The Last Piece of My Heart Read online

  I sit back down again, feeling on edge. Maybe we didn’t bond as much as I thought we did. I sigh, then switch my music back on and try to focus.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. Diaries.

  I haven’t been able to find that much plot direction from Nicki in her Confessions or Secrets folders, but it’s occurred to me that maybe the key to connecting with her characters really lies with connecting to Nicki herself.

  Sorting through all of her diaries and notebooks, I’ve worked out that she wrote her first diary when she was fifteen.

  As the years went on, the diaries became less confessional and rather all-purpose notebooks, with random thoughts and general musings. She was only thirty-one when she died.

  I lean back in my seat, put my feet up on the desk, and begin to read. Time to get to know the person behind the stories. . .

  At the first mention of Charlie’s name, I sit bolt upright and put my feet flat on the ground, my pulse racing. I had no idea that Nicki and Charlie went to secondary school together.

  Morris and Kit went to secondary school together, too, and the similarities don’t stop there. Both Charlie and Morris are from Cornwall, they’re both blond and good-looking and they both run their own businesses.

  Morris is a laidback surfer with ambition. I don’t know if Charlie surfs. I don’t even know if he’s laidback – it’s kind of hard to tell. I wonder if he has ambition.

  I look out of the window and watch for a moment as Charlie drives a long nail through the wooden structure, two more nails at the ready between his lips.

  It’s only when he finishes hammering in the third nail that I realise I’ve been staring, but, before I come to my senses, he lifts up the bottom of his T-shirt and wipes his brow, revealing a maddeningly sexy stomach, all tanned and taut, with a dark triangle of hair disappearing into his waistband. My skin feels hot.

  It is so not funny that my boyfriend lives ten thousand miles away. All this eye candy and no chance of action is doing my head in.

  I stand up and turn down my music, needing a break from Nicki’s messy handwriting. At that very moment, Charlie looks up and locks eyes with me. My scalp is prickling as I head down the stairs, walking into the kitchen at the same time as he steps through the French doors.

  ‘You have got seriously eclectic music taste,’ he comments drily.

  That’s why he looked up: he could hear my music. ‘It has been said,’ I reply with a grin.

  ‘What was the song before last?’ he asks.

  ‘The Avalanches?’

  ‘Is that who it was?’ He sounds surprised.

  ‘Yeah. “Frankie Sinatra” is the name of the song.’

  ‘Bonkers,’ he says.

  ‘You mean catchy.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Maybe I need to hear it again.’

  ‘I can play it for you if you want,’ I offer, quite genuinely.

  He shrugs and then meets my questioning gaze for a long moment. ‘Go on, then.’

  I return with my speaker and iPod.

  He leans against the worktop with his arms crossed and stares at me directly as a 1940s Calypso singer goes on about Frank Sinatra not having ‘the voice to sing calypso. . .’

  There’s something unusual about Charlie’s eyes. I’ve thought that before, but now it comes to me: there’s no darker line around the outside of his irises. The greeny-hazel colour is clear, like bottle glass, and goes right up to the whites.

  His mouth tilts up at the corners and I jolt, my concentration returning to the song. I suppress a strong urge to giggle at his expression, and then the rap kicks in and I can’t help singing along. He throws his head back and laughs at me.

  I really, really like making him laugh.

  ‘Catchy, huh?’ I nod at him significantly as the chorus returns.

  ‘Catchy,’ he confirms. ‘But bonkers.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, it’s totally bonkers,’ I reply in agreement.

  He picks up my iPod Touch. ‘Don’t you keep your music on your phone?’

  ‘Some, but I can’t fit fifty thousand songs on there.’

  He looks at me. ‘You have fifty thousand songs?’

  I shrug. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He studies my iPod again. ‘I didn’t even know The Avalanches had a new album out.’

  ‘Last year,’ I reply. ‘Sixteen years since their first one.’

  ‘They took their time.’

  ‘You never listen to music while you work?’

  He shakes his head. ‘It used to distract Nicki.’

  ‘She never listened to it either?’ I ask as he places my iPod back on the wooden worktop.

