Joanne Sefton Book 2. Joanne Sefton

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       Chapter 5

       Karen

       2019

      They’d eaten the Crespelle con Pollo after all. She’d changed her clothes, cleared up the smashed mixing bowl, and mopped the gloopy batter from the floor tiles. There was plenty of flour and eggs in the house, so the whole episode only set her back twenty minutes or so. But the joy had gone out of it. The pancakes were greasy and slightly too thick. She burnt her hand being careless with the saucepan for the béchamel. Her mind was no longer on the food, but on the memory of the woman she’d once called her best friend.

      When Tash came home with her friend Claire, they’d gone straight to the den. Barely a word, and they refused her offer of hot drinks and home-made flapjack. Callie had trooped through the door a few minutes later, proclaiming herself so exhausted that she needed to lie down before ballet. With the chicken in the oven, and an uneasy restlessness still troubling her, Karen picked up her phone and scrolled through reports about the bombing. There were plenty of pictures, but no more of the woman who looked like Alex.

      Listlessly, she checked her email and immediately wished she hadn’t bothered. More troubling news from her solicitor. She closed the email down; she wasn’t in the mood to worry about money just now. In fact, all she wanted to do was tell someone what she’d seen. But who? Jonathan, said a voice in her head, and the familiar stab of pain twisted in her guts. Her husband had died in a boating accident in 2008. It did get easier, but it never got easy. She’d long got used to taking out the bins and making the big decisions about mortgages and schools on her own, but still the grief broke the surface from time to time, shattering her equilibrium, often when she least expected it.

      Don’t get maudlin, she told herself, sternly, and then another thought popped into her head. She could phone Andrew Dyer. With a renewed energy, she thumbed through her contacts.

      ‘Hello, Karen? What’s up?’

      ‘Hi, Andrew. I …’ How to say it? She hadn’t thought of this before picking up the phone. ‘Um. I wanted to talk about Alex, actually, if you’ve got a few minutes.’

      ‘Right.’

      Even from that one word, she could tell he was taken aback, but there was something else there too.

      ‘I’m actually wrapping up a meeting just now. Err … do you want to meet up, maybe go for dinner? We’ve not caught up in a while.’

      ‘Yes, okay. As long as Tash is in to keep an eye on Callie, I can do most nights. When were you thinking? Later this week works.’

      *

      He’d picked an upmarket Thai place, which boasted pale wood and expensive-looking art in place of the usual rhinestones and buddhas. The front of the restaurant was crowded and bustling, but a waitress had led her to one of the high-backed upholstered booths that lined the back wall. It had been a bit of a trek for Karen to come so far east, but it was near his offices. Andrew had set up an online furniture retail business years ago, and after steady initial growth it had exploded in the last couple of years. It seemed impolite to ask in anything but the vaguest terms but, given that the TV ad was now appearing all over the evening schedules, she could only assume that business was booming.

      She saw him come through the door and took a moment to observe him whilst he waited to speak to a member of staff. There was a trace of the old jazzman cool about him. He had remained slim and a charcoal grey suit fell sleekly from his elegant frame. The silver showing in his dark hair did nothing to detract from his svelte good looks, but where she remembered a tanned complexion his face now carried the pallor of someone who spent little time outdoors.

      When she’d seen enough, she waved him over, accepting his kiss on the cheek and his flustered apology for being five minutes late.

      ‘Will you have a drink?’ he said, pushing the wine list across the table. ‘I always go for lager with anything spicy, so don’t worry about me.’

      ‘Actually, I think I’ll join you. It’s been ages since I had a nice cold beer.’

      He ordered swiftly, checking quickly with her before telling the waitress they’d share a banquet for two.

      ‘Saves picking,’ he explained. ‘So, tell me what’s going on. Why on earth did you want to see me about Alex?’

      His bonhomie had evaporated. He didn’t add ‘this had better be good’ but that was the clear message she took from his tone and the flint-hard look in his eyes. Suddenly the drive and decisiveness that he must possess to have become so successful was laid out on show. There was something vulpine about him.

      She took a deep breath and pulled out her tablet. Wordlessly, she keyed in the passcode, tapped open the saved screenshot and slid it across the table to him.

      He gazed at it, seemingly impassive, for a few seconds that seemed like an eternity.

      ‘I think I need that beer.’

      ‘You see it too then?’

      By way of answer, his hand travelled up to his temples, mirroring the posture of the woman in the background of the picture. Karen didn’t need to see the tablet – the arch of the СКАЧАТЬ