Contents (57)
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sharon Gosling
Rachel shook her head, though there was a trace of amusement in her eyes. ‘This place is a nightmare.’
‘What?’
‘I believe what Rachel means is that Newton Dunbar is a gossip mill of the worst sort,’ said Ezra, ‘and she can’t believe she counts one of the chief operators as a friend.’
‘Oh, you—’
‘Ezra,’ Rachel said, in a gently warning voice.
Edie had had enough. She’d thought a trip to the bookshop would clear her head, but instead she was even angrier than she had been before she’d left home, and all because of this one idiot. She pushed away from the counter.
‘I’m going. Some of us have work to do.’
‘But you haven’t finished your coffee,’ Rachel said. ‘Edie!’
‘I’ll pop back in tomorrow. Hopefully by then the quality of your clientele will have improved.’ She knew she was flouncing, but she couldn’t help it. Ezra Jones always had that effect on her. She just couldn’t stand his smug smiling face and the way he seemed to take up so much room. ‘Remember what I said, Rachel,’ she cautioned. ‘Keep your eye on the till. And you,’ she directed at her neighbour, ‘make sure that goat stays on your own property if you want to keep it.’
‘Goats are notoriously onerous and stubborn beasts,’ Ezra said. ‘And they like company with their own kind. I suppose that’s why Georgette likes to visit you whenever she can.’
Edie just managed to stop herself from slamming shut the lighthouse door as she left. She grabbed her umbrella from the porch hooks and strode on. Her thumb was aching, throbbing where she’d stabbed it with the carving tool. She needed to put some Savlon on it, she reminded herself, although a tiny voice at the back of her mind suggested that there was more pain in the joint than there was in the wound, which could have been why she’d slipped in the first place.
When she got back to her garden she went to double-check the gate. The latch hadn’t closed properly. She tried to push it down but it must have rusted somewhere and resisted. To get it to shut properly, Edie had to force it. She didn’t like how long it took to get her fingers to comply. But then, she’d spent a long time carving details the previous evening, which always made her fingers ache. She turned her back on the offending gate and in doing so looked back up the garden to see that her shed door had blown open. With a sigh, Edie went to close it, thinking, not for the first time, that she really should fit it with a lock.
Three
‘You shouldn’t tease her, Ezra,’ Rachel scolded him gently, as Edie stormed out of the bookshop.
‘But she makes it so easy,’ Ezra pointed out.
‘Edie cares a lot about her garden, you know that,’ Rachel went on, taking the pile of books he’d found and beginning to ring them into the till. ‘Is it true that your goat keeps finding a way in? You know how destructive they are – they’ll eat anything.’