The Old House on the Corner Read Free Page A

Where have you been all this time?’ he enquired in his booming voice. He was a big man, six feet tall, and heavily overweight. He was fifty-two and his sandy hair was rapidly receding, exposing more and more of his red, shiny scalp. Despite these signs of ageing, women continued to find him attractive, mainly due to his brash, outgoing personality and the fact that he flattered them mercilessly.
    ‘I’ve just delivered the invitations to the barbecue,’ Rachel said meekly, knowing he would disapprove.
    ‘And woken everyone up in the process,’ he sneered.
    ‘I was very careful not to make a noise, Frank,’ she stammered. ‘I slid the cards through the letterboxes as quietly as I could.’ He was only being awkward. Normally, he loved entertaining.
    ‘It took you long enough. It was barely daylight when I heard you leave.’ He grinned, but it wasn’t a very nice grin. ‘You woke
me
up.’ Everything he said held an accusation or criticism of something she had, or hadn’t, done, making her feel that she would never get anything right.
    ‘I’m sorry, Frank. The reason I was so long is I’ve been talking to Victoria Macara in the old cottage. She’s ever such a nice girl, old-fashioned. She works with computers, like Gareth next door; a web designer, I think she said.’
    ‘An old-fashioned web designer?’ Frank guffawed. ‘Bit of a misnomer if you ask me.’
    ‘Well, it’s true,’ Rachel said doggedly. ‘Anyway, she thinks the barbecue is a brilliant idea.’
    ‘I’m glad someone does.’
    Rachel sighed and glanced around the dazzling white kitchen with its gleaming surfaces, matching cupboards and stainless-steel sink. It looked very clinical, like an operating theatre. ‘Later, when we go to the supermarket,’ she said, ‘I’ll get some plants for the window sill.’ She wouldn’t tell Frank she wanted her smart new kitchen to look a bit more like Victoria Macara’s time warp, he’d only laugh.
    The sound of the doorbell took them both by surprise. Rachel went to answer it and found a tiny girl outside wearing only a grubby vest and knickers. She carried a teddy bear close to her chest. It was Sarah Rees-James’s eldest child, Tiffany, who was four, and as heartbreakingly pretty as her mother.
    ‘Good morning,’ Rachel said brightly.
    ‘Mummy’s dead,’ Tiffany announced in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I can’t wake her. I want a glass of milk and there’s none in the fridge.’
    ‘Oh, my God!’ Rachel’s hand went to her throat. ‘Did you hear that, Frank? I’m going over there.’
    ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Frank replied tersely, ‘as soon as I’m dressed.’
    ‘What about my milk?’ Tiffany wailed when Rachel raced down the path and across the lawn to number one where the front door was wide open and the house looked as if a hurricane had swept through it, although it had been the same when Rachel had glimpsed inside the other day. There were dozens of cardboard boxes and plastic bags in the hall and living room waiting to be emptied. She ran upstairs, doing her best to avoid the clothes and toys left dangerously on each stair, into thefront bedroom, where Sarah lay, face down in a froth of frilly bedclothes, wearing a dirty T-shirt, and apparently dead to the world.
    Rachel shook the inert woman vigorously and after a while a groan emerged. ‘You’re alive!’ she gasped, sinking thankfully onto the edge of the bed.
    Sarah groaned again, turned over, and screamed when she saw Rachel, whom she hardly knew, sitting on her bed. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she demanded shakily.
    ‘Tiffany said you were dead. She gave us a dreadful fright.’
    ‘I was asleep,’ Sarah said in a croaky voice, ‘fast asleep, having a lovely dream. I didn’t drop off until about three o’clock. Alastair’s teething. I need some of that stuff you dab on gums, I can’t remember what it’s called, and baby Aspirin and Calpol and hundreds more nappies, but before I can buy