What You Left Behind Read Free Page A

Stella said, pulling open another bag of chips and stuffing a handful into her mouth.

    “I CAN ’ T BELIEVE you didn’t bloody tell me,” Lorraine said, easing out of the sisterly embrace. “It’s pretty up there as family crises go.”
    They’d barely got out of the car before Jo had emerged from the front door, picking her way across the gravel with bare feet, cotton skirt swishing at her ankles. She was at her sister’s side, unperturbed by Stella’s indifference to their arrival, and had simply stated, calm as anything, “Malc’s buggered off.”
    “When?” Lorraine beeped the car locked, thrust a bag at Stella to carry, and walked across the drive with Jo.
    “Two months ago.”
    “Two months? And it didn’t occur to you to pick up the phone and tell me?”
    “I didn’t want to worry you. You’re always so busy.”
    Lorraine felt a surge of familiar guilt. Her work spilled into family time, into everything . It was the way it was, always had been. YetJo was making it sound as though the breakup was somehow her fault.
    “And I knew you were visiting soon anyway, so thought I’d tell you in person,” she added.
    They went inside the hallway of Glebe House. The cool, slightly musty air immediately transported Lorraine back to her childhood. The smell of the place never changed. She wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if her mother had come through from the kitchen to greet her, wiping flour-covered hands on a faded floral apron, her hair twisted behind her head in a tight gray knot, a handmade skirt over the dark tights she always wore, winter or summer.
    Lorraine shook the memory of her mother from her head. This was Jo’s house now, and she was glad.
    She gazed around and gave a little shiver, realizing she’d left her cardigan in the car. It was cooler inside. The thick-walled house remained a constant temperature all year round. Only once all three fires had been blazing for at least half a day during the winter months did the pervading chill lift, allowing them to stretch out of all but the essential layers of clothing.
    “Oh, come here,” Jo said as they dumped the bags on the uneven flagstones.
    It was then that they hugged properly. Lorraine felt her sister’s slightly leaner body pressed against hers, felt her ribs and slim waist beneath the cotton of her white blouse. She suddenly felt ashamed of the two rounds of bacon sandwiches and chips she’d consumed on the journey. But Jo’s bucolic lifestyle was more conducive to keeping healthy than her own frantic, grab-any-food-going, busy-working-mum routine as a detective inspector.
    “Are you OK for money?” It had to be asked. Jo hadn’t had a paying job in years.
    They were in the kitchen now. Nothing much had changed in here since her last visit either. In fact, you wouldn’t even know thatMalc had left, Lorraine thought, noticing a pair of man’s sunglasses on the dresser and a tweed cap hooked over the peg beside the back door.
    She’d never thought of Malc as a cap man. He worked in the City, commuting some days, but more often than not he’d be holed up in his Docklands studio flat, returning to Radcote at weekends.
    Lorraine would never have guessed he’d give up the country life so easily. But if she was honest, she thought Jo looked better for being single. Her skin seemed healthier and brighter, and her eyes had a mischievous sparkle to them.
    “Malc’s being generous. Giving me what I need.”
    Stella dragged a wooden chair from under the table, making a terrible noise on the quarry tiles. She slumped down, earphone wires winding out from within the unbrushed tangle of her hair. She rested her head on the table and made an overstated yawn.
    “Oh, poor little Stell,” Jo said. “Didn’t you get all your beauty sleep last night?” She rubbed her back playfully. She had always doted on her nieces.
    Stella made a grumbling sound from within the nest of her arms.
    “You can do me a favor if you like and wake