Sarah Mayberry - Her Favourite Rival

She drove into the garage and parked in her allocated spot. She didn’t immediately get out of her car. She needed a moment to get herself together.

If she could go back in time, if she could change one decision, undo one choice, she would return to the moment when her angry, resentful, achingly lonely sixteen-year-old self had stuffed a handful of clothes into a duffel bag and climbed out the window and into the waiting car of her boyfriend.

But she couldn’t, just as she couldn’t undo any of the foolish, dangerous things she’d done in the eighteen months following that night. Stealing from her parents and her sister. Endless rounds of binge drinking. The way she’d allowed herself to be treated by Johnny and his friends for fear that she’d lose the one person who had ever really seen her and believed in her and loved her. Or so she’d thought at the time.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the headrest. God, she’d been so young and so hungry for approval and attention. The great irony was that the two people she’d most wanted to sit up and take notice—her parents—were the two people who had never quite forgiven her for the months of worry and heartache and shame she’d inflicted on them as they searched and fretted over their runaway daughter.

They pretended they had. Everyone was perfectly civil and polite to one another once she’d moved home and embarked on the never-ending mission of redeeming herself. But the truth was that that rash, reckless dash into the night when she was sixteen had permanently cemented her black sheep status, and she’d never been able to claw her way back.

Not with good behavior. Not with heartfelt words. And not with gifts.

And certainly not by buying her sister a very expensive watch for her birthday.

She breathed in through her nose, held her breath for a handful of heartbeats, then released it fully. Then she opened the door and climbed out.

How did that L.P. Hartley quote go? “The past is a foreign country.” And she didn’t have the time or the energy to go there.

Not today, anyway.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE WAS WEARING perfume. Something light, with sweet vanilla undertones.

Zach looked up from the page he was proofreading and glanced at Audrey’s profile, trying to gauge her mindset. They’d been going over the finished analysis for the past hour, correcting typos, adding information, finessing the layout. Not by the flicker of an eyelid had she indicated that tonight was any different from last night or any of the other times they’d met to work on the report—except she didn’t usually wear perfume.

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