Page 75 of Artful Deceit
Without discussion, they set off back to the ice cream shop, neither of them speaking until they were inside with the door locked behind them.
“Poor Flynn,” Maria said. “He seemed really shaken up.”
“He and the sergeant had got pretty close.” Lily sank onto the nearest chair. “He was a nice man. I can’t believe he’s dead. How can he be dead?”
Of course, there was no answer to that, and they sat in stunned silence for a few minutes.
Eventually, Lily loosened her grip on the backpack and set it by her feet. Opening the top, she withdrew the passports and everything else except the money. “Could you do me a favour and keep hold of this until I know Len won’t make a fuss about it?”
“Of course.” Maria picked up the bag. “I promise I won’t touch any of it.”
“I’m not worried about that. You can spend the lot as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’ll just keep it safe.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
She chewed her lip. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I’ll probably have more questions,” Lily said. “I can’t think straight now, but I guess I’ll think of things later.”
“I don’t know if there’s much more I can tell you, but I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have.”
Lily walked Maria to the door. “It feels a little odd to finally have answers. Especially as I was starting to think I’d never know the truth about my childhood.”
“I can’t imagine knowing is much of a relief, given what you’ve found.”
“It’s better than not knowing. I really wondered whether Uncle Derek was some kind of spy.”
“I think he’d probably have liked that notion.”
“Probably.”
Maria stepped outside, then turned back. “Call me if you need anything.”
After thanking her again, Lily watched her walk away, eyes on the backpack, which had felt like such a burden over the last ten months. Sharing her problems definitely made the burden easier to bear.
Trudging upstairs, she shot off a message to Flynn, then stood over the sink and watched her forged passport go up in flames.
The relief was immediate, but her mind soon wandered to the events of the day. She thought about Flynn having to tell the sergeant’s wife that her husband was dead. Her chest squeezed at the thought, and tears filled her eyes as she ran through a snapshot reel of her time getting to know the sergeant over the last five months.
When the waves of grief passed, she mostly felt numb. And also a little guilty.
Because as sad as she was about the sergeant, she couldn’t help but wonder if this meant that Flynn might be able to keep his job on St Mary’s.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lily fell asleep waitingto hear from Flynn. The next morning she found a message had come through after midnight, saying it had been a long day and he was heading home for some sleep. He said he’d speak to her tomorrow.
Opening the shop felt somehow disrespectful, in the way that getting on with life feels wrong when someone has died.
After her uncle had died, Lily had felt an overwhelming urge to shout at random people for continuing their everyday activities as though nothing had happened.
Now she was one of those people – just getting on with life. The mood was fairly sombre in the shop, with a lot of locals coming in merely to exchange a few words and comment on how sad it was. Lily agreed on repeat. She was growing weary of having the same conversation when the woman who worked at the post office came in late in the morning.
“It must be awful for you,” she remarked after the standard mournful words.
Lily’s head darted up. “How do you mean?”
