Calla’s POV
I spent Wednesday morning composing an excuse to send to Vivienne Alderton, and I spent Wednesday afternoon deleting every version of it.
The lunch was tomorrow. One day away. And I had seventeen drafts on my phone and zero I could actually send, because every excuse I wrote sounded exactly like what it was — a woman who had something to hide finding a reason not to be looked at closely. Vivienne would know. Women like Vivienne always knew.
I gave up on the excuse at half past two, put my phone face-down on the desk, and went to look at the painting.
It had been bothering me for three days. A watercolour on the third-floor landing — a Cornish coastal scene, pale blues and greys, the kind of pleasant, unremarkable piece you hang in a corridor because it fills space and asks
