A Summer to Remember by Victoria Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

family’s home. Perhaps she’d recognised him at the traffic lights and was about to sue him for negligent driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
    Dominic panicked. She’d tracked him down and, more importantly, she’d see him with mud on his trousers, paint in his hair and stubble on his chin. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t how he’d imagined it at all. Not exactly the scene he’d pictured, with Nina sitting in the living room, sipping tea with his mother and then him striding confidently into the room.
    ‘Ah – Nina,’ his mother would say, ‘you remember Dominic, don’t you?’
    Nina would look up from her china cup and their eyes would meet, as surely as their hearts would.
    He shook his head in exasperation. He was such a fool. That wasn’t going to happen at all, was it?

Chapter Five
    Nina knocked on the door again and waited. Three cars in the driveway and nobody at home? It didn’t seem very likely. She looked up again at the windows, half-expecting to see a curtain twitch, but there was no sign of life other than a faint barking coming from somewhere deep inside the house.
    A sudden turning of the latch brought a smile to her face but, when the front door opened, she was greeted not by Olivia but by a little boy with a drink carton in his hand and a straw stuck in his mouth.
    ‘Hello!’ Nina smiled. ‘Is Mrs Milton at home?’
    The boy merely looked at her by way of response.
    ‘Can I come in?’ Nina tried, bending down to his height so as not to appear quite so grown-up.
    The little boy opened the door wider, took the straw out of his mouth and burped. Nina blinked in amusement and watched as he turned around and ran down the passage into one of the rooms, leaving her standing alone in the hall with the sound of barking louder than ever.
    It was funny but, being in the hall again, even after so many years, Nina half-expected to see her two dear young boys come running towards her to grab her hands and drag her into the playroom, and was quite disappointed when they didn’t. Instead she’d been faced with one little boy running away from her. Nina wondered whom he belonged to and, looking around, imagined that somebody would be along at any moment. Nobody would have left such a young boy at home on his own with just a mad dog somewhere in the house for company. Perhaps he was Billy’s little boy, or Alex’s? Or maybe even Dominic’s? Who was to say that the Milton boys weren’t all married now with families of their own? Just because her own love life was a disaster, it didn’t mean that the Milton boys weren’t all happily settled. She’d not seen them all for years. Anything could have happened in that time.
    Her eyes scanned the walls absently until they caught sight of something quite extraordinary; a huge painting of a white mansion standing by the most incredible waterfall. It took a few seconds for Nina to register that it was actually The Old Mill House. It was the most amazing painting she’d ever seen. She could feel the energy in the bold brushwork and taste the spray from the wild rush of water.
    ‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice floated down the hall from one of the rooms, breaking Nina’s concentration.
    ‘Hello?’ Nina echoed.
    ‘Hello?’ the woman’s voice came again, before the owner of it actually appeared. ‘Oh! Nina ! How wonderful to see you!’ Olivia said, talking in her familiar italics as she walked forward and gave her a hug. Nina was instantly enveloped in a waft of rosy perfume and time seemed to spiral out of all recognition as if a portal to her past had just opened up to her.
    ‘It’s so kind of you to invite me,’ Nina said with a smile as Olivia finally released her.
    ‘Not at all! I was just telling Benji all about you.’
    Nina looked down and saw the burping boy half-hidden by Olivia’s skirt.
    ‘Hello, Benji,’ Nina said, bending down to his level again, but her movement only encouraged him to hide further in the paisley