Faith - Lesley Pearse [228]
But Stuart hadn’t phoned for a week now, and when Laura had tried to ring him at the flat in Edinburgh the previous day, he hadn’t been there. She had no doubt he would surface again before long, but in her heart she knew Meggie and Ivy were reading too much into his interest in her. She was sure he only felt friendship, nothing more. Perhaps that was just as well; after all it was a well-known fact that old loves can rarely be rekindled.
Lucy suddenly cocked her ears and began barking.
‘Shush,’ Laura said, stroking her. ‘It’s only someone walking by.’
A ring at the doorbell proved this wasn’t so, and Lucy jumped off the settee in readiness. Laura frowned; she was much too comfortable to get up and she thought it was probably only a door-to-door salesman at this time of the afternoon. Her sisters had gone out to view a property and if it was them coming back they’d have let themselves in with their key.
When the bell rang again and Lucy continued to bark, Laura groaned and got up. She thought if it was Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses intent on converting her, she’d give them a piece of her mind.
Lucy had a habit of darting out when anyone came to the door, so Laura shut her in the sitting room before opening the front door.
Two men were standing there, wet from the rain, and they had none of the usual missionary characteristics like plain dark suits or a few religious tracts in their hands.
The younger one was tall and muscular in jeans and a denim jacket. She thought he was around thirty and he had a shaved head and a ring in one ear. The other was an elderly man in a long, dark, trench-style raincoat. He looked familiar, and he was looking at her as if he expected her to know him.
‘Come on now, Laura!’ he said reprovingly.
‘Robbie!’ she gasped. Even if he had aged dramatically, his Geordie accent was just the same. ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘It’s never hard to find someone when you’ve got friends in the right places,’ he said, grinning at the younger man. ‘So how about inviting us in?’
Laura felt a twinge of panic. Robbie Fielding was one man she never wanted to see or hear from again, and if she’d run into him out in the street she would have walked on by without speaking. She certainly didn’t want him in the house for she despised him, and his companion looked like hired muscle.
He smiled at her hesitation. She remembered his teeth being good, but they were now stained brown, with several missing. ‘Come on, just a cup of coffee for an old pal. You wouldn’t want to leave me out here in the rain, would you?’
As far as Laura was concerned she could have cheerfully watched him drown in the Thames and not lifted a finger to help him, but she couldn’t say anything along those lines for fear of him turning nasty. ‘It isn’t convenient right now. What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I was in London and I had a couple of things I wanted to talk over with you about Belle.’ He moved forward and put one foot inside the door before she could gather herself. ‘I also wanted to say how glad I was that you’ve got your appeal.’
Suddenly he was right through the door, pushing it wide open and nearly knocking her over, the other man following him. Laura’s stomach lurched and she cursed herself for answering the door.
‘By the way you are looking gorgeous,’ he said over his shoulder as he walked straight down the hall into the kitchen. He stopped inside the kitchen, turning back to her, and waved a hand at his friend. ‘And this is Andy, my right-hand man.’
‘My sister will be back any minute,’ she said, declining to acknowledge Andy. ‘And we’ve got people coming for dinner, so please make this snappy.’
He took a seat at the table, the other man doing likewise, and Robbie got out his cigarettes.
Laura waved a finger at him. ‘Please don’t, my sister doesn’t like smoking in her house.’
He put them back in his pocket