Perfect Strangers

‘Wow,’ said Sophie. She had been expecting some spartan shack with musty carpets and no electricity. Instead it was like a ski chalet imagined by Ralph Lauren. There was a moose head over a huge fireplace, dark wooden floorboards and sumptuous leather furniture. It even smelt good – of heather and hollyhocks and cinnamon, like drawing up close to a rich man wearing really expensive cologne.

Lana went over to the wall, where there was a framed map of the area.

‘We’re here,’ she said, pointing to the southern tip of the loch. ‘Ben Grear is here, beyond the north-west side, but there’s a direct road around the loch.’

‘Yeah, it’s maybe forty minutes away, weather permitting,’ said Josh, looking over her shoulder.

‘We leave as soon as it’s light,’ said Lana briskly. ‘I’ll take the master suite in the attic; you can have the double at the top of the stairs.’

Shrugging, Josh took their bags and went upstairs.

‘Drink?’ said Lana to Sophie, crossing to a well-stocked bar next to the fireplace. ‘I’m sure Edward has some rather fine whiskies.’

‘No thank you,’ said Sophie, tight-lipped.

Lana shrugged, pouring herself a tumbler of the amber spirit.

‘You hate me, don’t you?’ she said over the rim of the glass.

‘Not really,’ replied Sophie wearily. ‘I blame you for turning my life upside down, for putting me through so much. But hate? No.’

She wanted to tell Lana the truth, of course: that she loathed her for everything she had done, for playing with her life in such a cavalier fashion, for making her fall in love with a man who wasn’t even real, for putting her life in danger again and again. But what would that achieve? What was it Josh always said? Give them the story they want to hear. Until she could see how the game was going to play out, she needed to keep Lana on side.

‘But then if it wasn’t for you,’ she added, ‘maybe I’d be dead already. Sergei’s men would have found me first and I might have ended up like Nick. And for that I’m grateful.’

Lana nodded. ‘Nick did care for you, you know.’

Sophie flinched at that. Days earlier, they were words that she would have given anything to hear. She had felt so used and betrayed that even the glimmer of hope that Nick had really felt anything for her would have been a lifeline, something to grasp with both hands. But now she didn’t want to hear it, because it made her feel cheap and guilty. Yes, her affair with Nick Beddingfield had been a fabrication, a lie he had created, just another job, but Sophie had really liked him – or so she had thought. And yet now, only days later, she had slipped into a relationship with someone else. Josh. A relationship with Josh? She almost laughed out loud. Tomorrow this would all be finished. Tomorrow they would find the money and this crazy roller-coaster ride would be over. Could she really expect Josh to be there for her? In that dark motel room in Miami as he had held her, their skin still slick from lovemaking, he had talked about them going to some exotic island together, of running away and leaving the world behind, just the two of them. But had that been the post-coital endorphins in his bloodstream, or maybe even just the romance of the situation? Had it just been the words of two people bound together in an extraordinary situation by excitement, danger and adrenalin? She just didn’t know and it made her heart ache to think of it.

She looked at Lana for a long moment.

‘What are you going to do with the money, Lana?’

She surprised herself by asking the question. The old Sophie Ellis of a month ago, maybe even a week ago, would never have dared be so direct. Nice girls didn’t – it wasn’t polite. But the past few days h

ad hardened her. You couldn’t do what she had done, see what she had seen, without coming out the other side a different person.

‘That’s for me to negotiate with the authorities,’ said Lana briskly.

‘For us to negotiate,’ said Sophie firmly, meeting Lana’s gaze. ‘I have a stake in this too.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Lana. ‘And what exactly will you be asking for?’

‘I want all lines of investigation against me dropped and I want my mother to receive a lump sum that will make sure she doesn’t have to sell her house, plus a decent income for whatever time she has left.’

‘My, my,’ smiled Lana thinly. ‘Aren’t we the little Donald Trump?’

‘I’m getting there.’

Lana folded her arms and stepped towards Sophie.

‘So seeing as we’re playing twenty questions: did you kill him?’

‘Kill who? Nick?’ said Sophie incredulously. ‘No!’

‘So what was it?’ said Lana. ‘An accident whilst you were making whoopee in the bathtub?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘It was Sergei’s men.’