Читать книгу Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists - Erin Knight - Страница 25

19

Sarah leant back on her chair and peered along the hallway. Max’s orange raincoat lay abandoned at the bottom of the stairs. At the end of the corridor a familiar rump peeped into view around the kitchen doorway. ‘Mum, stop rummaging through my pantry!’ Her mother’s greying Bardot style popped around the door instead.

‘It’ll take you months to eat this lot, darling. You’ll be paying removal costs for . . .’ her mother inspected another tin, ‘ . . . kidney beans.’

Sarah grimaced. She wasn’t a fan of kidney beans. Patrick had called her boring for picking hers out of a chilli con carne once. Patrick had thought her boring for all sorts of reasons.

She lobbed her pen on to the Healthy! Happy! Hooray! paperwork Mr Pethers had dumped on her and abandoned the study. ‘I think you’re forgetting how much Will eats now, Mum,’ she called ahead. She made the kitchen doorway, the boys’ heights measured and remeasured up the frame. Soon a stranger would paint all over their milestones.

Disbelief glowered in Sarah’s mother’s eyes. ‘Mulligatawny soup?’

‘Think that came in last year’s Harvest Festival basket.’

‘Eat, pack or food bank?’

‘Mum, we only received the offer two days ago. What even is Mulligatawny?’ Sarah rinsed her cup under the tap and looked out on to the back garden. More than a decade of forgotten junk still needed clearing from Patrick’s long-abandoned summerhouse. The rotting shed had been off limits for a long time now; even Jon avoided it, despite it being the only space big enough to house his treadmill. It had been a small mercy the children had been in there and not inside the main house when Elodie had been hurt. A place they could close the door on.

‘Hello? Earth to Sarah?’

‘Sorry. You were saying?’

Milo was growing up. His voice this morning had been deep and confident, just like Karl’s. He’d still avoided eye contact though, the way Juliette had trained him.

‘I said, I believe it’s similar to a curried soup.’

‘What is?’

‘Mulligatawny!’

‘Oh. Mulligatawny,’ Sarah repeated absently. ‘Sounds like an Irish cove . . . or rare owl maybe . . .’

Sarah’s mother glared over her reading glasses. ‘Are you on drugs, darling? I’ve been reading about M-Cat in the Mail. Your father thinks M-Cat and internet porn are going to be the downfall of at least the next two generations.’

Sarah was on drugs, as it happened. Just the one secret pill, every day, religiously.

‘Goodness, that was a rather hefty sigh, darling. And there I was thinking that moving to a palatial new home overlooking the ocean was something to be upbeat about.’

‘Tea, Mum?’

‘Yes please. It is, though, isn’t it, darling?’

‘Is what?’

‘Something to be upbeat about?’

‘Of course. Where’s your cup?’

‘By the teapot. Your father’s always saying you’d both be better off putting your cash into property. Savings just aren’t worth the bother since interest rates died.’

‘Must be right, then. If Dad says so. Chamomile or regular?’

‘Regular is fine.’

She reached for the pot of teabags. Her mum’s hand appeared over hers. ‘Everyone deserves a happy ending, darling. Sometimes I wonder if you don’t believe you’re about due yours.’

‘You worry too much, Mum.’

‘Then what’s the matter, darling? And don’t say nothing