Chapter 4 - THE EMPTY SEATS
The bill came to one hundred and eighty pounds. Clare paid it in cash, added a forty-pound tip for Marcus, and stood up.
For the first time all evening, Clare felt no sting of humiliation at the empty chairs. They were no longer monuments to her children’s absence; they had been transformed into lifeboats. Daniel was in Bristol drinking craft beer with people who didn't know him; Sophie was tending to strangers on Ward 4; Helen was asleep in her warm cottage. But here, in the freezing December wind, two human beings were leaning against Clare as they walked through the restaurant's heavy front doors.
The cold hit them like a wall of iron. The snow had piled several inches high over the pavement, burying Clare’s modest blue sedan parked along the kerb.
"Get in the back, Maya," Clare instructed, unlocking the doors with a click. "Anna, take the front. Put the heater on full."
Clare scraped the windshield with an old plastic ice-scraper, her hands numbing within seconds. As she rounded the boot of the car, headlights flashed at the far end of the darkened street. A heavy black SUV was crawling down the road, moving at five miles an hour, its high beams sweeping across the storefronts like searchlights.
Clare’s stomach plummeted. She didn't panic; years of running a home, raising headstrong children, and enduring Peter’s long illness had bred into her an instinct for stillness under pressure. She slipped into the driver's seat, pulled her door shut without slamming it, and kept the headlights off.
The black SUV rolled past the restaurant, slowed down beside Clare's car, its tinted glass reflecting the falling snow. Inside, two men sat in dark coats, one of them holding a tablet that illuminated his face in a cold blue glow.
Maya held her breath in the back seat, clutching her notebook. Anna had ducked down into the footwell, her forehead pressed against Clare’s knees, trembling so hard Clare could feel the vibrations through the fabric of her coat.
"Shh," Clare whispered, resting her hand on Anna’s shoulder. "Keep down. Don't move."
The SUV paused for five excruciating seconds. The exhaust puffed white into the freezing air. Then, slowly, the tires crunched through the slush and the vehicle accelerated toward the high street.
Clare turned the ignition. The engine purred to life. She switched on the low beams and turned down the narrow alleyway behind the church, taking the back route through the old orchard roads where no modern GPS would think to lead a city driver.
"Where are we going?" Anna asked from the floor, her voice muffled by tears.
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"To Mill Lane," Clare said. "Peter built that house behind a stone wall two hundred years old. If Julian Vance wants to set foot on my property tonight, he’ll have to drag me off it first."
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