  ‘No, she couldn’t concentrate,’ he says softly, and I’m pained to hear the joy seeping out of his voice.

  The happy song seems out of place now, so I reach for my speaker and turn the sound down until it’s muted. I can never bring myself to end a track midway.

  Charlie goes and fills up a glass of water from the sink.

  ‘Do you want a tea?’ I ask, remembering what I came down here for.

  ‘Nah, I’m good, thanks. Better get on.’ He heads back outside.

  Chapter 11

  If Charlie is Morris, then who the hell is Timo?

  I find out in the next diary.

  Nicki was sixteen when her parents divorced and her father – a French chef – took a job at a five-star Thai resort. She and her sister were devastated, but, while Kate’s sorrow metamorphosed into anger, Nicki pined for her dad terribly. When he invited his daughters to join him for Christmas, Kate – Nicki’s older sister by three years – refused, opting to stay home with their mother instead, so Nicki went alone.

  Nicki and Charlie were just friends at this point, although Nicki did have a crush on him. She’d recently broken up with her boyfriend – a little shit called Samuel who’d stolen her virginity and then messed her around so much that I’d been screaming at her to break up with him weeks ago.

  Well, pages. Honestly, her diaries are riveting – I’m properly invested.

  So, when Nicki goes to Thailand, she’s single. Charlie, meanwhile, is going out with ‘Too Perfect Tisha’ – Nicki’s nickname, but I agree: it suits the girl.

  I remember parts of Thailand from when I was fifteen, which was the last occasion Wendy took me to see Mum on a cruise ship. But Mum cruised around Asia for only two years, and, by the time I was old enough to visit her unaccompanied, the married captain had dumped her and she’d got as far away from him as possible.

  The way Nicki writes about Thailand makes me want to book my ticket straightaway. And I really might have to. I’m here in Cornwall, soaking up the atmosphere, which is perfect for the Morris section of the story, but I know I won’t be able to write well about a country I’m not familiar with.

  But back to Nicki’s diary. . . Her dad is working a lot of the time, so he books his daughter onto a rock-climbing course to keep her occupied. This is where Timo – a.k.a. Isak – comes in.

  Isak, the course leader, is from Sweden – not Finland, as in The Secret Life of Us – but it hardly takes Sherlock to put two and two together.

  He’s twenty-one and absolutely gorgeous, with grey eyes and short, dark hair, and seventeen-year-old Nicki is smitten from the get-go. Even I’m captivated as I, along with her, read between the lines and try to work out if he likes her too.

  She goes into excruciating detail about their every touch, their every exchanged look, their every conversation. When the course is finished, she states that she’s going to continue to go rock climbing, and then I turn the page to see an entry written at two o’clock in the morning, and I know that something big has happened.

  Her excitement spills right out of her pen onto the page as she recounts the events of the night before. After her rock-climbing session she got chatting to Isak and he casually invited her for dinner with him. He took her to the rundown village where he lives – on the same island, a fifteen-minute walk away. Nicki was scared about leaving the resor
t without so much as telling her dad, but her irritation over his lack of time for her made her rebel.

  Isak showed her a side of Thailand that was very different from the five-star luxury of the resort – and, despite her initial fear, she found the excursion thrilling. Later, when he walked her barefoot along the sandy beach under the stars, he pulled her to a stop and gave her the most swoonworthy kiss she’d ever had.

  We’re seeing him again tonight. I can’t wait.

  Between one of my songs finishing and another beginning, I hear the door slamming downstairs. I lift my head up and look out of the window. No Charlie. What’s the time? Three o’clock! I’ve read straight through lunch! I wonder if he’s gone to get April.

  I go downstairs and make myself a piece of toast before returning to the office to continue reading.

  I have to tear myself away from the pages at five o’clock and, by then, Nicki has filled up another diary and is onto her third. She’s still in Thailand – as I said, she goes into detail – and she and Isak are having a secret affair. She’s in agony over the thought of leaving him in two days’ time.

