Читать книгу Fire Damage: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked - Kate Medina, Kate Medina - Страница 17

The light was on in Ahmose’s cottage, and she could see him inside, sitting in his stiff wing-backed chair – the one he favoured because he didn’t have to lower himself too far to get into it – by a roaring log fire, reading the paper.

Ahmose had obviously spent the day gardening because some of the plants in her tiny front garden, across the low flint wall dividing the properties, were wrapped in what looked like white woollen coats, protecting them from the winter freeze.

He pulled open the door, a wide smile spreading across his face.

‘Perfect timing. I put the kettle on when I heard your engine. It should be boiled.’

She gave him a kiss on the cheek and stepped into the hallway, immediately felt herself relax as the warmth of the little cottage enveloped her, the woody charcoal smell of the open fire filled her nostrils.

While Ahmose busied himself filling the china teapot, getting the cups and saucers from the cupboard, arranging them all on the floral tray that had been Alice’s favourite, Jessie found a plate and fanned out the biscuits his sister had sent him from Cairo in a neat semicircle. She spent a moment adjusting them, so that an exact portion of each biscuit showed from under the next.

Their weekly tea was a ritual that they had developed over the five years they’d been neighbours. Jessie’s heart had sunk the first time Ahmose had appeared on her doorstep the day after she moved in – clutching a miniature indoor rose, full of advice on how to keep it flowering – imagining a nosy old man who’d never give her any peace. The reality, she quickly found, was the opposite. She sought him out more often than he sought her, had learnt to value his calm, sensible views, his clear-headed take on her problems, his stories and his humour. Their weekly tea was now a sacred part of her calendar: civilized, to be savoured, a deeply companionable, uncompetitive couple of hours. Ahmose felt more like family now than her blood relatives, certainly far more than the father she had only seen five times in the past ten years.

Curling on the sofa, Jessie wrapped both hands around the piping cup. With the open fire the cottage was warm, but she felt chilled to the bone from standing too long in the car park playing verbal games with Starkey. She reached for a biscuit.

‘You must let me pay for the plant warmers, Ahmose.’

‘Most certainly not. A nice garden makes both our cottages look beautiful, adds value.’

She smiled. ‘You sound like a Home Counties estate agent.’

‘And it gives an old man something to do, some exercise,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and before I forget, your mother dropped by a couple of hours ago.’

‘My mother?’ Jessie was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had popped around. Years ago, it was – three at least.

She rolled her eyes. ‘She seems to think that I don’t actually have a job. That I’ll be here in the middle of the afternoon.’

‘It’s a mother’s job to believe that their child is forever too young to be gainfully employed and to worry about them constantly. I offered for her to wait in your house – I thought that you wouldn’t mind – but she said that she needed to get home for six.’

Jessie nodded, took a sip of tea. ‘Did she want anything specific?’

‘I don’t think so. I think that she just wanted to see you. She said that it has been a long time.’

Jessie bit her lip. It had been a long time, eight months – her mother’s birthday. The weather had been unseasonally hot and she’d been wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She remembered her mother asking if she couldn’t have dressed up a bit for lunch – even though they were only going to a pub on Wimbledon Common. Chafing against each other even now, fifteen years later. None of the life-changing events they had lived through talked about in detail. Nothing resolved.

‘You should go and see her, Jessie, whatever has gone under the bridge.’ And when she didn’t reply, he continued: ‘The mother–daughter relationship is …’ A pause as he searched for the right world. ‘Irreplaceable. Difficult, challenging, of course, but irreplaceable.’

Jessie shrugged. ‘It was always more mother–son for my mother.’

Ahmose took a biscuit from the plate, chewed in silence. Jessie watched him warily over the lip of her cup.

‘Alice and I never had the chance to have children,’ he murmured, dropping the half-finished biscuit into his saucer. ‘It was before all that IVF was widely available.’ He waved his hand towards the window, as if encompassing all the modern inventions of the last thirty years. ‘It broke Alice’s heart. She never got over it. I saw it in her eyes most when she smiled, when she was happy …’ A pause. ‘There was always something missing, as if sadness was sitting right behind her eyes, taking some of the light from them, even when she was smiling.’ Reaching across, Ahmose laid a hand on Jessie’s arm. ‘Losing a child must be worse than never having had one at all, because you know what a fantastic human being they would have made, how incredibly unique and wonderful they would have been. That is what your mother lives with every day.’

Jessie felt tears prick her eyes. ‘It’s not so great losing a brother.’

She had spent fifteen years dodging memories. How much longer could she maintain it?

‘Go and see her,’ Ahmose said gently. ‘Please. If only because I have asked you to.’