A Place to Hide Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Sheila Norton

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part 1: A Place to Hide

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Read More

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Emma Nightingale needs a place to hide away. Pursued by the demons left by her ex-boyfriend, she takes refuge in quiet Crickleford, a sleepy town in Dartmoor, where she can lay low.

  Life in Crickleford is quiet and peaceful, but it won’t be for long if people discover the truth about Emma’s past. Not wanting to make too much of a fuss, she ends up lying about why she’s there – she’s looking after some cats, she says – then suddenly the town’s new ‘pet-sitter’ is in high demand!

  While looking after an Alsatian, Emma finds all attention is on her, and the handsome young reporter from the local paper takes an interest in her story …

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sheila Norton lives near Chelmsford in Essex with her husband, and worked for most of her life as a medical secretary, before retiring early to concentrate on her writing. Sheila is the award-winning writer of numerous women’s fiction novels and over 100 short stories, published in women’s magazines.

  She has three married daughters, six little grandchildren, and over the years has enjoyed the companionship of three cats and two dogs. She derived lots of inspiration for her animal books from remembering the pleasure and fun of sharing life with her own pets.

  When not working on her writing Sheila enjoys spending time with her family and friends, as well as reading, walking, swimming, photography and travel. For more information please see www.sheilanorton.com

  Also by Sheila Norton

  The Vets at Hope Green

  Oliver the Cat Who Saved Christmas

  Charlie the Kitten That Saved a Life

  For all my friends and readers in my adopted county of Devon. Crickleford isn’t a real place, of course – but I think it should be!

  PART 1

  A PLACE TO HIDE

  CHAPTER ONE

  I hopped off the bus, pulling my suitcase after me, and stared around, taking in all the sights I remembered so well, despite the many years that had passed. The market cross, the town hall with its ornate black and gold clock that chimed loudly every half hour, the humpback bridge over the river, and the view, between the stone-built shops and cottages in the Town Square where I stood, of the big, square castle on the hill. So here I was, after all these years, back in Crickleford. Apart from the fact that I was now seeing everything through a January snow shower instead of in summer sunshine, nothing seemed to have changed. And that was exactly what I’d been hoping.

  I’d stayed in this little Devon town, tucked away on the edge of a fairly remote part of Dartmoor, several times for family holidays from when my sister and I were about ten or eleven. Our parents had fallen in love with its charm and peacefulness, whereas we children, after the initial novelty of being in the country had worn off, found it too quiet and dull. No cinema! No swimming pool! No bowling alley! What were we supposed to do all week? By the time Kate and I were teenagers, Mum and Dad had given into pressure from us and started taking us somewhere livelier for our holidays.

  Now, though, peace and quiet were exactly what I needed, and it couldn’t have been much more tranquil than it was now, on this cold, snowy afternoon. I pulled my woolly hat down over my ears, checked the address I’d tapped into my phone’s memos, then grabbed the handle of my suitcase, hoisted my rucksack onto my shoulders and set off up the lane. I’d found the advert on an internet search, but I had no idea what to expect. I’d never been a lodger before, never expected to be one, either. When I thought about the life I’d been living, just a few short weeks earlier, it seemed incredible that it had all come to this. But I knew I mustn’t think about that. I just had to get on with it, now, whether I liked it or not.

  It was only a ten-minute walk to Primrose Gardens, which was a small turning off Lavender Lane. As I trudged along through the falling snow, I felt I could almost smell the perfume, in the chill winter air, of those spring flowers in the road names. They seemed to hold a promise of better days ahead – and I wasn’t disappointed when I arrived at my destination. Primrose Cottage was right at the end of Primrose Gardens, and it was a one-off, a little jewel of a pastel pink cottage, in a road of fairly ordinary semidetached houses. Presumably the cottage was there long before its neighbours were built, giving its name to the road. There was a neat little front garden and a fairly old Peugeot parked outside. I walked up the path and rang the doorbell, suddenly feeling nervous, and it was answered by a woman of perhaps about thirty-five with short, curly fair hair and bright blue eyes.

