Читать книгу Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists - Erin Knight - Страница 21

15

Harry dumped his bike on the front drive and wandered breathless into the garage. ‘What are you up to, Ma?’

Cleo lumped another box of Sam’s wall tiles on to the trolley she’d brought home from Coast. ‘Hi, son. Just clearing a few things.’

Harry moved his sunglasses to his forehead. ‘Need a hand?’

‘Sure, could you load them into the back of my car? Your dad’s using this place as a dumping ground, I want it all cleared. I need a new splashback at Coast anyway.’

‘Y’know, a few egg boxes stapled to the walls in here could be a sweet place to, I dunno, keep a drum kit?’ Harry grinned.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, H. I’ve got enough grand designs to organise with those back store rooms.’

‘We’re converting the stores?’

She rooted around her feet for the next box. ‘Only if I can convince your father to do the work for me.’ Cleo straightened up and thumped her head on Sam’s punchbag again. It swung pointlessly from the garage ceiling. ‘That’s next to go, bloody thing. I told your father it would never get used.’

Harry tilted the trolley, pushing for the garage doors. ‘We used it, Mum. Dad was pretty good until he knocked it out of the ceiling. Reckons it’s like riding a bike.’

‘What is?’

‘Boxing.’

Ha! Sam hadn’t boxed for over twenty years. All that time ago, when Cleo would help her mother deliver hot sandwiches to the gym offices, just so she could watch Sam Roberts’ taught body twist and flex, lean and powerful. The only boxing Sam did these days was goggleboxing. ‘Yes, but how long did it take him to fix it back to the ceiling joist again, Harry? A bloody age. And even then he said not to touch it, just in case. He probably used Blu-tac . . . a temporary fix just to stop me moaning.’

‘Actually, I used a plate and bolt system, but those timbers are going to need replacing soon. Damp’s getting through somewhere, I’ll have to have a weekend at it.’ Sam stood in the doorway between the kitchen utility and the garage, hair wet from the shower, wearing one of last year’s best holiday shirts. Cleo gave him a point for getting out of his work clothes at least.

‘Whenever you next get one of those, Sam. So, damp rafters? Brilliant. Are they dangerous?’

He wiggled his eyebrows. ‘Not unless we start swinging from them, baby.’ Cleo scowled. Sam held out a cup of tea. She struggled to take it, Sam’s enormous industrial gloves like rubber buckets on her hands.

‘Why didn’t you say we had a leak?’

‘Because I didn’t need you adding anything else to that nagging – I mean, snagging – list you keep in your head for me, my love.’

She did not keep a snagging or a nagging list at all.‘I wouldn’t moan if you took a bit more interest in what I say. Tell me the last time I moaned about something new? Go on!’

Sam sighed. ‘Extending Coast . . . the school mothers . . . Pomme du Port’s hygiene rating . . . the Inman-Holts’ new Mercedes . . . Jonathan Hildred being a snappier dresser than me . . . No! Wait! That’s an old complaint, forget that one, darling.’

He pecked her on the head before she could speak. She felt an instant fury. A silly part of her wanted to cry again, like she had to that poor young girl in Coast this morning. She shrugged off Sam’s gloves, letting them fall to the floor the way Sam used to let his boxing gloves fall just before leaping over the ropes to kiss Cleo passionately before her mother saw.

‘I didn’t do anything to deserve what I got from Loopy Lorna Brooks, Sam. She was oversensitive and bloody horrible to me. But thanks.’

‘She’s not the only one who’s oversensitive, Cleo.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Heads-up, Mum’s hands are on her hips . . . again. You two argue more than me and Harry now.’ Evie stood in the doorway behind her father, clad head-to-toe in graphite grey gym gear that Cleo had never clapped eyes on before in her life.

‘What is that?’

Evie blanched. ‘They’re old, I haven’t worn them in ages.’

‘Don’t give me that, I do the bloody washing. And the label’s sticking out of your neck! How have you paid for that lot? Trainers too!’ Cleo yelped. ‘Where have you found the cash for—’ Even beneath the generous bronzer Evie’s cheeks were reddening. ‘Oh no, you better bloody well not have.’

