Free Original Cyn by Sue Margolis Page A

appointment she could get at the dentist had been precisely when they were due to pick up their cars.
    Hang on, Cyn thought, this didn’t make sense. “But if you were in so much pain that night,” she said, “how did you manage to go and pick up the car?”
    “I was on extra-strength painkillers. I figured it was the lesser of two evils. The pain was bound to be worse the next morning. I talked to the people at the showroom at about four that afternoon and by pure chance one of the cars had already arrived. It just happened to be the Stella car. I’m so sorry I didn’t phone you. I just forgot. I think it was probably the pills making me feel a bit weird. I don’t know how I managed to drive home.”
    “But you’re all right now?”
    “Oh, you know,” she said with another grimace, “the pain comes and goes.” Then her face broke into what Hugh would no doubt have described as a martyred smile. “But I’m dealing with it.” Cyn didn’t know what to make of her story. She knew what Hugh and Harmony would think—that Chelsea was putting on an act and that she had taken the car on purpose.
    “You know, I feel so guilty about this whole thing that I just phoned Stella’s people to see if it would be OK for us to swap cars, but they said there would be a problem with the insurance. I didn’t quite understand, but apparently . . .”
    “That’s OK,” Cyn said. “Don’t worry. I’m going to phone the Anusol people in a minute. I’m sure I’ll get it sorted out.”
    “You sure? What can I say?”
    “It’s OK,” Cyn said, “you don’t have to say anything.”
    Cyn had been completely thrown by Chelsea’s thought about wanting to swap cars. Now she didn’t know what to think. She was still dithering, wondering whether to let the whole thing go or just come out with it and say, “Look, Chelsea, I’m not sure I buy any of this toothache nonsense. I think you have a problem with me and wangled it so that you got the Stella car,” when Graham Chandler interrupted them.
    “OK,” he announced, “show-and-tell session in trailer one at two o’clock.” He sounded a bit irritable, Cyn thought. No point mentioning the Anusol ad to him and seeing if he would phone the company to try and persuade them to tone the ad down a bit. He clearly had more urgent matters on his mind. She knew it wasn’t just work pressure. He was also exhausted. Three months ago his wife had given birth to IVF triplets, and judging by the dark circles under his eyes, they still weren’t sleeping. “Hang on,” Cyn said to Graham, “I thought that meeting wasn’t until the day after tomorrow.” After a brainstorming session the previous week, Graham had sent everybody away to “think wild” about ways of promoting the new Droolin’ Dream low-fat doughnut. It was agreed that those thoughts would be discussed at the next show-and-tell meeting.
    “I know what I said,” Graham said briskly, “but things have changed. I’m off to New York this evening. This Droolin’ Dream account is worth a fortune. We need to get some ideas up and running before I go.” Andy and Phil had been in New York for a couple of months setting up PCW NY. Apparently Andy had phoned a couple of hours ago to say things were going seriously wrong with the attorneys and Graham’s presence was needed urgently.
    It was only after Graham had gone that Cyn noticed that Chelsea was looking strained and rather pale. “You OK?” she said, thinking that maybe this tooth abscess was for real after all.
    “It’s OK, I’ll be fine when the antibiotics kick in.” But something about the expression on Chelsea’s face left Cyn thinking that it wasn’t just the tooth that was troubling her. Cyn was certain she was seeing something in Chelsea that she had never seen before. It was hovering about her eyes and looked remarkably like panic.
    “So,” Cyn said, “I bet you’ve got loads of ideas to take into this show-and-tell session.”
    “Oh, a few,