This Girl, That Girl, page 24
Right now, Scarlett and her father should have been on an express train from Santa Maria Novella station in Florence to Venezia Santa Lucia, watching the Tuscan landscape roll by, Rebecca’s ashes carefully stowed in a discreet scatter tube in Scarlett’s rucksack. Rebecca would have travelled with them in a taxi from south-east London to Gatwick and, from there, accompanied them on the EasyJet flight to Peretola airport. It would have been physically and emotionally exhausting, she knew it would, but her dad would have been there, looking after her.
The three of them would then have checked into her aunt’s favourite hotel on the hills above Florence and Scarlett and her father would have spent a few days sightseeing in the pleasant spring weather, soaking up the treasures of the Uffizi before the hordes of tourists began to arrive. A chance for them to spend some much-needed time together. To reconnect. Then they would have embarked on the two-hour train journey to Venice, the penultimate leg of their final journey with Rebecca, the last being the funeral boat to the pontoon.
Scarlett locked the front door and walked to the bus stop. When the bus arrived five minutes later, she stuck her cane out and waited for it to draw up. Hopefully, they would still carry out their plan, when this ghastly Covid business was over and life went back to normal, but for now Rebecca remained on a bookshelf in Scarlett’s living room, in a hand-painted ceramic urn purchased from Fond Farewells. An expensive buy, and one that Rebecca herself would surely have scoffed at. ‘Put me in a shoebox and have done with it,’ Scarlett could almost hear her saying.
She pulled her scarf up and wound it around the lower part of her face, cross with herself for feeling self-conscious about it. The threat of this damn virus was more important than worrying about what people might think of her. If the news was to be believed, they’d probably all be wearing masks soon.
She tapped her Oyster card on the reader and found a spare seat, as far from any of the other passengers as she could get. The bus pulled away. Soon it would be level with the crime scene. The house where the ‘bedroom bloodbath’, and now the ‘gruesome garden discovery’, had occurred.
Scarlett stared out of the window as the bus passed it by, observed the house in a detached, curious way, much like the strangers she was travelling with. There was no way she’d be able to sell at market value. Not with that kind of history attached to it. And with a national lockdown imminent, the chances of moving any time soon were virtually non-existent. But as Ollie was so fond of saying, she was a stubborn woman.
What he really meant, of course, was that she was a strong woman. He might not have been right about many things, but he had been right about that. And if anyone could carry on living in such a place, it was her.
She exhaled into the fabric of her scarf. There would still be a ritual today, but not for her aunt. This morning belonged to a young woman called Gina Caplin. A woman her aunt had once taught, and with whom she had kept in touch, the two of them united by their love of writing. A woman whose life had been cut short in the most heinous way and whose parents would never recover from the loss. A daughter, a dancer, a writer, a friend – and who knew what else she would have become if circumstances had been different?
Scarlett blinked away her tears. Rebecca would have wanted her to pay her last respects, and after everything Scarlett had been through these past few months, she felt close to Gina, too. To the woman she’d never actually met and who might, perhaps, have been found ten years ago, if her aunt and her brother had done the right thing and contacted the police, if they had given them a statement.
Scarlett wasn’t just going along for Gina, though. She wanted to see Dee again, to support her on this saddest of days. Like her, Dee knew what it was like to lose someone she loved in the worst possible way. She also knew what it was like to have slept with a murderer. Maybe today’s funeral would be the beginning of a new friendship. A friendship that would encompass more than death and grief.
The kind of friendship that Scarlett had been waiting for all her life, even if she’d never quite realized it till now.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to the following people:
Sarah Adams, for her thoughtful, generous and exceedingly wise comments and suggestions.
Imogen Nelson, for her additional editorial input, and the rest of the glorious team at Transworld, with an extra shout-out to Alison Barrow and Louis Patel.
Amanda Preston, for keeping me sane and knowing exactly when to call me and what to say.
Louise Ford, for telling me what her working day looks like so I could pinch a few details for Scarlett.
Nathalie Andrews, for answering my random questions about funerals and celebrants, and for showing me round the business end of a crematorium.
Graham Bartlett, for our discussion about murder scenes and missing persons.
Rashid Kara, for all the other stuff.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Bantam Press
Copyright © Lesley Kara 2022
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover design by Richard Ogle / TW
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-1-473-57676-6
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Lesley Kara, This Girl, That Girl