  There’s no one in the kitchen, but there’s a saucepan on the hob, its contents merrily bubbling away beneath the lid. I put my empty mug in the dishwasher and then jump with fright when I realise April is standing in her playpen, staring dolefully up at me. She bounces on her feet a bit, steadying herself with her chubby little hands on the side of the pen.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, wondering where Charlie is.

  She holds her arms open to me. A split second later, she falls backwards onto her bum and starts to cry.

  ‘Hold on, hold on.’ I look around for Charlie, then, against my better judgement, reach into the pen and lift his daughter out.

  Her cries stop instantly, her face breaking into a full-beam smile.

  ‘All right?’ I ask, grinning back at her.

  She reaches up and pulls my hair.

  ‘Ow!’

  She giggles, so I let her do it again.

  My squawk this time prompts her to laugh like crazy. Huh. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I think she likes me.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough now, you cheeky monkey,’ I say, trying to untangle her fingers from my locks before she bruises my scalp. She grins at me, her chubby cheeks widening to chipmunk-like proportions. Maybe it’s her blue dress, but her eyes seem bluer today.

  The lid on the pan begins to vibrate violently and both April and I turn our heads at the same time to stare at it. With one arm holding her to my hip, I go over to the stove and carefully take off the lid, grabbing a wooden spoon and stirring the red sauce within. The toilet flushes inside the hallway cloakroom and Charlie emerges.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, coming into the kitchen. I jut my hip towards him, expecting him to take April, but he goes to a cupboard and begins rooting around.

  ‘What are you making?’ I ask.

  ‘Spaghetti Bolognese.’

  ‘For you or April?’

  ‘Both,’ he replies, unscrewing a jar of dried herbs and shaking some into the pan, flecking the red sauce with green. ‘Just have to blitz hers in the food processor first.’

  ‘Ew.’ I pull a face.

  He smirks at me as he screws the herb lid back on.

  ‘How’s your work coming along?’ I walk over to the French doors and look out.

  ‘Getting there,’ he replies.

  ‘Is that driftwood?’ I ask, studying the twisted structure that’s beginning to form around the outside of the play kitchen’s frame.

  ‘Some of it is. It can be pretty brittle, so I tend to use pine for the base and fix branches and driftwood on top to give it character.’

  ‘Do you get it from the beaches yourself?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He materialises at my side. ‘And my friends and family sometimes pick it up when they see it.’

  ‘It reminds me of the seaside,’ I say. ‘I like the colour.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s been bleached by the sun. I like the shape,’ he says. ‘It’s been knocked about in the water for so long that the waves have smoothed away most of the rough edges. And I like not knowing where it comes from or how long it’s been adrift at sea.’

  I smile at his reverential tone, and he in turn, smiles at his daughter, reaching across to tweak her nose. She giggles.

  ‘Well, I guess I’d better get home,’ I say, offering April over with more purpose this time. I still seem to have her attached to my hip.

  ‘Do you want to stay for dinner?’ Charlie asks casually, finally getting the hint and taking her from me. ‘I’ve got plenty.’

  ‘Oh, no, thank you,’ I reply automatically, and then frown at myself as I walk away from him. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do – and I like a bit of spag bol – but he doesn’t repeat his offer.

  Nicki’s bike is still resting in the hall and the sight of it makes me nervous.

  I’m reluctant to pick up her helmet, and even more so to pull it over my head, but I do. The fit is good, but the straps don’t quite meet under my chin and I’m struggling to loosen them.

  I honestly would be so much happier on hired equipment.

  ‘Let me help,’ Charlie says, putting April down and coming to my aid. I didn’t know he’d followed me out here.

  I’m not sure where to look as he fiddles with the straps, so I focus on his jaw, trying not to flinch as his rough fingertips brush against my throat. His jaw clenches and my eyes dart up to his, my breath freezing in my lungs – his pain is palpable.

  ‘Charlie, I—’

  ‘Done!’ He interrupts me, taking a step backwards and forcing a bright smile.

  ‘Seriously, I don’t want to—’

  He covers his hands with his ears. ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ he says, going over to open the door.

