I leaned into him, letting his comforting bulk seep into me. I’m sorry.
He kissed my hair. It’s okay.
The policewoman snapped photographs of my van and opened the back door to see inside. Every bouquet and buttonhole was wrecked, ripped apart beyond recognition, and beyond that, the vases I’d stashed for the table centrepieces were smashed to bits. Brilliant. As if the creeping fear amping up in my veins wasn’t enough.
Luke shook me slightly. Belatedly, I realised the policewoman was talking to me. “Sorry, what?”
She smiled gently. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”
I had no idea what she meant, but I nodded, and she took my arm and led me away from Luke and back into the shop.
“There’s every chance this is random vandalism, but put together with the incidents your brother mentioned, I think we have to consider the possibility of harassment. What can you tell me about your ex-husband?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with where he lives.”
“In France...last I heard he’d started a new life in Nice.”
“Where did he live before?”
“Paris.”
“With you?”
“Yes.”
The policewoman made some notes. “How did your relationship end? Are you separated? Divorced?”
“I signed divorce papers about a month ago, and we separated when he left me for my friend.”
“It wasn’t amicable then?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t anything. One day he was there, the next he was gone having cleared out our bank accounts.”
“Had he done anything like that before?”
“What? Slept with my friends, or stolen my money?”
“Both.” The policewoman shut her notebook. “I’m trying to get a handle on his personality, but obviously you know him better. How long were you together?”
“Four years.”
“And what about before you?”
“I—” I stopped, thrown, as my mind drew a blank. “I actually don’t know.”
“You don’t know about his previous relationships?”
I shook my head. “Not much beyond slagging them off a bit, and that suited me because I didn’t want to talk about my own.”
“Why not?”
My gaze drifted naturally to the tiny window in the back door. In the darkness I could just make out Luke as he passed armfuls of botanical shrapnel to my brother. “Lots of reasons, but mainly because I was still in love with someone else.”
I spoke absently, as though the policewoman was my mother and she loved me enough not to be angry that I wasn’t giving her my full attention, and a few seconds ticked by before I realised the implications of what I’d said. “This won’t be about that, though. Laurent never knew about Luke.”
“Luke Daley? The man outside with your brother?”
“Yes.”
The policewoman fished her pencil out again and reopened her notebook. “Piecing it all together, Ms Amour, the state of Mr. Daley’s van would indicate that even if your ex-husband didn’t know about him then, he certainly does now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Luke
Gus eyed the lampshades I’d humped back from my garage. “They don’t look anything like vases.”
“Neither did what she had in the back of the van. They were like goldfish bowls.”
He stared at me like I’d grown horns. “You could tell that from the smashed glass?”
“Actually, I saw her packing them up the other day when I was waiting for you to find your phone.”
“That makes more sense.” Gus shut Mia’s van door, complete with its boarded-up window. “You’re starting to freak me out.”
I gave him the finger and set the box down on the ground. Fetching it had gifted me a welcome distraction to whatever was going down between Mia and the friendly policewoman, but now I was back, worry gnawed at my gut again. I couldn’t have cared less about my own van, but the attack on Mia’s was creepy. More than that. It was fucking terrifying.
“They’re not going to stand up.” Gus held a glass lampshade up to the security light in the courtyard. “You can’t put these in the middle of a table.”
“We can shave the bottom off.”
“With what? Last time I checked, my sister didn’t have any power tools knocking around.”
I hadn’t thought of that when I’d been in my garage, surrounded by every tool under the sun, and I didn’t fancy another midnight walk through town. I’d do it, though...for her.
Thankfully, there turned out to be no need. Gus had the keys to Mia’s van, and he was insured to drive it.
He departed for my house to fix the lampshades, leaving me to keep watch in the courtyard. I couldn’t describe how I felt. Seeing Mia vulnerable broke me, and there was guilt too. I’d missed so many moments to keep her safe, and even now I was still letting her down. Still loitering in the background when I should’ve been at her side. That shit had to change.
Ten minutes into my solo vigil, the back door to Mia’s shop opened. The policewoman stepped out and gave me a hard look before moving on to her car, but I barely noticed as I waited for Mia to appear.
When she didn’t, I hauled myself off the step I’d been lounging on and crossed the courtyard to the back door.
It was unlocked. I slipped inside and locked it behind me. “Mia?”
“I’m in the front,” she called back flatly.
I followed the sound of her voice, drawn to her by an invisible cord, and found her on the floor of her shop, surrounded by flowers and tools, despair clouding her usually fierce gaze.
“Don’t start,” she said. “I’ve got so much to do.”
I took in her pale face and bloodshot eyes, and dropped to her side. “Can I help?”
“Help?”
“Yeah. I know jack about flowers, but I can follow orders.”
“Is that some kind of pun?”
“What do you think?”
“I think your hands are too big to manhandle daisies, so if you really want to help, you can trim down those roses for the buttonholes.”
“Show me.”
Mia picked up a white rose and cut the stem with a small knife, then stripped the leaves from the remaining stalk so she was left with just the bloom. “Like that. Don’t stuff it up. I don’t have any backup.”