The Last Piece Read online

  ALSO BY IMOGEN CLARK

  Postcards from a Stranger

  The Thing About Clare

  Where the Story Starts

  Postcards at Christmas (novella)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Blue Lizard Books Ltd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542020770

  ISBN-10: 1542020778

  Cover design by Lisa Horton

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  PART TWO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  PART THREE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART FOUR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  PART FIVE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART SIX

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  1

  ENGLAND

  LILY: mum’s disappeared ;-)

  JULIA: ???????!!!

  FELICITY: What?

  LILY: am at the house now. she’s gone!

  JULIA: gone where?

  LILY: on an adventure

  JULIA: hahahaha

  FELICITY: Will someone please tell me what is going on?

  LILY: mum’s gone to greece

  JULIA: nice one

  LILY: i know ju - cool huh?

  FELICITY: When? How? Why?

  LILY: this morning - by plane - don’t know

  FELICITY: Well did Dad know?

  JULIA: has she left him? ;-)

  LILY: hahahaha - no she’s coming back on Friday

  FELICITY: What?????

  LILY: thats what dad said

  FELICITY: But she’s having Hugo today.

  JULIA: not any more she isn’t!!

  FELICITY: Very helpful Ju. Shit. Got to go and sort childcare.

  2

  Felicity Nightingale hurled her mobile phone on to the freshly made bed, raised her hands to her forehead and gently massaged her temples with her thumbs. She forced herself to breathe steadily through her mouth until her heart began to beat a little more slowly. Wasn’t it a pressure point, the temple? How hard did she have to press before she did herself some damage? She pressed a little harder.

  The garish green display of the clock radio read 7.37. On Mondays she dropped Hugo off at her mother’s at 8.00 on her way to the train station. That was the arrangement and had been since she first went back to work. It never varied, week in, week out, which was just how Felicity liked things. She knew where she was with an arrangement.

  But now what was she meant to do? Her mother couldn’t just disappear off to Greece without so much as a by-your-leave when she was supposed to be taking care of her grandson. It was ridiculous. And highly inconvenient.

  To make matters worse, the nanny had gone to a funeral. Supposedly. Felicity wasn’t entirely convinced that this was true, but Marie-Claude had chosen to clear the time off with Richard and not her (a fact that made her suspicious on its own) and Richard had just taken her request at face value and agreed.

  Felicity knew that if she had spoken to the nanny herself her intuition would have sniffed out any lies, but Richard seemed far less adept at spotting untruths (which was quite ironic in the circumstances). Either that or he really didn’t care one way or the other. This was probably more like it. They both knew that making alternative childcare arrangements for their son would tumble into her lap come what may, particularly as he was in London again and not due back until Friday. No – this lack of her mother and their arrangement was very much Felicity’s problem.

  Quickly she ran through her options as she traced a neat red line of lipstick around her mouth. She could call in sick, but she was supposed to be at an important board meeting and she wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to be in attendance, even if her opinion was rarely sought or considered. Feigning illness was not on the cards.

  She could ask her sister Lily to have Hugo. Lily would just absorb another child at her glitter-encrusted kitchen table without even batting an eyelid and it would suit Hugo, too. He loved spending time with his Aunt Lily and all his cousins, although Felicity had noticed a distinct decline in his table manners after a day spent at their house. Lily was unhelpfully relaxed about that kind of thing, but Felicity felt very strongly that it was important he knew how to hold a knife and fork properly. Her son might only be four, but it was never too early to learn basic etiquette and very hard to undo bad habits.

  Her sister’s lack of table-manner training wasn’t what was putting her off, though. If Felicity asked Lily to help, then Lily would tell Julia and that would doubtless lead to one of their little ‘twin chats’ behind her back. Even when they’d been children themselves, Felicity had hated it when her siblings did that. It always left her feeling excluded and alone.

  Time was ticking on. If she wasn’t careful she was going to miss her train. It was no good. She was all out of options. She would have to leave Hugo with her father.

  Felicity let out a deep and heartfelt sigh as she thought of the number of instructions she would need to provide him with to get him through a day with his grandson. For a start, her father had no idea what children should eat and would supply ice cream at 10.30 a.m. if Hugo asked him for it. There would no doubt be messy play, commenced willy-nilly without a thought for Hugo’s clothes, even though she knew that her mother kept a little plastic art shirt for exactly this eventuality. And she would have to make it crystal clear that the park was totally out. Her father could not be trusted to watch Hugo properly. Last time they went, Felicity had caught Hugo at the very top of the climbing frame with her father just standing at the bottom and egging him on. God only knows what would have happened had he fallen from that height. In fact, Felicity had had nightmares about the various possibilities for days afterwards.

