The Bad Mother: The addictive, gripping thriller that will make you question everything. Amanda Brooke

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ on the winter-bare fruit shrubs she had failed to nurture during the summer, which were now being bullied by gale-force winds.

      West Kirby was on the exposed western tip of the Wirral, a peninsula pinched between the fingers of the Dee and Mersey estuaries, and there was little to stop the storm sweeping in from the Irish Sea. Lucy felt its force as a sheet of rain hit the patio doors, causing her to slump down on to a chair at the dining table.

      ‘I take it you slept in this morning?’ Adam asked with a yawn. He was taking Lucy’s snappishness in his stride and his patience was irritating.

      ‘Only ’til about eight,’ she said. It had been nearer nine, which still wasn’t bad for someone who had refused to rise before midday in her misspent youth.

      ‘I wish I could have stayed there with you, but then again, your fidgeting is getting worse. I hardly slept a wink last night.’

      ‘Is that why you got up so early?’ she asked as she trailed a finger across the surface of the table, leaving a faint mark in a layer of fine dust that had no right to be there.

      Lucy hated the monotony of housework. She and Adam shared their duties but he was a little more particular and she felt guilty whenever he came home after a long day and picked up the chores she never seemed able to finish. She didn’t remember housework being this hard when she lived with her mum, but that was probably because her mum had done most of it.

      Adam groaned and she imagined him stretching his spine. ‘I needed to make an early start anyway. I thought I’d cracked it with this new user interface but unless there’s some miracle breakthrough in the next few hours, I’ll have to go to Manchester tomorrow to work on site,’ he said, his tone giving away his disappointment and his lethargy. He worked for a software company thirty miles away in Daresbury and while he loved his job when it was going right, dealing with clients and their ever-changing needs was the bane of his life.

      ‘I suppose I shouldn’t keep you then,’ she said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. She wasn’t ready to make another attack on her painting and she sensed Adam was in no rush to get back to his modules and macros either.

      ‘Are you going to have another stab at Ralph?’

      That’s what I was doing when you phoned,’ Lucy said as she pulled out a second chair to rest her feet. Arching her back, she unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her white lace briefs and the gentle rise of her stomach punctuated by a belly button that had recently popped out. ‘I’ve spent an hour getting nowhere when I would have been better off catching up on housework.’

      ‘But I thought you’d just had breakfast?’

      Lucy went to open her mouth to correct him but she knew why he was confused. She had lied about how long she had left the gas on. ‘What is this, Adam? Since when did I need to report all my movements to you?’ she asked, knowing the answer was an obvious one.

      ‘How long did you leave the gas burning, Lucy?’ Adam asked, his gentle tone fuelling her anger.

      As she hauled her legs off the chair to straighten up, Lucy’s feet thumped hard enough against the porcelain tiles to sting her heels. ‘I don’t know, an hour or two. Does it matter? Nothing happened.’

      ‘Thank goodness it didn’t, but why bother lying about it? If you could stop getting so wound up over these things, you’d relax more and maybe then you’d make fewer mistakes.’

      ‘I am relaxed!’ Lucy said as her finger drew sharp lines through the dust on the table to form two words in capital letters. There were a lot of ‘F’s.

      When Adam didn’t respond, it was as if he could read what his wife had written. She hung her head in her hands and as she leant over the table, she felt a strange fluttering in her stomach – except it wasn’t in her stomach, but a spot lower down. It was the first time she had felt her baby move and for all Lucy knew, her daughter’s movements were signs of distress caused by her mother’s roiling emotions.

      She wanted desperately to say something to Adam. Only the night before, he had splayed his hand across her stomach, impatient to feel a part of what had been exclusively her experiences of pregnancy so far. They needed to share this special moment together, but now was not the right time.

      Taking a deep breath, Lucy reminded herself that none of this was Adam’s fault. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

      ‘It’s OK. Maybe I’m the one who needs to up my game. I could juggle my schedule and try to work from home more often.’

      ‘Except when you have to go to Manchester,’ she reminded him, proof that her short-term memory didn’t always misfire.

      ‘Isn’t it time you started to take things easy?’ he tried. ‘You could always stop taking commissions for a while. It’s not like you haven’t been slowing down already and I’m sure we could manage without your income.’

      ‘Painting isn’t simply a job, it’s my passion. I can’t not paint.’

      ‘Then paint for pleasure,’ Adam persisted as if he could solve her like one of his programs. ‘Let me worry about the bills. Please think about it, Lucy. Why don’t you go for a walk along the beach and clear your head?’

      Glancing towards the tall beech tree in their neighbour’s garden swaying from side to side, she said, ‘Have you seen the weather?’

      ‘Then go somewhere indoors, go shopping.’

      ‘Maybe,’ she said as a means to halt Adam’s attempts to fix her. He meant well but if he threw one more suggestion at her, she was going to explode.

      ‘And when you do go out,’ Adam said, his voice rising as he sensed he was getting through to her, ‘make sure you turn everything off and lock up.’

      Lucy’s lips cut a thin line across her face as she stared at the words written in the dust. She could feel them forming on her tongue and cut the call dead before they spilled out.

       3

      Lucy huddled against the corner of the large L-shaped sofa that took up most of the space in the living room. The black leather upholstery complemented the monotone colour scheme, as did the sixty-inch TV screen dominating one wall. With the exception of a couple of paintings Lucy had hung up to soften the sharp edges of Adam’s choice of décor, the entire house bore the hallmarks of a bachelor pad, although Lucy was grateful that no previous love had stamped her mark on the place before her.

      There had been only one significant other in Adam’s life prior to Lucy, but Rosie had never moved in, which had been a lucky escape by all accounts. She had been a work colleague and had used Adam to rise up the career ladder by taking credit for his work and apportioning blame to everyone else when she messed up. Something had gone disastrously wrong and Adam had been forced to move jobs, but he had put his past mistakes behind him and Lucy was determined not to be the next.

      Adam was different from the other men she had dated, and there had been quite a few. She had flitted from one casual affair to the next, avoiding commitment and responsibility as best she could. When Adam came along, the eight-year age difference had felt pronounced and she had been embarrassed by her immaturity. She had been a wild thing and he had tamed her, or so Adam told her. He was probably СКАЧАТЬ