and a chat. We’d had a really good time and I’d discovered that, while I no longer seemed to have anything in common with my ex-colleagues and fellow rat-race school friends, I now had a lot more to share with my sister. We still had a rift of many years to bridge, but I definitely thought we were making some progress.

  But that had been when she’d been the new favourite - married and with a stable future. Anything might happen now.

  Samuel grinned round, apparently unfazed by the icy reception he was being given by his girlfriend’s parent. “Nice to meet you,” he said, stretching his hand out to me.

  “I’m Diana, Charlotte’s sister,” I said, making an effort to smile and shake his hand in return for t
he sake of my sister.

  My first impression of Samuel Farley was that I could see why my sister had traded in her husband. Her new boyfriend was six-foot-one of gym-wrought physique with a strong set to his forehead and a not-quite straight nose that had been broken many times. His hair was a mess of dark blond tussles. He wore a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, in spite of the cold December chill, and he’d left the buttons undone just enough to show off a tribal type necklace that was definitely not a tourist trinket. I’d been skeptical when my sister had claimed that her new beau was a hot-shot investigative journalist but this guy certainly looked like the real deal. He was also surprisingly attractive in the kind of way that rouses your primal animal instincts. Poor Garrett never stood a chance.

  “Charlotte has told me all about you,” Samuel continued, still glowing towards me. I shot my sister a suspicious look. “She said you’re a scientist who quit her job to grow flowers?” That was Charlotte’s kind of angle. It was a soundbite that would sell a story.

  “In a nutshell,” I said, not wanting to get into any details that might derail the focus of this conversation. Charlotte shot me an exasperated look. I smiled sweetly back. “You said you were in India this past month. May I ask what you were working on?” There - I was throwing my sister and her boyfriend a bone.

  “You may! Although, that is on the understanding that this stays in this room,” Samuel said with a twinkle in his dark eyes. I found myself warming to him in the same way I was sure my sister had. For just a second, I lamented not having a person like that in my life - a man who I could look at with starry eyes and feel amazed by, and he by me in return. Then I remembered my strange encounter with George earlier that day and firmly stomped on the notion. I hadn’t wanted anything of the sort before he’d turned up, and I certainly wasn’t going to let the seeds of doubt he’d attempted to sow in my mind take root.

  “So, there I was, with a tiger quite literally on my tail…” I zoned back in just in time to hear the middle of Samuel’s anecdote. Judging by the enthralled look on my sister’s face, and the appalled one on my mum’s, I’d missed a good story.

  “…and you’ll have to read about the rest when the newspaper releases it,” Samuel finished triumphantly. I laughed at the appropriate time and my sister glowed.

  “Samuel is on the television all the time. He’s even been on the BBC as their local correspondent when there was that huge disaster. Several tourists were trampled to death by a herd of stampeding elephants. He was the reporter for that!” Charlotte informed us.

  I nodded and looked impressed but not overly excited. It was tough to know how to react to someone’s success when it was sandwiched around tragedy. That was journalism for you.

  “How did you meet Charlotte?” my mother asked in a suspiciously innocent manner. I smelt a rat immediately.

  Samuel ran a hand through his dark blond hair. The sideways look he shot my sister was so quick I nearly missed it, but I knew it for what it was - a sure sign that he’d been coached on the right answer to give. “We were both submitting stories to the same news publication. There was actually a bit of competition as to who got prime position. I won,” he added and received a jab in the ribs for his comment. This was perfectly choreographed.

  “When was that?” my mother pried, seeing straight through the act. Charlotte should have known better.

  This time Samuel floundered. “It was, uh… when was it, Babe? I’m travelling so much I don’t even know what month we’re in any more.”

  My sister sent me a look that let me know she knew her boyfriend had gone way overboard on the recovery. “We actually met this summer.” She didn’t elaborate further, but I did wonder if she’d already been seeing Samuel when we’d met for coffee. She’d definitely still been with Garrett then.

  “Diana, why didn’t you bring your boyfriend with you?” My mother turned her guns on me.

  “You mean my ex-boyfriend George? The one you gave my address to?” Ha! I could make as much of a fuss as my little sister these days. This whole evening was turning into some kind of soap opera, and we hadn’t even sat down for dinner yet.

  “Was that who that young man was? I didn’t recognise him. You never introduced us when you two were dating. He seemed very nice…” That was a strike back for my mum.

  “I didn’t bring him with me because he isn’t my boyfriend, and he never will be. You do remember that he cheated on me, don’t you? Surely you don’t think any self-respecting woman should return to a man who does that?” That was a point back in my favour, although I wasn’t happy about striking a blow so close to home. Dad had pretty much done exactly that to our mum. Their relationship had come to an end because of it.

