Lingerie Wars (Invertary 1)

Lake threw back his head and laughed. Yeah, like he’d trust Betty to sort out his life.

Grumbling under her breath, Betty went to fetch the number.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The morning after the fire, Lake was gone. In fact, everything was gone. The very worst had happened to Kirsty and the world hadn’t ended. With resolve she wouldn’t have believed possible, she began to pick up the pieces of her life. The strange thing was, because she’d built her life from scratch once before, it wasn’t that scary doing it again. She thought it would be, but she was wrong. It would just be hard. Very, very hard. Especially without Lake.

Christmas came and went with no word from him and Kirsty’s hopes that he would return began to fade. She told herself that it was pathetic to pine after him, especially since he’d run off without even saying goodbye. As New Year’s Eve approached, Kirsty wondered when she’d see the “for sale” sign on Lake’s shop. She’d been expecting it since the Monday after the fire and it hadn’t appeared, which made everything even more confusing. To add to her suspicions, Betty wasn’t talking. And Betty always talked.

Betty’s silence didn’t stop the speculation, though. The rumours were flying in Invertary. The local pub had become a hub of gossip and intrigue, mainly because Caroline wouldn’t tolerate it at the library and no one wanted to hang around the bakery. Kirsty was perfectly aware of the talk. She could hardly miss it, seeing as the women of Knit Or Die gave her almost hourly updates.

“I hear he’s joined the foreign legion,” Jean said in a conspiratorial tone. “It was all that testosterone. Far too much for a wee town like this.”

The women nodded.

“A man like that needs an outlet, he’s better off in a war.”

“I don’t know,” said her mother. “I think he’s gone to find his sister.”

Shona nodded as her lips pursed.

“Word is that she fell pregnant to that young Alastair and went mad with the thought of all that responsibility.”

“Oh,” Heather said. “I heard that she killed her parents in a fit of rage and was on the run.”

Jean’s eyes went wide.

“Nobody’s seen the parents since the night of the fire,” she said in a stage whisper.

The women gaped at each other.

“Seriously?” Kirsty said, mainly because she’d had enough of listening to them. “Rainne killed someone? Rainne who talked about peace and recycled underwear? The girl who made the traffic stop so a hedgehog could walk across the road. That Rainne?”

This was the problem with living with her mother—she was constantly surrounded by a group of gossiping middle-aged women and there was no space to think. That and the fact she now slept on faded Barbie sheets and looked at old Take That posters when she couldn’t sleep, which was all the time.

“Now that you mention it,” Shona said, “she’s really not the type for violence, is she?”

“Oh, oh, oh.” Jean bounced on the old wooden chair, making the round table rock and mugs of tea spill. “I know what happened!”

The looks around the group said that no one believed that for a minute. Kirsty grabbed a cloth from the tiny kitchen at the back of her mum’s shop and mopped up the mess.

“I bet,” Jean said, “that Betty killed the parents and pinned the murder on Rainne!”

“We all know she’s capable of murder,” Shona said as she considered the latest theory.

Kirsty looked towards heaven and silently asked for more patience.

“Why would she kill Rainne’s parents?” she asked her mother’s loony friends.

“Why? To get Lake all to herself, of course,” said Jean.

“We all know she thinks of that boy as a son,” Shona said.

“Or as her evil prodigy,” Heather said with a nod.

They looked at Kirsty for a minute. Heather blushed.

“Not that he’s evil,” she said quickly. “Just that Betty would like him to be. You know, so she can start an empire and take over the town.”