A Christmas Gift. Sue Moorcroft

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       Chapter One

      Georgine tied the laces of her running shoes, keeping one anxious eye on the patterned glass in her front door and the two manly shapes silhouetted by November sunlight.

      One of them knocked with measured movements. ‘Miss France? Miss France? Come to the door, please.’ Then he muttered something to his companion.

      The companion answered clearly, ‘Not giving up yet,’ and leant on the doorbell, raising his voice above the sound. ‘If you could just open the door, Miss France, we won’t keep you long.’

      Everything about the men and their insistence said ‘debt collectors’. Even though she knew they weren’t as bad as bailiffs, who could lawfully gain entry, they raised too many horrible memories for her to open the door, even just to say that Aidan no longer lived with her. She wouldn’t have expected to be believed, anyway.

      Heart tumbling, she fumbled herself into her running jacket and gloves, then checked her backpack for the Christmas student show production file. Yep, there was its pretty Christmassy cover, nestling on top of her distinctly less-Christmassy work clothes. Quietly, she swung the backpack onto her shoulders and let herself silently out of the back door, heaving a sigh of relief as she turned the key. The debt collectors would have to come up the footpath behind the terraced houses on Top Farm Road and climb her six-foot fence to see her here. She hoped they wouldn’t, because that was the route she was about to use to escape.

      Breath forming a white cloud, she loped across the lawn, every grass blade rimed with frost and squeaking beneath her feet. A run and jump onto a garden chair and her gloves found enough purchase on the top of the ice-beaded fence to allow her to swing a leg over the top, then she was up, over and jogging along the footpath.

      When she reached the point where Scott Road met Top Farm Road she lengthened her stride. She’d intended to drive to work until her unwanted callers had planted themselves between her and her elderly hatchback, but it was exhilarating to race through the zing of frost on the morning air. Any number of men could bang on her door all day long without bothering her.

      Her breath came easily as she found her rhythm, legs carrying her out of the Bankside estate, soon reaching the last houses of Middledip village. The pavement petered out and her comfortably worn running shoes began slapping the road. She tried to concentrate on thinking about props for the Christmas show, but every time a car whooshed past she hopped onto the verge and held her breath in case it was the debt collectors and they’d somehow guess she was the Miss France they’d been trying to speak to.

      It was a relief, when she’d covered a mile or so, to swing left beneath an iron arch bearing a white sign with black writing:

       ACTING INSTRUMENTAL

       Performing Arts College

      Sanctuary. A place where she could leave reality behind. Her running feet ate up the final few hundred yards as СКАЧАТЬ