you are!’
Another voice interrupted his explanation and Adam sat up abruptly. He didn’t mean it to look like a guilty start, and the thought that Sunita might interpret it like that unsettled him.
‘Hi!’
Gold sandals winked across the last few clumps of grass and wobbled up the uneven surface of the rock.
‘Oh! Damn!’ Sunita swayed and might have fallen if Adam hadn’t sprung to his feet in one lithe movement and caught her. ‘Ouch!’ She reached down and rubbed her ankle.
Adam noticed Molly’s frown and knew she was wondering, as he was, whether the stumble had been deliberate.
Sunita seemed oblivious.
‘Thank goodness you caught me,’ she said, her smile dazzling. She raised her arms and hooked them round his neck, then pressed her ruby-painted lips to his mouth. ‘Have you had a wonderful morning?’
She could hardly have made the statement of possession more obvious. So it had been deliberate.
Molly stood. ‘Listen, I’ll leave you two. It’s time for lunch, and Lexie needs to eat.’
‘Maybe we’ll see you at dinner?’ Adam called as she leapt gracefully across the rocks.
She lifted a hand in acknowledgement, but if she replied, he didn’t catch it.
‘Lovely girl,’ Sunita said, laying the palm of her hand on his chest. ‘Now, tell me all about where you’ve been and what it was like. I’m dying to hear about your climb.’
Molly, hopping from rock to rock, was conscious of Adam’s gaze following her and her face burned. She had not known she still felt like this.
Chapter Six
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C aitlyn Murray grabbed for the tin of baked beans as a boy raced down the aisle, backpack flailing behind him as he sprinted for the door.
Too late. The backpack hit the display and yanked a corner tin out of place. Cans crashed noisily onto the floor and rolled in surprising directions under the shelving.
‘Kevin McQuade, I’ve told you before!’ she yelled after the small boy.
It was no use. The thieving brat had gone already and there wasn’t much any of them could do about it. The days when the local constable would have grabbed a snotty-nosed kid by the ear and dragged him terrified to his father for a ticking off were long gone. Kevin – who lived a few doors down from Caitlyn’s family on the Summerfield estate – wouldn’t suffer. He definitely wouldn’t be told off by his parents. In fact Caitlyn suspected it was his mother who’d sent him out to steal. Angie McQuade had an exaggerated sense of what she was owed by the world at large.
‘You OK, Cait?’
One of the assistants scuttled from behind the shelves, his face a picture of concern.
‘It’s fine, Joe. I’m fine.’
She ducked away and reached to retrieve one of the tins.
‘Here, let me.’
‘Thanks Joe.’
‘He take anything?’
‘Probably. It really bugs me. Honest folk work for a living.’
‘Like you and me, yeah? Doesn’t pay much though, does it?’
‘Still,’ she said.
It was Friday night, but Caitlyn didn’t have any plans, which was just as well because she didn’t get away until almost ten o’clock.
The supermarket was on the edge of Hailesbank, on the site of an old printing works. Caitlyn could remember the factory. She’d even been inside once on a school trip. She could still hear the noise of the machines and see the grimy windows, looking like no-one had cleaned them for a hundred years. Her friend Jenna said it was about time that smelly old place was pulled down and Hailesbank needed a supermarket anyway, but Caitlyn missed the factory. She liked the magic of seeing the vast sheets of paper hammering through the massive presses, building yellow upon magenta upon cyan upon black until everything came together in a perfect full-colour sheet at the end.
Everywhere had supermarkets. She didn’t know where there was another print works. Still, a job was a job. She had to make up for the salary she used to earn from her job in Edinburgh and needed every