  I roll my eyes at him to lighten the mood as I wheel the bike past.

  ‘Height okay?’ he asks when I reach the road and swing my leg over the frame.

  ‘Fine,’ I reply, wondering if he’s already adjusted it. I’m pretty tall at five foot eight.

  He nods. ‘Ride carefully.’ He pats the doorframe with an air of finality and goes back inside, shutting the door behind him. I’m glad he didn’t wait to see me set off. I’m feeling on edge enough as it is.

  Chapter 12

  A few days later, on Friday, I meet April’s grandmother, and, if I didn’t know that she was going to be there, I’d probably still guess who she was from her identical chipmunk cheeks. Like April’s, they bulge brilliantly when she smiles.

  ‘You must be Bridget!’ she exclaims, opening the door to me. If she weren’t so warm and welcoming, I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable wheeling her late daughter-in-law’s bike into the house. ‘I’m Pat.’ She offers her hand as soon as mine is available.

  She’s of medium height and build and dressed colourfully in a print blouse and trousers the colour of sunshine. Her champagne-blonde hair is long and curly, falling to well below her shoulders.

  ‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ I reply, shaking it.

  ‘Charlie’s taken the play equipment to the school,’ she says, the wooden beads around her neck clattering together noisily as she shuts the door.

  He told me he would be setting everything up today. The finished articles were quite beautiful – like something out of a fairytale with their twisted, wooden structures and asymmetrical lines.

  As well as a long, low play kitchen, complete with sink and pegs to hang utensils on, he made a table for sand play, several wooden stools, a series of stepping stones and a small play house – all gorgeously characterful pieces.

  ‘He should be back around lunchtime. Cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, liking her even more than I already did.

  I follow her into the kitchen. I think I might’ve just met Charlie’s cleaner: the place is immaculate. As mothers go, this one clearly rocks.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Pat asks, and it’s more than just a conversa
tional question: it’s concern.

  ‘Really well,’ I reply, although I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I’m still reading Nicki’s diaries. I can’t tell yet whether that’s getting me anywhere.

  ‘Is there anything I can help you with? Anything at all?’

  I furrow my brow. ‘I don’t think so,’ I reply. ‘To be honest, I’m still going through everything, hoping to find some clues as to what Nicki had planned. It’s a bit of a one-man job.’

  ‘I was hoping to come and say hi to you before now,’ she confides as she moves swiftly around the kitchen, from the sink to the kettle and over to the cupboards. ‘Charlie’s not much of a talker. And he finds it very hard to talk about Nicki. So, if there’s anything you need to know about her, them, whatever, then you can always ask me.’

  ‘Er, thank you,’ I say, surprised. ‘I’m all right so far, but I’ll keep that in mind.’

  ‘Good.’ Pat smiles at me. ‘I’ll give you my number so you have it if you need it.’

  Was that a bit weird? I ask myself as I head upstairs to the office. I think she’s just trying to help, but I’m pretty sure that, if I don’t feel comfortable asking Charlie something, I won’t feel right asking his mother. Although I guess that remains to be seen.

  I’ve been on quite a journey with Nicki this week. When she left Thailand, she was heartbroken. She had assumed she and Isak would stay in touch, but, on their last night together, he confessed that he didn’t want to try to make a long-distance relationship work. She told him she loved him and they were both emotional, but he didn’t back down. He would likely still be in Thailand the next time she came, he said, but she mustn’t wait for him.

  Back in the UK, Nicki grew resentful, knowing Isak also meant that he wouldn’t wait for her. She tortured herself by imagining how many other girls he was having holiday flings with.

  Meanwhile, her sister, Kate, gave her the cold shoulder about Nicki going to Thailand to stay with their dad. She thought Nicki was being disloyal to their mum, and their mum didn’t do a whole lot to reassure her younger daughter. Nicki felt very alone.

  Charlie broke up with Too Perfect Tisha and flirted with Nicki at a party, but she was sworn off men, which, of course, only made him want her more. Over the following weeks he got several mentions in Nicki’s diary, but she continued to claim she was over her crush.