The adrenaline spiked through her, making her hands tingle and her palms sweat, for the celestial skies painted on the ceiling were exactly as she remembered and there was no denying it any more. She could hardly bear the irony of it, the unfairness that she had fled her home and travelled across the country by foot – only to end up here. In her godmother’s house.

Chapter Seventeen

NM. SE.

Charlotte stared at the initials carved roughly into the bark of the jacaranda tree; they had been crudely etched and would have been almost completely obscured were it not for the especially smooth wood here of the black fissure, like a necrotic wound, running down the trunk on this side. The carving was conveniently hidden from the house, even though the tree was in plain view of it, sitting front and centre between the two spectacular wings.

Checking no one was watching – it would have been hard to explain why she was standing in the middle of a flowerbed – she crouched down and reached her hand in, feeling blindly for something, anything: nothing. Whatever might once have been there, Señora Quincy clearly had it now. It was remarkable it should still have been there after all this time, even more remarkable that she should have remembered it.

With a sigh, she rose, her fingers tracing over the initials once more as she wondered who had carved them and why. NM – one of the Mendozas? She ran through the names she knew of from the file: Mateo, his wife Cristabel, son Felipe, daughters Isabella and Sofia . . . father Carlos, mother Matilda. No Ns though . . .

She picked her way carefully out of the flowerbed and resumed her stroll around the gardens. It was that point in the late afternoon when the sun hung like a peach, heavy and ripe and blushing in the sky; the worst of the heat of the day had passed and the cicadas were still an hour off starting up their scratching racket. She had left her book and a cool drink under the veranda and she headed back there now, restless, anxious to get on.

It had been a slow day and, frankly, pointless. The Marinas were still hiding out, barely venturing from their rooms, Nathan was missing in action somewhere – she hadn’t seen or heard him since his run. As far as she could see, there was no point at all in her being here, whilst perversely, in London, her presence was desperately needed . . .

She had had another shower after her workout, lunch on her own, and now she was just watching the shadows lengthen, killing time and waiting to go. It had been a wasted day. Finally, though, time had obliged her and Mayra had gone to find an estate worker to drive her to the plane; her overnight bag was packed and she could almost taste her escape.

The sound of shoes on the flagstones made her look up expectantly. She reached for her overnight bag and stood in anticipation.