drowned out her voice.
‘Dad, it isn’t funny. They’re back from Paris next week with Gemma and I need to get it fixed before Steve sees it. You know he’ll be as mad as hell about it.’
Will was still laughing when he ended the call. He was picturing the expression on the face of his ex-wife’s second husband when he saw what had happened to his precious new car. Steve Dodd, a.k.a. PC Plod because he used to be something big in the police force, had tried hard to be a model step-father to Suzie and Gemma, but he suspected that Steve was going to have his work cut out keeping his cool over this. Unless, of course, for Suzie’s sake, Will could get it sorted before anyone was the wiser.
Ten minutes later, when he was hunting through the Yellow Pages for a suitable body shop, his mobile chirruped with a text message from Sandra saying the coast wasn’t clear for the next few days. Sandra was a fellow dealer and had one of those open marriages that he thought only ever existed in people’s heads. Seemingly her husband would be around for the foreseeable, so any nocturnal visits from Will would be inappropriate. To be honest he was relieved. He was too tired for one of Sandra’s sexual marathons. She might not demand any form of commitment from him, but physically she was the most exhausting woman he’d ever been to bed with. There was no such thing as a quickie for her.
Putting his mobile aside, he returned his attention to more important matters: finding a body shop for PC Plod’s pranged car.
Chapter Seven
It was raining when Harriet arrived in Oxford. She let herself into her flat, went through to the kitchen, hung her keys tidily on the hook beside the breadbin and stood for a moment in the gloomy half-light, listening to the silence. The flat felt cold and empty, as if it had fallen asleep in her absence. Or ... as if it had died.
She briskly chased the thought away and went round switching on lamps, filling the kettle, and checking there was nothing amiss, that a pipe hadn’t sprung a leak or a window been jemmied open. Constant activity, she’d come to know, was the only answer.
She’d set off early that morning, trying to beat the worst of the traffic, but had still got caught in a two-mile tailback just north of Birmingham. Her father had offered to come with her, but knowing how tired her mother was, Harriet had suggested he ought to take the children out for the day to give Mum a break. It was obvious to them all that Eileen wasn’t getting enough rest, and if that went on for too long, Harriet knew her mother would be stuck in bed for days. It was such a frustration for Mum; just as soon as she started to feel well and her energy levels increased she invariably overdid it and was back where she’d started, feeling ill again. She needed to avoid emotional stress and too much physical work, but they were there for her every day of the week. There seemed no let-up. Harriet knew that her mother would carry on until she dropped. ‘Don’t worry about me, Harriet,’ Eileen had said to her only last night, ‘none of us has the luxury of going to pieces, least of all me. I wouldn’t do that to the children.’ It seemed wrong to Harriet that the focus was all on the children, but maybe that was because she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body.
The first room she tackled was the bedroom. It didn’t take her long. Most of her things from this room were already up in Cheshire; only a few winter clothes were left, which she had known she wouldn’t need straight away. What little furniture she had was being packed up this afternoon by a removal firm and put into storage - there was no space left in Mum and Dad’s garage.
From her bedroom she moved to the bathroom: the linen and towels from the airing cupboard took up no more than a couple of bin liners. The sitting room was next, and with the first shelf of her books packed, the buzzer for the intercom sounded.
Spencer.
She
‘Dad, it isn’t funny. They’re back from Paris next week with Gemma and I need to get it fixed before Steve sees it. You know he’ll be as mad as hell about it.’
Will was still laughing when he ended the call. He was picturing the expression on the face of his ex-wife’s second husband when he saw what had happened to his precious new car. Steve Dodd, a.k.a. PC Plod because he used to be something big in the police force, had tried hard to be a model step-father to Suzie and Gemma, but he suspected that Steve was going to have his work cut out keeping his cool over this. Unless, of course, for Suzie’s sake, Will could get it sorted before anyone was the wiser.
Ten minutes later, when he was hunting through the Yellow Pages for a suitable body shop, his mobile chirruped with a text message from Sandra saying the coast wasn’t clear for the next few days. Sandra was a fellow dealer and had one of those open marriages that he thought only ever existed in people’s heads. Seemingly her husband would be around for the foreseeable, so any nocturnal visits from Will would be inappropriate. To be honest he was relieved. He was too tired for one of Sandra’s sexual marathons. She might not demand any form of commitment from him, but physically she was the most exhausting woman he’d ever been to bed with. There was no such thing as a quickie for her.
Putting his mobile aside, he returned his attention to more important matters: finding a body shop for PC Plod’s pranged car.
Chapter Seven
It was raining when Harriet arrived in Oxford. She let herself into her flat, went through to the kitchen, hung her keys tidily on the hook beside the breadbin and stood for a moment in the gloomy half-light, listening to the silence. The flat felt cold and empty, as if it had fallen asleep in her absence. Or ... as if it had died.
She briskly chased the thought away and went round switching on lamps, filling the kettle, and checking there was nothing amiss, that a pipe hadn’t sprung a leak or a window been jemmied open. Constant activity, she’d come to know, was the only answer.
She’d set off early that morning, trying to beat the worst of the traffic, but had still got caught in a two-mile tailback just north of Birmingham. Her father had offered to come with her, but knowing how tired her mother was, Harriet had suggested he ought to take the children out for the day to give Mum a break. It was obvious to them all that Eileen wasn’t getting enough rest, and if that went on for too long, Harriet knew her mother would be stuck in bed for days. It was such a frustration for Mum; just as soon as she started to feel well and her energy levels increased she invariably overdid it and was back where she’d started, feeling ill again. She needed to avoid emotional stress and too much physical work, but they were there for her every day of the week. There seemed no let-up. Harriet knew that her mother would carry on until she dropped. ‘Don’t worry about me, Harriet,’ Eileen had said to her only last night, ‘none of us has the luxury of going to pieces, least of all me. I wouldn’t do that to the children.’ It seemed wrong to Harriet that the focus was all on the children, but maybe that was because she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body.
The first room she tackled was the bedroom. It didn’t take her long. Most of her things from this room were already up in Cheshire; only a few winter clothes were left, which she had known she wouldn’t need straight away. What little furniture she had was being packed up this afternoon by a removal firm and put into storage - there was no space left in Mum and Dad’s garage.
From her bedroom she moved to the bathroom: the linen and towels from the airing cupboard took up no more than a couple of bin liners. The sitting room was next, and with the first shelf of her books packed, the buzzer for the intercom sounded.
Spencer.
She
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