  ‘Hi.’ I gave her a smile. ‘I’m Emma Nightingale. We spoke on the phone—’

  ‘Emma! Yes, of course, we’re expecting you. I’m Lauren Atkinson. Come in, quickly, out of the snow. Just drop your bags there. How was your journey? You didn’t have to get a taxi all the way from Newton Abbot, did you?’ she asked, ushering me through the hallway to the kitchen.

  ‘No, I got the bus,’ I said, following her. The house smelt of polish. Had she been cleaning up for me? I was only the lodger!

  She turned to look at me in surprise. ‘The bus! You were lucky, then. There only are two a day.’

  ‘Yes. I researched that on the internet, and planned my train time to coincide with it.’

  She looked impressed, as if this wasn’t a perfectly normal thing to do for a long journey.

  ‘You might be disappointed with the internet connection around here,’ she said sadly. ‘Well, with the mobile phone signal too, to be honest. They both tend to come and go. You can normally get a decent phone signal up at the Town Square, though.’

  I had a mental picture of the entire population of Crickleford congregating on the Town Square to send their text messages.

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ I said. I’d have to call Mum and Dad later, to let them know I’d arrived safely. I sighed, remembering the looks on their faces when I told them I was leaving. I’d only been home from America for a few weeks, but my homecoming had caused them nothing but aggravation. They said they were sorry I wasn’t staying, but their faces told me otherwise. They were relieved. I wasn’t the kind of daughter a family would want to have living with them. I was a liability. When I said I was coming all the way to Devon, they didn’t offer to drive me. I guess even having me in the car with them would have been more trouble than it was worth.

  My sister had been more sympathetic, but I could tell that even she thought it would be better for me not to stay at home in Loughton.

  ‘You can come back when things have calmed down,’ she said, at least having the decency to look distressed on my behalf. ‘It’s just … right now … well, all this fuss and attention is just as bad for you as it is for us, isn’t it.’

  Actually, it was surely worse for me, since I was the cause of all the fuss and attention. But I could understand Kate’s concerns. Married to the lovely Tim, with their nice home, good jobs and two perfect little children, Kate was my twin, but I often thought she must have inherited the entire stock of our parents’ combined genes for sensible behaviour, leaving me with just the stupid, irresponsible ones. I couldn’t stay at home. Everyone around there would be talking about me. It wasn’t fair. And hopefully, here in this rural backwater away from most vestiges of civilisation, and having reverted back to my re
al Christian name, I could be anonymous. The very idea of anonymity, right now, was bliss.

  While I’d been thinking all this, Lauren had pulled out a chair for me at the kitchen table, boiled the kettle and got mugs down from a shelf. I felt strangely like an honoured guest instead of a paying boarder.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked brightly, putting a biscuit tin on the table in front of me.

  ‘Tea would be great, thanks – but I can do it!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll show you where everything is and you can help yourself in future. But I thought you’d probably appreciate having a cuppa made for you, after your long journey. From London, you said?’

  ‘On the outskirts, yes.’

  She shook her head in wonder, as if I’d said I’d flown there from the moon.

  ‘So, what made you want to leave there and come all the way down here?’ she went on, sitting down opposite me. ‘Have you got a job lined up here?’

  I couldn’t blame her for asking. After all, she needed to be sure I was going to pay my way. It would be hard to explain that I’d had money in American bank accounts, which, by now, would certainly have been made unavailable to me. Other than that, I only had enough for the first month or so here, and that was thanks to the generosity of my parents. Or their eagerness to see me gone.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire,’ I lied vaguely. ‘Interviews lined up.’

  ‘That’s good. What is it you do, then?’

  Do? I resisted the urge to laugh. I hadn’t actually had to do anything much apart from float around looking glamorous, since I’d left England at the age of nineteen with Shane, the love of my life (at the time). Before that, well, there’d been a brief spell of—

  ‘Caring!’ I said. ‘Working in a care home.’

