Lemonade and Lies Read Online Free PDF

headed for the cathedral then, still on track. I figured on a two-birds-with-one-stone approach. A walk through the beautiful and newly restored cathedral and lunch in the Chapter House restaurant.
    The soup was great. Sweet potato with peppers. And the bread was homemade with some sort of seeds clinging to it. I savoured every mouthful and was halfway through when the waitress marched up to my table, like a woman on a mission.
    She was a real waitress in the old-fashioned sense of the word; black uniform, with white frilly apron and cap. She was middle aged, pleasant, interested in giving her customers good service. She held out a note.
    It was like something from a movie. I mean nothing like that had ever happened to me before.
    “The young man asked me to give this to you. Said you’d understand that he couldn’t stay.”
    My eyes instinctively roamed the room, looking for the young man. He wasn’t there. But I figured I knew who had left the note. The waitress thrust it into my hand and I eyed the thing like it was a king cobra inflating its massive hood. Getting ready to strike.
    You have something that belongs to me. I want it back. If I don’t get it back, your life may never be the same again. This is just a friendly warning, but I know how much you value your children.
    “Shit!”
    “You okay?” The woman seemed concerned. “Only you look a mite pale.”
    Who says mite? Not that I could throw stones. I’d just said shit.
    “Who gave you the note, can you remember?” I asked urgently, hearing my voice shake.
    “The young man. He said you knew him.”
    Crap. It was James McDonald again. My shadow.
    “What did he look like?”
    “Very striking,” she said.
    That’d be right. He was definitely striking.
    “Wavy hair, mid-brown - dark hazel eyes?” I said. “Intelligent looking. Bit like a younger version of that Irish actor.”
    “Actor?”
    “Liam Neeson.”
    The waitress looked puzzled. “What, the bloke what delivered the note, you mean?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He didn’t look nuthin’ like that.”
    “You sure?”
    “I look stupid to you?”
    “No, ‘course not.” I was wrong. People-reading-skills way off mark. She wasn’t as sweet as she looked.
    “This guy had black hair,” she said. “Sort of straggly, down to his shoulders and an earring in one ear. More like a gypsy. Kind of wild and dangerous. Good luck with that one!” There was criticism in her voice. As if I’d made some kind of risky and unsuitable choice.
    The waitress left me to mull over the image and I put the soup spoon down, dropped the remainder of the bread beside it, the appetite frightened out of me.
    I knew no one who looked like that. Unless . . .  The new thought hit me like lightning. Christ! I flapped a hand at the waitress, an urgent gesture that brought her back over at a trot. Maybe she figured I was done and wanted to give her a tip.
    “This bloke – was he tall?”
    “Yeah.”
    “But not skinny, right?”
    She gave me an odd look. “Definitely not skinny,” she said. “Works out, I’d say.”
    My hands were shaking as I took out the money for the bill. I left a tip, even though the family finances were about to slide from the sick to the critically ill. But it had been a slow lunch time for the waitress, only me and one elderly woman eating a muffin. She’d hardly make it to the Bahamas on our tips.
    Fear seems to block any intelligent thought. I sat on a bench outside the cathedral, shaking, struggling to bring my terror under control. Trying to think my way through to some ordinary explanation for the note. Nothing worked. My mind had a log jam up there. And I couldn’t get past the feeling of utter disbelief that someone wanted to hurt my children, because I’d been mistaken for somebody else. I had nothing belonging to this man, whoever he was. And although I had no idea who he was, I knew exactly what he looked like.
    It was too much of a coincidence for it not to be him. And life isn’t