Evie flattened herself against the utility door so Cleo could rampage through.

‘Cleo . . .’ Sam tried. He could smell an imminent explosion at a thousand paces. That and a sausage sandwich.

Cleo dragged a chair out from beneath the kitchen table that Sam had crafted for her out of old scaffold boards, and jumped up so she could reach the two terramundi jars sandwiched between her Nigella Lawson cook book collection and the twisted lump of driftwood she and Sam had found on their first dawn walk together along Mooner’s beach.

It was supposed to be a joke! Keeping the clay jars out of reach, as if the notes she’d been feeding equally into the two pots were chocolate chip cookies the kids couldn’t be trusted around. Harry’s jar was nearest, and Cleo didn’t bother giving it a shake; normally she’d feel a twinge of guilt but she was far too enraged right now for guilt. She hadn’t been feeding the two jars all that equally, but Harry was never going to need as much extra tuition as Evie. Cleo grabbed Evie’s jar and checked for signs of infiltration. Terramundi jars had to be smashed before surrendering their contents.

‘You sneaky little—’

‘You said it was for emergency purposes, Mum!’

‘Dressing up as a sodding ninja? Tuition, Evie! That money was for extra tuition! So you don’t end up flipping burgers for a sodding living!’

‘You flip pancakes.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Evie,’ he groaned.

‘I don’t need the tuition! Not if I do the extra classes Mr Hildred suggested,’ Evie bumbled. Evie always bumbled when she was lying through her teeth.

‘Oh, that’s your plan is it, Evie? So how come that’s the first you’ve said about extra classes? I’ll just ring Sarah now then, shall I? Ask Jon to confirm you’ve signed yourself up?’

Sam pinched the skin above his nose.

‘Well?’ said Cleo, balancing the jar Evie had deftly managed to chip the base from. ‘How much?’ Because, damn it, Cleo couldn’t remember exactly how many twenty-pound notes she’d fed into Evie’s pot.

Sam braced his arms against the countertop. ‘Cleo, she’ll work it off at Coast.’

‘She will not. She spends half her time there on her phone.

She can take those clothes back and get my money back.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing. You still have the labels in them. You’re taking them back. Now how much?’

‘About one hundred . . . and thirty . . . ish.’

‘I want that cash back in this pot tomorrow. Or else.’

Evie looked open-mouthed from Cleo to Sam. ‘But Dad . . .’

‘Cleo, I’m sure we can work something out.’

She glared, stopping Sam dead. ‘Do you know how long it takes me to earn a clear profit of one hundred and thirty pounds selling teacakes? Do you have any idea?’

Sam straightened. ‘No. But before tax it’s about nine hours of backbreaking work, digging footings in the pouring rain while some snot-nosed upstart foreman asks me from his Range Rover window how many tea breaks I’ve stopped digging for. How much did those fancy new cushions in the sun room cost us again, Cle? You never said.’

Was he backing Evie up? Again? Evie’s face said she couldn’t call it either. What happened to being on the same team, Sam? What happened to him being in Cleo’s corner?

Cleo stood there on the kitchen chair and reached out her hand as far as possible without overbalancing. She let the terramundi jar fall from her palm. It made a dull cracking sound like a thick egg before spilling its remaining contents on the kitchen tiles. ‘There you go, Sam. You two share what’s left between you.’

Her hand fell back to her side again. Sam’s eyes held something she hadn’t seen in them for years: the hardened look of an opponent.

Harry appeared in the doorway. ‘What’s going on? And why is Evie dressed like a funky assassin?’

Sam was still watching Cleo, working out where her next blow might come from.

She lifted her chin and looked at her daughter again. Evie steeled herself, sniffing back tears. ‘I just wanted to start jogging. Some boys at school . . .’ She blinked at her mother and Cleo felt another horrible penny drop. ‘They’ve started calling me the fat tranny.’