Piece of My Heart Read Free Page A

was for sissies and red wine tasted like vinegar. His mother preferred sweet sherry. Their loss was Banks’s gain, and while it lasted, he got to enjoy the high life of first-growth Bordeaux and Sauternes, white and red Burgundies from major growers, Chianti Classico, Barolo and Amarone. When it was gone, of course, he would be back to boxes of Simply Chilean and Big Aussie Red, but for the moment he was enjoying himself.
    Whenever he opened a bottle, though, he missed Roy, which was strange because they had never been close, and Banks felt he had only got to know his brother after his death. He would just have to learn to live with it. It was the same with the other things–the TV, stereo, car, music–they all made him think of the brother he had never really known.
    Part of the way through “Us and Them” he heard the doorbell ring. Annie, half past seven, right on time. He walked through and opened the front door, flinching at the gust of wind that almost blew her into his arms. She edged back, giggling, trying to hold down her hair as Banks pushed the door shut, but even in the short trip from her car to his front door it had become a tangled mess.
    “Quite the night out there,” Banks said. “I hope you didn’t have any problems getting here.”
    Annie smiled. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” She handed Banks a bottle of wine–Tesco’s Chilean Merlot, he noticed–and took out a hairbrush. As she attacked her hair, she wandered around the front room. “This is certainly different from what I expected,” she said. “It looks really cozy. I see you did go for the dark wood, after all.”
    The wood for the desk had been one of the things they had talked about, and Annie had advised the darker colour, as opposed to light pine. What had been Banks’s main living room was now a small study complete with bookcases, a reproduction Georgian writing table for the laptop computer under the window and a couple of comfortable brown leather armchairs arranged around the fire, perfect for reading. A door by the side of the fireplace led into the new entertainment room, which ran the length of the house. Annie walked up and down and admired it, though she did tell Banks she thought it was a bit of a bloke’s den.
    The TV hung on the wall at the front and the speakers were spread about in strategic positions around the deep plum sofa and armchairs. Storage racks on the side walls held CDs and DVDs, mostly Roy’s, apart from the few Banks had bought over the past couple of months. At the back, French windows led through to the new conservatory.
    They wandered into the kitchen, which had been completely remodelled. Banks had tried to make sure it was as close to the original as possible, with the pine cupboards, copper-bottomed pans on wall hooks and the breakfast nook, where bench and table matched the cupboards but that strange, benign presence he had felt there before had gone for good, or so it seemed. Now it was a fine kitchen, but only a kitchen. The builders had run the conservatory along the entire back of the house, and there was also a door leading to it from the kitchen.
    “Impressive,” Annie said. “All this and a Porsche parked outside, too. You’ll be pulling the birds like nobody’s business.”
    “Some hope,” said Banks. “I might even sell the Porsche.”
    “Why?”
    “It just feels so strange, having all Roy’s stuff. I mean, the TV and the movies and CDs are okay, I suppose, not quite as personal, but the car…I don’t know. Roy loved that car.”
    “Give it a chance. You might get to love it, too.”
    “I like it well enough. It’s just…oh, never mind.”
    “Mmm, it smells good in here. What’s for dinner?”
    “Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”
    Annie gave him a look.
    “Vegetarian lasagna,” he said. “Marks and Spencer’s best.”
    “That’ll do fine.”
    Banks threw a simple salad together with an oil and vinegar dressing while Annie sat on the bench and opened the