  ‘Really? With elderly people? That must have been very rewarding.’

  I’d only done it for about a year. Between leaving school with no qualifications, moving in with Shane, and him getting his big break. But I remembered there’d been talk of me needing to take NVQs.

  ‘Yes,’ I said now, my fingers crossed under the table. ‘I’ve got my NVQs and everything.’

  ‘Well in that case, you shouldn’t have any trouble. There’s a massive shortage of carers everywhere, isn’t there.’

  Was there? How would I know? But I nodded sagely as I sipped my tea. And then, fortunately, before I could add any further lies, there was a shout from the next room:

  ‘Mummeeee! What are you doing? Can I watch TV?’

  Lauren raised her eyebrows at me.

  ‘That’s my little one, Holly. I did warn you, didn’t I? She’s not normally too noisy.’

  ‘Oh, that’s fine, I like children. How old is she?’

  ‘Three. Here she is. Holly, this is Emma. Remember I told you? She’s going to be living here.’

  A little girl with blonde curls and blue eyes like her mother was watching me suspiciously from the doorway.

  ‘I’m not three,’ she told her mother crossly. ‘I’m nearly four.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I hope we’re going to be friends.’

  The look of suspicion intensified.

  ‘Let’s take Emma upstairs and show her her room, shall we?’ said Lauren brightly. ‘Can you manage your bags up the stairs, Emma – let me take one.’

  ‘No, that’s fine, I’ve got it.’ I grabbed the case and the rucksack again and followed her up the slightly rickety stairs, with Holly stomping up behind me.

  ‘Here you are,’ Lauren said, throwing open a door, revealing a room that I could only describe as very blue. Blue walls, blue curtains, blue duvet, even a dark blue carpet. Fortunately I like blue. The little lattice window looked out over the garden, where the snow was beginning to settle on a couple of small trees and a child’s swing. I suddenly felt sure I was going to feel happy here, in this little blue room.

  ‘It’s really nice,’ I said.

  ‘It’s my grandad’s room,’ Holly said in a mutinous tone.

  ‘Oh!’ I looked at Lauren, confused. Another door had a sign on it in the shape of a teddy bear with the name HOLLY painted in pink, and I presumed the other two doors belonged to the bathroom and my host’s own room. The cottage wasn’t exactly big enough to be hiding another wing.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ Lauren was saying patiently to her daughter. ‘But Grandad’s not here any more, is he?’

  ‘Oh!’ I said again. ‘I’m so sorry to hear—’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that!’ She laughed. ‘Not quite. We’ve had to move my dad into Green Pastures. The nursing home. He’d started wandering. And, well, he thought we were still at war with the Germans. It was getting difficult. Still, I suppose you’re used to that kind of thing!’ she added. ‘Maybe they’ll have a vacancy for you there.’

  ‘Yes, maybe,’ I said faintly.

  ‘So, of course, what with the fees for the nursing home …’ She sighed. ‘That’s why we decided to start letting the room. You’re our first lodger, actually, so I’m not at all experienced with all this. I hope everything will be all right for you.’

  She looked at me anxiously, and her uncertainty made me warm to her. I was glad I’d found this place, this cottage, this little family. This blue room of her poor demented father. It could have been a lot worse.

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ I said. ‘It’s my first time of being a lodger, too, so we can work it out together, can’t we?’

  After I’d unpacked – my every move followed by the slightly unnerving stare of Holly, who remained just outside my door, arms folded as if my being in her grandad’s room was an affront to her sensibilities – I slipped my coat and hat back on, to take my phone as far as I needed in order to get a signal and call home.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Holly demanded as I headed for the front door.

  ‘Just to make a phone call,’ I said, giving her a smile. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Holly!’ Lauren remonstrated, rushing out of the kitchen. ‘You mustn’t ask questions. Emma doesn’t have to tell us where she’s going.’