  She checked her reflection in the mirror, smacking her newly painted lips together, and removed a stray blob of red from the corner of her mouth with the tip of her little finger. Perfect. Then she reached for her mobile and rang her parents’ house. At least, she thought as she waited for it to be answered, she could quiz her father about what on earth was going on with her mother.

  3

  Julia sat in a traffic jam and laughed out loud. This was all too perfect. Never, in Julia’s entire thirty-five years on this planet, had her mother done something so spontaneous, so, well, just plain out of
character. Taking off to Greece without saying anything first? It was unheard of. Where was the rota of who would call in on their father, which pre-cooked meals he would eat when, which plants needed watering by how much and full instructions on the television programmes to record in her absence? She hadn’t even left them the phone number of where she was staying. It was all so deliciously unlike her.

  And poor Felicity. Julia obviously hadn’t seen her face as the situation unfolded via WhatsApp, but she could picture it nonetheless. Priceless. She knew she shouldn’t mock – she loved Felicity, despite all her flaws and insecurities – but what she wouldn’t have paid to be a fly on the wall at the moment when her sister’s carefully laid Hugo plans had all come crashing down around her.

  She had half-expected to receive a distress call from Felicity herself, but it appeared that she fell quite a long way down the pecking order when it came to the care of her nephew. Lily had probably just whisked him up along with her five and saved the day calmly and without fuss. If she’d been in a different mood, Julia might have allowed this to niggle at her. Just because she had no children of her own didn’t mean that she was incapable of looking after one. In many ways, and definitely in Felicity’s eyes, the fact that she was a GP should have served to bump her up the rankings somewhat, and yet her phone had remained tellingly silent. Still, Julia couldn’t get herself in a steam just because she was languishing at the bottom of her sister’s ‘go to’ list. She was too far intrigued about what her mother was up to.

  She pulled the car into her parents’ road, the road where she had lived until she left for university. Even though she had now been gone for longer than she had been there, it always felt like coming home and she absorbed the familiar houses, the pavements where she’d played and the copper beech tree that leaned dangerously across the street, still threatening the telephone wires as it had done for decades. The warm evening light shimmered through its branches as she came to a stop in her parents’ driveway.

  Felicity’s A5 cabriolet was already there – of course it was – with Hugo’s child seat jammed incongruously into the back. In her sister’s shoes, Julia would have swapped the car for something a little more practical, but Felicity’s priorities had always been different from hers.

  Julia edged her Clio in next to the Audi and climbed out. The house was beginning to look a little shabby, she thought as she locked the car. It had always been more of a much-loved family home than a show-house, but now Julia noticed that the aged silvering tarmac was crumbling in places and the grass, which had previously been restricted to the edges of the drive, was now growing in a thin stripe up the middle. They should have a word with their parents about getting someone in to keep on top of the basic maintenance, or it would turn into a massive job when the time came to sell. The horror of selling the family home briefly did battle in Julia’s head with the practicalities of maintenance, but she shook the thought away. There was no need to think of selling yet. There was plenty of time left.

  She walked up the drive, looking beyond the dandelions that poked through the ragged lawn like miniature Catherine wheels, and let herself into the house.

  ‘Hi,’ she called as she hung her keys on the hooks by the front door through force of habit.

  Felicity had told her parents that the world was no longer as it had once been and that they must keep their door locked at all times and definitely not leave their keys where anyone could see them from outside.

  ‘And feel like a prisoner in my own home?’ their father had scoffed. ‘No. Let the burglars come. It’s not like we have anything worth stealing.’

  That was probably true. The twenty-first century had largely left her parents untouched. Their television was ancient, their antiquated video recorder sitting beneath it, VHS tapes scattered around, each with a Post-it note attached saying what was currently on it. The tapes had been recorded over so many times that the pictures must surely wobble by now. Could you even buy VHS tapes any more? Julia had no idea – maybe she should investigate. The three of them had once clubbed together to buy their parents a new DVD player for Christmas but then Julia had found it in the garage some months later. It was still in the plastic packaging.

  ‘We’re in here,’ her father’s sonorous voice called from the sitting room.

  He was sitting at the round table in the bay window, a jigsaw set out in front of him. He had his reading glasses on, his distance glasses perched on his forehead, giving the impression of two sets of eyes, rather like an alien. Bifocal, or, heaven forfend, varifocal lenses, were more than he could contemplate. Hugo was sitting opposite him, noise-cancelling headphones over his ears like mufflers and an iPad in his hand. He didn’t look up, so Julia assumed that he was unaware of her arrival.

  Felicity was tapping furiously into her phone. ‘Just got to send this email . . .’ she muttered to no one in particular.

