Page 6 of For My Finale
“And I’ve got work to do,” Arty said, throwing back his flat white in one big gulp. “Come on, Gloria, you can monologue at me while I wash the glasses from last night.”
And as quickly as they’d all arrived, they were all gone, leaving Blossom behind the counter in a far more peaceful cafe.
She exhaled, laughing a little to herself. The idea of Lilah Paxton coming to Bankton was ridiculous. Completely absurd. The stuff of fantasies. Teenage fantasies.
Still, as she went back to work washing cups, she couldn’t help but remember her childhood bedroom, Lilah’s face staring down at her from different angles, her eyes watching every movement.
But nothing exciting ever happened in Bankton. That was just a fact. A fact that Blossom Baker sometimes found herself wishing wasn’t true at all.
Chapter Three
Lilah Paxton had been either in Bankton or in its general vicinity for approximately twenty minutes, and was beginning to admit to herself that she might be lost. She stood next to her sleek rental car, squinting at the crumpled sheet of directions the estate agent had given her.
“Turn left at the old oak tree,” she muttered.
She looked around. The direction might be helpful if she knew what a damn oak tree looked like. Or if every stupid tree in the area didn’t look like it had been around since medieval times.
She leaned on the car and sighed. She could drive, that was a plus. She was driving herself, something that hadn’t happened for years now. But she’d forgotten that there was a convenience attached to having a driver. Namely, that getting lost wasn’t her problem, it was firmly someone else’s.
She looked down at the paper again and sucked air over her teeth. “Follow the footpath past the field,” she read on. She sniffed and turned in a slow circle. From where she was standing, she could see no fewer than five fields. All of which looked suspiciously similar.
With a frustrated groan, she shoved the paper into her coat pocket. It was as good as useless. “I am an intelligent, competent adult,” she said out loud. “I have memorized entire scripts. I have survived Hollywood. I can find a stupid cottage.”
She turned, saw a footpath, and seized the day, her designerheels sinking into the mud as she began to walk.
“Who put damn mud here?” she muttered. But she kept walking, despite the suspicion that things weren’t exactly going well.
For a start, everything smelled like, well, like animal mess. And smoke. Where was that from? Why did the country smell like smoke? Was it on fire? And it was all fantastically dirty. Not that LA was the cleanest city in the world, but there was mud everywhere here. Only God knew how people kept their carpets clean.
She tottered around the edge of the field and through a gap in what might have once been a hedge, but that now towered over her. Which was when she heard it. A rustling noise behind her.
Lilah froze. Her heart stopped beating, her breath stopped breathing, and her skin prickled with anxiety. It was entirely too quiet around here. Unlike the buzz of city traffic or the constant shouts of a film set, Bankton seemed eerily still. Like one of those films where the place was deserted and yet haunted at the same time.
But something was definitely moving behind her.
She swallowed, steeling herself, then glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself. “There’s no zombies out here. Surely there’s nothing more dangerous here than in LA. Get a grip.”
The rustles grew louder. The sound of something very, very large on the other side of the hedge. Something very, very large approaching the gap that Lilah had just walked through.
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Blossom leaned on the kitchen counter, sipping her tea and watching the dark gray clouds gathering overhead. It’d rain before long. She smiled to herself. She loved the smell of the rainon the trees, loved her little corner of peace.
Her cottage was tiny, no more than four rooms. But the garden stretched out in front of her, the view contained not a single other building, as long as you didn’t count the horrifically renovated cottage next door, and all was right with the world. Particularly since it was her morning off. She took another mouthful of tea.
Well, all was perfect except for Billy.
She leaned a little further forward, straining to see further out to the road. But she saw not a sign of him. Odd. He was usually a creature of habit, and he really should be here by now.
She was just wondering whether or not she should put on a raincoat and go and look for him, when her phone rang.
“Hey, Ives,” she said, picking it up.
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