Читать книгу Freya North 3-Book Collection: Love Rules, Home Truths, Pillow Talk - Freya North - Страница 35
Оглавление‘Cover for me!’
Thea’s heart dropped and she felt like hanging up the phone. She’d become reluctantly resigned to such a call from Alice, which wasn’t to say she hadn’t been deludedly hoping Alice might say Paul had changed his mind, or he was staying in Lancashire, or she’d changed her mind and was ignoring his calls.
‘Cover for me?’ Alice implored. ‘Please! Come on – you promised. You must honour our promise to be each other’s P.I.C.’
Thea suddenly deeply regretted that fateful school day in the second year when they had snuck behind the science block to smoke – daring each other, declaring they’d be each other’s Partner In Crime, swearing solemnly that if one was caught the other would go down with her. But neither was caught and they puffed their way through the packet of Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes over the next eight lunch hours. And after that, when it came to anything which implied risk or wrong, Thea and Alice committed to being each other’s P.I.C. I’ll do it if you do it. Come on, let’s try it! I won’t tell if you won’t. We’ll say it was both our ideas! The difference now was that this was the first occasion in eighteen years that the P.I.C. was acting merely as lookout rather than collaborator.
‘It would be the one bloody week Mark isn’t travelling,’ Alice bemoaned, ‘so cover for me, Thea. You have to.’
‘When?’ Thea asked out of a sense of duty, an unwilling partner in a crime she did not want committed.
‘Tonight! Tomorrow night! The night after!’ Alice’s effervescence and excellent spirits were seductive and Thea had to sternly remind herself of the deplorable cause of Alice’s mirth.
‘What’s your story?’ Thea sighed.
‘Pilates tomorrow night – with you. And some late-night preview shopping thing at Heal’s on Thursday night – with you. He flies back Friday afternoon.’
‘When does he arrive?’
‘Late tonight,’ Alice enthused.
‘You’re not going to climb out of your window and steal away to him tonight, are you?’ Thea asked flatly.
‘No, I’ll just about resist!’ Alice laughed.
‘You so owe me, Mrs Sinclair,’ Thea told her.
‘I think I ought to be Miss Heggarty for the next three days, don’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t mind going to that Heal’s thing anyway,’ Thea justified. ‘Saul and I could look at dining tables.’
‘I made it up, silly!’
‘Alice,’ Thea cautioned, ‘are you sure you’re doing the right thing here? Isn’t it bloody dangerous?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘it is dangerous but I have to do it – I feel compelled to – so in that respect, it must be right even if, on paper, it’s wrong and dastardly. I have to rid it from my system.’
‘I thought the one-night stand had done that,’ Thea reminded her.
‘So did I,’ Alice said darkly. Then she brightened. ‘Guess what!’
‘What?’
‘I’m going to play hooky from work tomorrow afternoon and Thursday morning.’
‘Christ, Alice,’ Thea exclaimed, ‘you really need to tread carefully.’
‘Oh shush, Thea – you know you’ll be gagging for details!’
And that was it. That was just it. No matter how greatly Thea deplored Alice’s actions and despaired at her abhorrent lack of morality, she did indeed crave details. The whole scenario was car-crash horrific, but like a terrible road accident, one is compelled to look. Because it’s bizarrely life-affirming to gasp and recoil from something so appalling you can’t believe it’s real. And it’s sobering to think thank God that’s not me. And it’s chastening to think I hope it never happens to me.
