Free The Real Katie Lavender by Erica James Page A

transpired, but things were beginning to get crazily out of hand.
    It had all started when she’d had that funny turn in Penelope Nightingale’s garden. If she closed her eyes and imagined herself back at The Meadows, she could relive that lovely spellbinding sun-filled moment when for a couple of brief minutes she had felt wonderfully happy and worry-free. It was extraordinary that a garden could have that effect on her.
    If that wasn’t surreal enough, now she was dressed in a white blouse and a black skirt that was mortifyingly too short for her long legs. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she looked every inch a waitress. Which, funnily enough, was what she was expected to be.
    When she’d left The Meadows, she had followed the road – just as that nice woman had instructed – and in no time she was parked at the end of a drive beside an open gate with a sign bearing the name Willow Bank. At the sight of it she had suddenly lost her nerve. What on earth was she doing? What did she plan to do? Waltz in and introduce herself as Stirling Nightingale’s daughter? There, you old devil, bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? Or maybe he did. Maybe, once he’d agreed to Mum’s terms and had got on with his life pretending the affair had never happened, he had lived in constant fear of a child turning up out of the blue and putting a spanner in the works of his carefully ordered life. Was that what she wanted to do? To disrupt the equilibrium of his life just as her mother’s letter had done to hers?
    Shamefully, a part of her had wanted to do exactly that, and knowing that it was wrong, she had driven away from the house to take stock.
    An hour later, after driving round the beautiful countryside and walking along the towpath of the river, she had decided to rework the ruse she had used earlier, but with a twist. She would go back to Willow Bank and pretend she had a delivery for a Mr Neil Nightingale. If she hit lucky and it was Stirling Nightingale who answered the door, it would give her the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, to meet her father in the flesh. She would do that and then she would leave. The only problem she could foresee, given that she didn’t actually have anything to deliver, was if she was told that she could leave the parcel at Willow Bank and they would make sure it was passed on to Neil Nightingale. If that happened, she would have to say something about it being company policy that the recipient signed for it in person. Improbable to anyone with half a brain, but the best she could come up with in the circumstances.
    But when she had returned to the entrance to Willow Bank, she had found herself caught up in a cavalcade of taxis. What was going on? A party? Again her nerve was in danger of running out on her, but there was no way she could turn around: another taxi had driven in after her, and so resigned to pressing on, she had stopped in the only available space, alongside a small cream-coloured van with the words Elite Caterers written on the back of it. No sooner had she registered the words than a heavy-set woman wearing a striped blue and white apron appeared beside her car. Katie had lowered the window and the woman had spoken in a breathless rush. ‘Thank goodness you made it, and at such short notice! We were beginning to panic. The agency was my last resort. I told them not to worry, that I had a uniform here for you. We always have a selection of spare skirts and blouses in case of accidents. You’ve just got time to change and then it’s action stations.’
    She should have said there and then that the woman had got it wrong, that Katie was no more a waitress than she was Lady Gaga booked as the entertainment act. But she hadn’t. She had seized her opportunity – nobody ever noticed a waitress at a party; it would be the perfect way to observe Stirling Nightingale at close quarters. And feeling like an undercover agent, she told herself that if it all went wrong