  “Anyway… I wasn’t actually talking about your ex boyfriend. I meant the young man everyone in Merryfield has seen you spending all of your time with. The nutty one.” My mother swerved to the left so hard I was left reeling.

  My mouth flapped for a moment. “He’s my friend,” I managed.

  “Who is this friend?” Charlotte asked, taking a sip of her wine and looking amused. She always looked amused when I was the one taking a grilling.

  “He’s a researcher…” I started, hoping to push the conversation back towards Samuel.

  “I heard that he’s some kind of conspiracy theorist looney. Mrs Dovey said that when he came into her shop last week he was raving about Prince Charles being a vampire, or something equally barmy. Apparently because the man has relatives in Transylvania and burns in the sunlight it makes him one of Dracula’s descendants.” My mother looked utterly perplexed. I couldn’t say that I blamed her.

  “Prince Charles has relatives in Transylvania?” Samuel queried, looking far more thoughtful about the whole thing than anyone should look. I supposed it was the investigative journalist in him.

  “Probably. Pretty much every country that still has a royal family is related to all of the other royal families. It’s how they kept power, by forging alliances through marriage,” I said, hoping this would be an end to the conversation.

  “It’s funny… because I thought that the royal family were actually lizards,” Samuel continued, deadpan.

  The room fell so silent that you could hear a pin drop.

  Samuel grinned. “I’m joking! If you really believed I was being serious then this other guy must be completely nuts. Wow,” he said, shaking his head and smiling as widely as a Cheshire cat. “What’s his name? I get contacted by conspiracy guys all the time. They all think they have a story worth investigating.”

  “Fergus Robinson,” I said, grudgingly. For all of Fergus’ crazy theories that I refused to go along with, I didn’t want him to be mocked.

  Samuel shrugged and shook his head. I felt a brief moment of relief that their paths hadn’t crossed.

  My sister smiled sweetly at me. “Are you sure he’s not your boyfriend? He definitely sounds like your type! You know… kind of crazy.”

  I decided right there and then that Charlotte would be getting a lump of coal from me this Christmas. Or a potato. Potatoes were cheaper and got the message across just fine. You could even write ‘You’re a pain in the butt’ across a potato in case of any misunderstanding.

  “We should sit down to eat… unless we’re expecting any other surprise visitors?” my mother said, apparently satisfied with the third degree burns my sister and I were nursing.

  “No,” we dutifully chorused, before shooting each other catty looks. Christmas had definitely begun.

  “Are you going to the Wrextons’ ball this year?” Charlotte asked when we’d sat down to the main course of roast beef.

  “No, I’ve never been invited and don’t expect that to change. You know that,” I added, well aware that my sister was playing her usual game.

  “I’m going with Samuel. Isn’t it nice that we were both invited? How about you, Mum?” Charlotte asked.

  “I was invited. I will not be attending,” my mum replied.

  “You never
go to anything. It would be good to get out and do something.” Charlotte was pushing her luck.

  My mother raised her eyes to meet my sister’s. “I am not going to an event that I have been invited to out of pity.”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “No one would ever dare to pity you, Mum. The Wrextons ask anyone who’s anyone in Merryfield to their ball. I’m sure they’ve asked you because you’re a respectable member of the community.”

  “And who am I? The village idiot?” I said, peeved by my sister’s sales pitch.

  “You know exactly why you’re never invited to the ball.” My sister gave me a smug look that transported me way back to our teenage years.

  “I’m actually doing the flowers for the ball this year. I’ve been commissioned by Mrs Wrexton,” I said, hoping to scrape myself back onto the scoreboard.

  “But you won’t be staying, will you? Not with…”

  “…I know,” I said, cutting Charlotte off before she could speak the name of my arch nemesis and the reason why I was never invited to the annual Merryfield Ball.

  Cordelia Wrexton.

  3

  Beating the Bully

  Every school has its bullies. Cordelia Wrexton was mine.

  I’d always been the quiet one, the one who got on with her work and got good grades, but whilst that had worked out for me just fine in primary school, it had all changed the moment I’d started secondary. That had been when I’d met Cordelia. It had begun with her sneering at my enjoyment of science and eagerness to answer the questions the teacher asked. Then she’d progressed to making fun of my hair and starting rumours that I was dyeing it. It was small stuff, stuff you might not even sweat as an adult, but it wore me down over time. I’d asked adults for advice. They’d told me to ignore it, ignore it and it will go away. If you’ve ever been bullied, you’ll know that this stock advice never works. If anything, pretending that you can’t hear your bully ripping apart everything about you actually encourages them - it gives them a free rein.