Read Lemonade and Lies for Free Online Page B

of bed prematurely.
    “Thanks.”
    “See you in ten minutes, then,” he said. “Meanwhile, go round and check all the doors and windows. Make sure they’re secure.”
    “What?” Not another man who thought women were pathetic, mindless cretins. Of course I’d already done that.
    “Jill! Do what I say. From what you’ve told me, a guy seems to be stalking you.”
    His tone struck me as someone used to giving orders. I bristled, for now I had my own little piece of independence, male-free, and didn’t much care for a man barking orders at me. I began to have second thoughts about calling him.
    “You still there?” he asked.
    “Okay. I’ll go round and triple-check the locks and you come over and play detective,” I said.
    I’d pissed him off. His martyred sigh came out of the earpiece as if he were standing next to me.
    “Okay, smart-arse. You want to do this on your own, I’ll happily go back to bed and you can play detective.”
    Ah. I’d hit him in the soft, vulnerable bit. No, not that! The male ego. And I suspect it was the play thing that got him.
    I wanted to put the phone down on him, but resisted. I recognised the instinct for what it was. A signal of defeat. Instead, I’d waffled on about the challenging sort of day I’d had. I would have said ‘crap’, but figured I didn’t know him well enough to swear.
    After his call, I’d checked on the kids - both sleeping soundly - and gone to make yet another cup of green tea. If this kept up, I’d have the same bilious tinge that my student Arthur had before he threw up.
    Then, I’d gone looking for the note.
    When James McDonald arrived, I still hadn’t found it and the search had turned into an obsession.
    “It would’ve been useful, sure,” he agreed. “Still, I wouldn’t get too stressed about it.”
    He was the second person that day to mention me and stress in the same breath. But the other one was only 4 foot tall and slept with a Peppa Pig duvet, so I wasn’t too worried.
    “I’m perfectly calm,” I said, perfectly calmly.
    “Good.”
    “All right, then.”
    “Okay. Just give me the gist.”
    “What, of the note?” I said.
    “The note. The day. Anything you can remember.”
    So I told him. For my brain had tucked it all away in its maze of dark alleyways. But it wasn’t easy to force it to the surface. Or comfortable.
    I didn’t want to confront the chilling memory, the threat to my children. The fact that some whack-job had mistaken me for somebody else, and said he’d hurt my kids if I didn’t return what I had of his.
    Crazy! I had nothing belonging to this madman. I didn’t even know the guy. Had never seen him before he’d followed me to the cathedral and appeared outside my daughter’s bedroom window. I assumed he was the same man who’d given the note to the waitress. The description fitted. And it seemed logical.
    James McDonald’s reaction was surprising. He didn’t treat me like some paranoid fruit-loaf, about to be hauled off by men in short white coats. He believed me, took my fears seriously.
    “Right,” he said, and he seemed to be making his mind up about something, “whatever the explanation, it’ll be sorted.”
    “ Whatever the explanation? There’s only one explanation,” I said angrily, “mistaken identity.”
    He put his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, I’m on your side. Look, it’ll be fine. We’ll deal with it.”
    I couldn’t tell if the ‘we’ was him and me. (Had I suddenly become part of a we ?) Or him and somebody else. Or even him and a whole lot of other people. I didn’t ask. I’m not usually an airhead, but it didn’t seem important at the time, for his assurance made me feel normal again. Then the moment was gone, because he left the room and made himself at home in my kitchen.
    I could hear him rifling through cupboards and the chink of glasses being moved. Maybe, like Alice, he was looking for something more exotic than my special offer wine glasses.
    He came