Page 116 of Best Summer Ever

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ was Mum’s terse response. ‘Daisy will either still be in the walled garden or in the summerhouse, so it won’t take long to track her down.’

‘I really wouldn’t mind going to find her myself,’ came the voice again and my stomach twisted. ‘It feels like forever since I had a look about the place.’

And hated it, I bitterly thought as I braced myself, then quickly parted the old-fashioned but still favoured vinyl fly curtain hanging over the doorway and stepped inside.

‘Laurence,’ I said crossly to the back of his head. ‘What are you doing here?’

He twisted round to look at me and I felt not a single flicker of the attraction I had formerly felt for him. If anything, the sight of him sitting at the table in my family home made me detest him all the more. What right did he think he had to just turn up?

‘He wanted to see you, Daisy,’ said Mum, over the top of his head. I couldn’t make out what she was thinking, but I hoped that manufacturing a reconciliation wasn’t on her mind. ‘Your dad’s out looking for you as we speak.’

‘And why on earth would you want to see me, Laurence?’ I furiously frowned. ‘I can’t imagine we have a single thing to say to one another.’

He gave me a complacent smile that I found utterly irritating.

‘Oh, but we do, Daisy,’ he said, standing up and tucking in his chair. ‘We really do.’

I walked back outside again, in the hope that he would follow me and he did. I didn’t want to become embroiled in an exchange of words with Mum in earshot.

The sight of him looking so superior and self-assured had made me wish that I’d told everyone why I had left him when I arrived back and then Mum would have sent him away with a flea in his ear on sight, rather than treating him to tea and shortbread. And the best tea service, I had noticed with annoyance. Not even my homecoming had warranted that.

‘Go on then,’ I said bluntly. ‘You can say what you think you need to say and then you can leave because I have to get back to work.’

‘According to your beautiful Insta account,’ Laurence then surprised me by saying, ‘Wynbrook Blooms closes at four and it’s a fair way after that now, isn’t it?’

I opened my mouth to object, but no words came out.

‘I have got that right, haven’t I?’ he asked, with an ostentatious glance at his Breitling watch. ‘You close the garden gate at four o’clock?’

‘Yes, that is right, but there’s still plenty of work to do beyond selling the flowers. There’s watering to get on with and the days takings to register.’

I didn’t like the thought that he had been watching my life and change of circumstances online. It wasn’t something I had considered he might do before and it made me even more annoyed with him.

‘But surely you can spare me just five minutes?’ he wheedled. ‘Or would it be better if I came back later? Perhaps I could take you out for dinner somewhere, Daisy.’

The last thing I wanted was to have the threat of him reappearing hanging over me.

‘Five minutes, then,’ I said, as I buried my hands in my shorts pockets and arranged my features into the best bored witless expression I could muster. ‘Get on and say what you think is so important, Laurence, because I can’t bear the thought of you coming back here again. I thought I was completely rid of you.’

He looked both shocked and hurt, but I was the injured party in our former relationship, not him, and I was keen to remind him of that.

‘Come and sit in my car,’ he suggested. ‘We won’t be overheard in there.’

A brief glance over my shoulder confirmed that Mum was lingering just the other side of the door curtain, so I did as he had suggested, even though I didn’t want to be in such closeproximity to him. His aftershave might have been expensive, but it was cloying too and in the confined space of his sleek car it would doubtless be intense.

‘What do you think of the new wheels?’ he asked, once he was settled in the driving seat.

‘You know very well that as far as I’m concerned, one car is much like another, so not much.’

Though of course, no other car on the planet was like my lovely, ancient jalopy with its unreliable passenger window and intermittent electrics.

‘Why are you putting on your seatbelt?’ I then asked, as I realised Laurence had pushed something and started the engine. ‘I haven’t got time to go anywhere with you and what’s more, I don’t want to.’

I went to open my door, but he was already moving off and I had no choice but to pull my belt on too.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded, once I was buckled in. ‘Let me out, this instant.’

His behaviour was akin to kidnap and I was trapped with no safe means of escape.

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