Read Online Faith by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page B

was about ten in the morning and she and Angie, her assistant, had just started a stock check, to remove all the clothes they’d had for more than two months, when Jackie rang.
    Laura was irritated when Jackie begged her to come over to Fife. An eighty-mile or more round trip would take up most of the day, and she had had a lunch appointment booked with her accountant.
    But Jackie sounded so desperate she felt she had to drop everything and go, leaving Angie to hold the fort and cancel her lunch appointment.
    Yet by the time she’d crossed the Forth Bridge and was on the pretty coastal road to Crail in bright spring sunshine, her irritation had gone. Jackie hadn’t been quite herself for some time, and she thought perhaps this would be a good opportunity to get to grips with the root cause of it. Laura thought she might even stay the night and drive back to Edinburgh the following morning.
    As she drove into the enclosed cobbled yard of Brodie Farm she noticed the red and yellow tulips and forget-me-nots planted in tubs either side of each of the six old stable doors that opened out on to the yard. That seemed a good omen, for if Jackie still cared about the impression flowers made on her paying guests she was clearly holding things together.
    The door to the house was wide open, and as Laura got out of her car she could hear ‘Moving On Up’ by M People playing on the radio. She remembered thinking that meant Jackie must’ve pulled herself together since making the frantic call, for she always played opera when she was feeling low. The song itself made her smile, for two years earlier when it was in the charts it had almost been Laura’s anthem.
    She called out as she got to the front door, but walked in when she received no reply, thinking her friend was probably upstairs. As always when she came to Jackie’s home, she felt a surge of admiration at her sense of style. She raked through junk shops and auction rooms and bought furniture anyone else would consider rubbish. But she stripped or painted it, made cushions or added old tiles, and somehow it always turned out looking marvellous.
    The hall of the farmhouse was typical of Jackie’s taste: black and white tiles on the floor, an old-fashioned hall stand painted lime green, with a selection of colourful hats hanging on it. Even the flower arrangement was just right, a rustic basket filled with late primroses and moss.
    She called again, looking up the narrow staircase straight ahead of her, and when there was still no reply, she decided Jackie must have popped out for a moment, so she went into the kitchen on her left to wait.
    But as she pushed the half-closed door open, she saw Jackie on the floor. She was wearing jeans, her white shirt was red with blood and there was a knife embedded in her chest.
    Much of what happened later that day had become a blur of indistinct images. She couldn’t recall the faces or names of the policemen, or even the correct sequence of events. But that first sight of her friend on the floor, the way the sunshine slanted in through the window on to her vivid red hair, the pool of blood beside her, even the grotesque way her legs were splayed out, was still as clear in her mind now as if it had been just yesterday.
    She heard herself scream, and threw herself down beside Jackie, grasping the big knife to pull it out. In her naivety she thought her friend was still alive because her skin and blood felt so warm, and she caught hold of her shoulders in an attempt to rouse her.
    ‘Laura?’
    She started at Stuart’s voice, and was brought back to the present and the question he’d asked her.
    ‘That’s right, it was Michael Fenton who phoned the police,’ she sighed. She quickly told him how she’d found Jackie. ‘I was covered in her blood and kneeling beside her when he came in. I’m absolutely certain he arrived just a few minutes after me, but I expect you know that at the trial, Angus McFee, a neighbour, gave evidence that