Page 29 of The Holiday Cottage

With a final nod to Janie, she grabbed her coat and headed back down to the lobby. She popped her head into the back of the room where the lunchtime event was already underway, satisfied herself everything was fine and then left the hotel.

She’d support Sophie and deal with the horrible client, and then she’d go home and collapse for a few hours. Fortunately tomorrow was clear. No events. She just had to survive a few more hours and then she could use her office day to recover.

She stood on the street for a moment, debating whether to use the train or taxi. In the end, she went with a taxi. She didn’t feel well enough to cope with the Christmas crush on the train.

In the taxi, she relaxed back against the seat and checked her emails.

She’d had ninety-six in the short time it had taken her to get from the hotel to here, almost all of them marked urgent. She scanned them all, selected the ones that related to the events she had today and answered them swiftly. She was in the middle of composing a reassuring response to a panicked email from a client about a budget change when a call came in.

Tina.

She rejected the call. The only time her mother called her was when she wanted something, and there was no way she was taking a call from her in the middle of her working day. It would unsettle her too much and she needed to concentrate.

She went back to her emails, but she felt on edge and she hated the fact that a call from her mother could still have this effect on her. It wasn’t just an emotional reaction, it was a physical one. Her heart was banging against her ribs, pounding out an alert.Disaster incoming.Her palms were sweaty (drop what you’re doing and run), and her breathing felt as it did when she ran up the stairs too quickly.

She took several slow breaths, and then the call came again, and again she rejected it.

To begin with it had felt weird and unnatural to be rejecting a call from her mother, but that had been before she’d been forced to acknowledge that everything about her mother was weird and unnatural, most of all their relationship.

Call me Tina, was one of the earliest things Imogen could remember her mother saying to her.I don’t want people knowing you’re my daughter.

It had been confusing when she was six and hadn’t become any less confusing at sixteen. But she’d weathered it. It wasn’t as if she’d been given a choice. No one had said, hey, which one would you prefer? This warm loving mother who will hug you and read to you and show interest in everything you do, or this young angry individual who blames you for coming along uninvited and ruining the best years of her life?

Her phone buzzed again and this time it was Sophie.

ETA? Client asking for you.

The event wasn’t for another five hours, but if the client needed her to hold his hand she’d hold his hand.

She was about to type her reply when her phone rang again. This time it was from an unidentified number.

Concerned that it might be a client, she answered it. “Hello?”

“Is that Imogen Thorne?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“I’m a doctor and I work in the emergency department.” He named the hospital. “Are you Tina Thorne’s sister?”

Sister? She leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes briefly. Her mother had been at it again.

“I’m her daughter.” In her time she’d played the part of sister, best friend and a distant cousin from Scotland, but those days were gone. She was done with all that. “What happened?”

“She has had an accident. When she was brought in, she mentioned a sister. We found your number in her purse. We tried calling you from her phone, but you didn’t answer.”

That had been the hospital? She felt a flush of guilt. She’d assumed it was her mother asking for money. “I was in a meeting. And she doesn’t have a sister.”

“You’re sure? Because she mentioned it specifically. She was adamant.”

Pretend you’re my sister.

“She doesn’t have a sister. You mentioned an accident. What kind of accident?”

“If you come to the hospital, we can discuss this face-to-face. She does have a head injury, and the fact that she thinks you’re her sister might indicate an element of confusion.”

Delusion, more like, not confusion.

What did it say about her that she immediately suspected a trap? Was this guy really a doctor or was this one of her mother’s elaborate manipulations?

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