  Julia strolled over to her father and planted a kiss on the top of his head.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ she said. ‘How are you? Coping okay on your own?’

  Felicity threw her a warning look, although Julia wasn’t sure what she hadn’t been supposed to say.

  ‘I’m getting along just fine, thanks, Julia, or I would be if I could just locate this piece. I’ve been hunting for it for three days now. I’m beginning to think that your mother’s hoovered it up.’

  The front door banged again and the noise levels went up as lots of little voices rang through the house.

  ‘Only me,’ called Lily.

  ‘In here,’ Julia and her father chorused.

  The twins Leo and Luca appeared first, sandy-blond heads that didn’t quite reach the door handle bobbing along together until they arrived at Julia’s side and each pressed themselves into one of her hips like a pair of slightly grubby bookends. Lily trailed behind her boys, the baby strapped to her chest by what looked like nothing more than a cotton scarf.

  ‘In here, please,’ she said to the remainder of her brood, but no more children appeared. ‘Okay, but don’t go near the road.’

  The front door creaked open again and then slammed shut.

  ‘Hi, hi,’ said Lily, spinning her head from one side to another to spray her greeting at her collected family.

  Julia felt a little burst of love for her twin, as she did each time they met. It was like an electrical impulse over which she had no control, but signalled that all was suddenly right with the world. Lily looked as wonderful as ever, her skin fresh and dewy and her china-blue eyes bright and clear. Whatever Lily had found to give her such deep contentment, Julia wished it could be bottled and sold by the gram.

  ‘Would you like some squash?’ her father asked the twins with a conspiratorial wink, and Hugo’s ears seem to prick up despite the headphones.

  ‘Yes, please,’ the twins chorused.

  Felicity let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘Squash is so bad for them, Dad,’ she said, as though her parental duties extended as far as her nephews.

  Lily shrugged. Her children existed mainly outdoors, tracking the movement of the sun across the sky by way of a timepiece and stopping only when hunger called them back in. A bit of sugary naughtiness would do them no harm from time to time.

  ‘Well, I can hardly give the twins some and not Hugo,’ their father stated reasonably.

  ‘Better not to have mentioned it at all then,’ replied Felicity under her breath, and then added, ‘Oh, all right. Just this once.’

  Their father got to his feet, Julia noticing just a ghost of stiffness in his movements, and pointed his arm, sword-like, at the door.

  ‘Come on, troops! To the kitchen!’

  The menfolk left, leaving the women alone.

  Felicity spoke first, an urgency to her voice that suggested she wanted to get everything said before their father returned. ‘We need to find out what Mum is up to and how long she’ll be gone and then we can set up a rota between us to sort out his meals. You know how shocking he is in the kitchen and he can’t live off ready
meals for more than a couple of days.’

  Julia thought that he probably could and that many did, if her patients were anything to go by, but one of the advantages of all three of the Nightingale girls settling in their home town was that it was no problem to pop round in an evening with a little bit extra of whatever they had had for supper. In fact, she thought, it might be very pleasant to cook here sometimes, rather than at home, and share the meal with her father. She wondered idly why this thought had never occurred to her before and she made a note to suggest it to her mother when she got back from wherever it was that she’d gone.

  ‘Obviously, it’s going to be harder for me to drop everything, what with Hugo . . .’

  Julia resisted the urge to glance at Lily.

  ‘But I can do my best. And things’ll be easier when Richard gets back tomorrow.’

  Richard was away again, then? Sometimes Julia couldn’t help but feel sorry for her sister, not because her husband was away so often but because of how exhausting it must be to be so stoical about it. Felicity appeared to accept her husband’s absences as if they were a penance for some former misdemeanour, rather than an irritating fact of life.

  ‘Well, I’m just up the road,’ said Lily simply, ‘so it’s easy to pop by.’

  Julia doubted that it was easy to pop anywhere with five children in tow, but Lily made everything look so effortless that you could just be sucked in by it and forget the logistical challenges of her life. Felicity clicked something on her phone and started squinting at the screen. She should probably get her eyes tested, Julia thought, but Felicity would never admit that her eyesight was slipping.

  ‘I’m here today,’ Felicity recited. ‘Meeting late tomorrow, out of town. Wednesday is the third Wednesday so we’re all around. Thursday is a bit vague but perhaps she’ll be back by . . .’

  ‘Who’ll be back?’ asked their father, kicking the door open with the toe of his slipper and then turning on the spot to push it wide with his back. He was carrying a tray on which sat three glasses of purple squash and what looked like four gin and tonics, the bubbles fizzing delicately. Ice cubes clinked as he set the tray down. ‘I took the liberty of preparing a little something for us all,’ he said, taking the largest of the gins and holding it aloft. ‘Cheers!’