Runaway Wife by Rowan Coleman Page A

like?” Jenny muttered, shaking her head and returning to the kitchen, with Maddie trotting behind.
    “So was everything OK?” Rose called after them, pausing by the living room, where the door of the glass cabinet that encompassed the doll’s house was still open, as was the front of the house itself. Tiny lights twinkled, and Maddie had taken great care arranging tiny people around a dining room table laden with pretend food.
    “Fine,” Jenny said, as Rose joined them in the busy kitchen. “Speaks as she finds, your Maddie. I like that in a person.”
    “Yes, she can be rather candid,” Rose said, thinking ofMaddie’s innate ability to rub people the wrong way in seconds, never shying away from pointing out that they were fat or short, or badly dressed in her opinion. It had been funny when she was two and three and four, but now that she was seven people were a little less forgiving.
    “Was it amazing playing with the doll’s house?” Rose asked Maddie, squeezing the little girl’s shoulders as she stood on a stool, crumbling butter and flour together. Maddie shrugged her touch off, just as she usually did.
    “It was,” Maddie said. “They are having dinner now, and then later they are going to watch TV, although there isn’t a TV, but Jenny says Brian will make one when he gets in.”
    “Oh, well, I’m sure there’s no need to bother him . . .”
    “He’ll make one,” Jenny assured her. “Thirty years of marriage, he’s learnt what’s good for him.”
    “And you didn’t miss me?” Rose said. “Or get worried?”
    “No,” Maddie said, completely blasé. “I don’t worry when things are interesting, and things were very interesting. I like Jenny, she talks a lot and is quite bossy, but she is mainly nice. I told her all about Daddy.”
    “Did you?” Rose said uncertainly.
    “Speaks as she finds,” Jenny repeated, raising a brow as she browned what Rose assumed were cubes of beef in a pan. Just what had Maddie told her? Had she said anything about those last few minutes at home before she’d been forced to leave? Rose didn’t think so. The things that Maddie found the most distressing were also the things she studiously ignored, determined to act as if they didn’t exist. And if Jenny knew, then there would be no way she’d be able to refrain from letting Rose know.
    “So how did you get on with my Ted?” Jenny asked.
    “He’s very . . . boisterous,” Rose said, not sure how to describe her first encounter with Ted.
    “He’s a waste of space, that’s what he is,” Jenny said fondly, rolling her eyes at Maddie. “How he’s got to his age without getting a proper job and a proper girlfriend, I’ll never know. He’s too good-looking, that’s his trouble. My oldest, he looks like his dad, so there was never going to be a problem there. And Haleigh, well, she’s a right looker, the spit of me, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders, like her mother. The trouble with Ted is he’s a dreamer, a romantic, always waiting for the love of his life to walk through the door. He pretends he’s all bluster and front, but really he’s a sensitive soul, my Ted, even if he does have too much of a nice time, working in that pub, messing around with his so-called band.”
    “What’s a right looker?” Maddie asked her.
    “Someone who’s pretty, like you,” Jenny said, flicking a smudge of flour onto the end of Maddie’s nose, which the child vigorously wiped off at once.
    “I don’t think that you are a right—”
    “He really is very handsome,” Rose said, preventing Maddie from speaking in the nick of time, even if sounding somewhat inappropriately overenthused about Jenny’s son.
    “Well, you wouldn’t be the first married woman he’s had dealings with.” Jenny pursed her lips, more than a hint of pride mixed in with the disapproval. “My Brian had to stand between Ted and Ian Wilkins and his shotgun for fifteen minutes, talking him down from castrating