Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists. Erin Knight

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СКАЧАТЬ timer counted up instead of down, Mum. I swear, look . . . ’

      A green crime scene waited inside the microwave. Customers were craning necks. ‘Lorna, I’m so sorry. Marnie’s lunch . . .’

      Lorna grimaced. ‘It’s fine, Cleo. That was the last of Mummy’s homemade pesto pasta, wasn’t it, Marnie-Moo? But it’s fine. I have milk, she can have milk, until we get home.’

      ‘I’m so sorry, but the microwave . . . I won’t be able to warm a bottle.’

      Lorna was already weaving through the tables back to her own spot in the window. ‘We have it covered, Cleo.’ She settled herself into her chair and began fumbling at her blouse.

      ‘Oh. Sure.’ Cleo’s eyes left Lorna’s pale bosom and clocked a couple of the kids on the terrace outside stop inhaling their food just long enough to grin at each other. She glared through the glass. ‘Keep that up, you little sods, and you can clear off.’ Getting Harry and Evie to feed from her had been all kinds of awful. Hell hath no fury like a nipple with mastitis.

      Evie tensed. ‘Uh-oh, geriatric storm brewing, table 4.’

      Cleo recognised something in the posture of the man at the table neighbouring Lorna’s. That incensed-embarrassed-unreasonable look that Cleo had once seen in a lunching corporate’s face just before she’d been dispatched from the department store’s restaurant to the ladies’ changing rooms. The manager thinks you’ll be more comfortable somewhere private, madam. Her neck burned at the memory. Harry and Evie’s need for sustenance had got in the way of a grown man’s need to finish his jacket potato without having to wrestle any of life’s big questions, such as whether or not boobs really were just for groping.

      The woman at table 4, face grey and puckered, twisted in her chair to face Lorna. ‘My brother doesn’t know where to look!’

      ‘Sorry?’ blinked Lorna.

      Cleo bristled. ‘Right.’

      Evie caught Cleo’s elbow ‘Mum! What are you doing?’

      ‘I’m going to offer Lorna a free drink and a seat out of that blazing sun. Then I’m going to inform table four that Coast welcomes breast-feeding mothers, even if they are members of Juliette Inman-Holt’s PFA cult.’

      She stalked around the counter, her bottom accidentally clipping two chairs on the way, but she didn’t care. ‘Lorna? Sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering, would you and Marnie like to use the new sofas? It’s cooler over there, with no customers who—’

      Lorna reared like a snake, eyes wide and wild. ‘No customers to watch my baby feeding, is that it? Consuming the food Mother Nature intended for her?’ Lorna’s breast yanked free of Marnie’s lips, Marnie’s protestation immediate.

      Cleo opened her mouth but her voice abandoned her, Lorna’s boob staring straight at her, the gypsy blouse risen defiantly over the top of its fullness.

      Lorna stood. ‘It’s alright my five-year-old son has to look at filthy girly mags every time I take him to the newsagents, isn’t it? Absolutely fine when he flicks a music channel on that hordes of disco bimbos shake their thonged backsides at him? But . . .’ Lorna cupped a hand to her mouth . . . ‘Good God! Someone call the modesty police if a mother nurses her child. Well I’ve got news for you, Cleo Roberts.’ Lorna’s face had gone quite red. ‘My daughter has a right to feed freely! I have a right to use my breasts!’

3

      Isobel startled at the sound of the woman behind the counter banging away at the coffee machine. A baby began to cry over near the other window. She felt a wave of purpose wash through her, then noted the Free Wifi sign framed and hanging on the far brick wall like a gift waiting to be stolen. All those thoughts swelled somewhere at the bottom of her like a rising threat. The doubt. The ridiculousness of her goals.

      She clasped her writing pad like a religious scripture.

      Base Camp 1. Simple enough. Home. Home was Base Camp 1.

      She scribbled the next few lines of writing as if indenting them into the page made them more achievable somehow.

      2 - Job

      3 - Friends

      4 - Partner/Family

      5 - Reputation

      6 -

      The pen flicked free of her grasp, skittering to the floor.

      ‘Whoops, nearly.’ A pair of expensive deck shoes arrived where Isobel reached. Their owner scooped up her biro and offered it back to her with a smile. She noticed it now, his boyish handsomeness, but still it didn’t matter. She mustered a polite smile in return.

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘No problem. A woman after my own heart.’

      ‘Sorry?’ He was older than Isobel but only a decade or so, and in that way that seemed to benefit the male sex and leave the females worrying about crows’ feet and dermal fillers.

      He nodded at her notepad. ‘A list-maker. The world is divided into us and them, you know. The list-makers and the billionaires, according to Forbes.’

      Isobel grimaced. She would definitely be worrying about crows’ feet one day. Probably very soon. ‘Sorry, I don’t follow.’

      ‘Forbes. According to them, the ultra-successful tend not to make lists. I can’t function without them myself. Good luck with yours, maybe you’ll buck the trend?’ Isobel watched his eyes travel to the tabletop. Oh no, was he? Bugger, he was, he was skim-reading her list. She fought against slapping a hand over her pad like a child hiding the answers to a test and glugged another mouthful of tepid tea instead. ‘Looks pretty aspirational. Hope you get to tick it all off soon.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘I moved to Fallenbay with similar goals. It’s a great place.’ Isobel went with another smile. ‘See you then.’

      ‘Bye.’ Her breathing relaxed as soon as he turned. She studied her list, the blank spot waiting next to Base Camp 6. Was it a base camp? Or was it the summit? What was it she was hoping to achieve here in Fallenbay exactly? A Happily Ever After? She was thinking on this point very carefully when something blew up in the kitchen.

      ‘Evie! I told you to watch that thing today!’

      Isobel stopped listening to the crisis over the exploding microwave. She was zoned out. Focused. Determined again.

      Home. Job. Friends. Partner/Family. Reputation.

      It was an aspirational list, he was right. It was just missing one final and integral point. Item 6. She penned it in without hesitation and a wave of calmness washed over her. If Sophie was going to watch her go down this route, then this would be Isobel’s consolation prize. The best she could shoot for. The second summit. This would be what she wouldn’t leave this shiny, clean, brochure-ready town without having first crossed off her list.

      She clamped her pen between her fingers.

      Base СКАЧАТЬ