No Ordinary Affair by Fiona Wilde, Sullivan Clarke Page B

suddenly. “No, I don’t know anything about it at all."  She turned. “I must be going. Thanks for your help.”
    The door closed behind her with a ‘ding’ leaving me and Miss Parsham standing behind the counter looking after her as she went.
    “What on earth was that about?” my employer asked.
    “I’m sure I don’t know,” I replied, but deep down I knew I was wrong, about more things than one.
    “Well, we’re a moody sex,” Mrs Parsham said , but even after her light comment, she was still looking after Helen, puzzled .
    I couldn’t help but smile. “That we are.”
    Fortunately, finally, Miss Parsham's attention turned to something else . “Well look at this,” she was saying. “How unusual.”
    “What?” I turned to see her holding up a perfect, life-sized glass apple.   “Where did that come from?” I asked.
    “The Weaver estate. Lovely, isn’t it?”
    I put my hand out. “May I hold it?”
    She handed it to me. “An app le for teacher,” she said. “It’d make a great gift for an educator.”
    I closed my hand on it. “Yes.” I paused. “ Miss Parsham , may I buy this?”
    “Oh I don’t know. I may not want to sell it.”
    I rolled my eyes. “You sell everything. Come on now, sell it to me. Please? ”
    “No,” she said and I scowled. She could be so –
    “I’ll give it to you.”
    “Really?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “But put it in your coat pocket this once if you really want it. You know how prone I am to changing my mind.”
    I did as she asked, looking at the glass apple for a long moment before tucking it in the pocket of my coat.
    “An apple for teacher,” I thought, and the pain of his memory hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d promised myself that I didn’t care, that he didn’t matter, that we were finished. But the sight of that apple had brought all the desire for him, and with it the doubts Helen’s visit had added to it.

 
Chapter Five
     
     
    What right did I have to be suspicious? Even if Ethan was seeing Helen as well, I was a married woman. I could hardly play the jilted lover when I was the one doing the jilting.
    And yet I felt more down by the moment, and so taciturn by the end of the day that Miss Parsham took to asking me whether she’d done or said something to offend me.
    “It’s not you, promise,” I said. “I just have a lot on my mind.”
    “You’re welcome to take the rest of the afternoon off,” she said. “Lord knows you’ve earned it with all the extra time you’ve put in lately.”
    I started to say no, but instead found myself taking her up on her offer. I had class that night and couldn’t risk missing it again. But I needed something of a pick-me-up, too and decided to go to the bookshop on the corner and find some new reading material to take my mind off my woes.
    But after an hour of perusing the collection I left empty handed and got back into my car.
    I don’t know why I headed west out of town. I don’t know what drew me to Drumlin ' s. Perhaps I wanted to confirm for myself whether Ethan was really out of town. Maybe he’d lied, and this was his day to meet another woman at the school. Or perhaps he didn’t meet all of them at the school. Perhaps he was different things to different women and at that very moment was on a renovated clipper ship down at the harbor, where he was binding and whipping some woman who’d always dreamed of being of being taken captive by pirates.
    I couldn’t say what I was more afraid of, not seeing Ethan’s car and worrying about where he was or who he was with, or seeing his car and having to explain to him why I’d decided to come out to Drumlins in defiance of his wishes.
    I looked for it as I drove but didn’t see it, not by his house or by the Drumlin school. I pulled up in back where my car couldn’t be seen from the road and cut my engine, trying to decide whether to get out and go in.
    It’s probably locked anyway , I told myself as I walked up to the front