  ‘Why not?’ the child demanded sulkily.

  ‘Because she’s a grown-up, and … oh, look, sorry, Emma.’ She turned to me, shaking her head. ‘I’ll have to explain all this a bit more to her. She doesn’t quite understand.’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t, don’t worry!’ I laughed. ‘It’s not a problem.’

  ‘Well, you’re entitled to your privacy. Speaking of which, here are your keys. This one’s for the front door and the other one’s for your room.’ She winked. ‘I’m sure you don’t want a little visitor popping in and out whenever she fancies it.’

  ‘Are Romeo and Juliet allowed in her room?’ Holly asked.

  I blinked in surprise. I’d thought Holly was the only child. And – Romeo and Juliet? Really?

  Lauren was laughing at my expression. ‘They’re our cats, you haven’t met them yet – they’re probably outside somewhere. My husband’s an English teacher so everything has to have some kind of Shakespearean connection. And no, Holly, I’m sure Emma won’t want the cats in her room, lying on her bed—’

  ‘Oh, I won’t mind at all, if you don’t,’ I reassured her. ‘I love cats, we had one in …’ I stopped, swallowing. I’d nearly said in New York. I missed Albert, my beautiful Ragdoll house cat. Would Shane be looking after him? I doubted it. ‘We had one at home,’ I finished quickly.

  ‘Ah, well, that’s OK then. But just shoo them out if they annoy you.’

  I walked back towards the town centre, snowflakes now blowing in my face, holding out my phone every now and then to see if I had a signal yet. Having Holly around would be a pleasant distraction from my worries, once she’d got used to me anyway. And I didn’t care about the phone or the internet. It suited me not being easily contactable. I wasn’t even going to give anyone apart from my family my new address. But talking to Lauren about my supposed job interviews had made me realise that, as well as looking f
or work, I’d have to concoct some kind of background for myself. People were always curious about newcomers, especially in a small town like this, so I needed to be prepared.

  It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, by the time I’d stopped outside the library to call my parents.

  ‘Glad you arrived safely,’ Mum said, sounding unhappy. ‘You know we wish you didn’t have to—’

  ‘I know.’ I swallowed, determined to sound brave. ‘But honestly, Mum, I think I’m going to like it here. I just want to hibernate for a while. Is it … any better at home now?’

  ‘Not yet, no. I’m not even sure they realise you’re not here.’

  ‘Well, sorry, but if I hadn’t slipped out the back way before it got light this morning, I’d have been mobbed again and, even worse, they’d have tried to follow me. They’ll soon give up once they realise I’ve disappeared.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Well, look, if you ever need me urgently you’ll have to call that landline number I gave you for my landlady. Lauren Atkinson. She’s really nice. I’ve got no mobile signal at the house,’ I warned her before we said goodbye.

  I walked back to Primrose Gardens through the snow, feeling guilty all over again. My parents didn’t need this hassle, and it was all my fault. I’d turned up on their doorstep just before Christmas and the whole festive season had been ruined because of me. Of course, I’d been a disappointment to them for most of my life, but I’d really excelled myself this time. It would probably do them a favour if I stayed away for good. All I’d done was bring them trouble and shame. Why couldn’t I have been a better daughter, a more sensible, dutiful girl like Kate?

  Well, I decided, this was my chance. If I couldn’t turn things around now, when would I get another opportunity? I made up my mind there and then to make a go of things, here in Crickleford. I’d become a model citizen here, and perhaps even save up, in due course, for a nice little place of my own. I imagined myself with a husband – one who was grown-up and normal, who wore a suit and worked in an office – and a nice, well-behaved little child (I pictured one a bit like Holly but with a less hostile stare), and living in a pretty little cottage with its own garden. I’d work hard – at something – and earn a proper salary, for the first time in my life. And when my parents came to visit me, they’d finally have that look on their faces, the one they normally reserved for Kate. Well done, they’d say. We’re proud of you, Emma.