Read Online Asking For Trouble by Ann Granger - Free Book Online Page B

still looked as if a major riot had taken place in it. The walls were pitted and scarred; parts of the skirting had been ripped out. There was something very odd about the kitchen sink unit which was at an angle. Anything placed on the draining board simply slid down into the basin.
    Squib, looking more than usually perplexed, wandered around rattling loose fittings and opening cupboards. Eventually he said, sounding pleased, ‘Got it!’
    We waited apprehensively, expecting him to turn round, holding some furry creature he’d found lurking in the corner.
    Instead, empty-handed but triumphant, he declared, ‘Worked it out. It’s the wrong place. The council gave you the wrong key, Fran.’
    I told him I wished that could be true. Sadly, I thought it wasn’t. This, despite all appearances, was home sweet home.
    He shook his head. ‘Can’t be. Look, they condemned our house and it was better than this. They got it wrong, Fran.’
    He took some persuading and, finally accepting my argument, became offended and muttered, ‘Well, I’m not staying here.’
    I found that hurtful, considering I’d generously offered him the shelter of my roof. For Squib, of all people, to object . . . But he said he’d been offered a place in a hostel and he’d try it out. The police had told him he had to stay there so they could find him again. But if the hostel made a fuss about the dog, he’d leave.
    I suggested that if the hostel wouldn’t take the dog, Mad Edna might look after it for a while. The dog would probably like being in the churchyard and Edna, in her crazy way, could be relied upon for something like that.
    But Squib wouldn’t even think about being parted from the dog, even temporarily. Besides, he thought the cats were quite capable of ganging up on a dog. He’d seen them do it.
    I leaned over the balcony to watch him walk across the wasteland between the condemned blocks, his rucksack on his back and the dog trotting nicely by his heels.
    Euan, whom I liked more and more, had promised to try and rustle up some extra furniture. He had a friend in the Salvation Army. At least the hot water was working. It was ages since I’d lived in a place with hot water. While Nev dragged our existing furniture around trying to make the place look habitable, I spent an hour cleaning out the bathroom before I got in the tub and lay there in the steaming water, just looking up at the cracks in the ceiling and another hole in the plaster where the lavatory cistern was coming away.
    As it turned out, Nev only stayed twenty-four hours before his parents descended on the place. I wasn’t surprised to see them. I don’t think Nev was, either. He’d had the air of a condemned man about him since walking in the door.
    His father stood in the middle of the sitting room, heels together, bolt upright, hands clasped behind his back as if he were reviewing the troops. His mother looked at me just as my old headmistress did when I was being carpeted for something.
    I’ve mentioned my school before. My mother ran off and left my dad and me when I was seven, so I was brought up by Dad and my Hungarian Grandma Varady. I think my father felt he owed it to me somehow to give me every opportunity he could because my mum had left. I always told people she was dead, because we didn’t know where she was and for me, it was as if she was dead. So they scraped and saved, Dad and Grandma Varady, and paid for me to go to this school for young ladies.
    I was in and out of trouble from the first day I went there and by the time I got to be fifteen they told my father it really wasn’t worth keeping me on there. They meant they wanted me to go.
    They wrote a final report on me. It read, ‘Francesca is extremely bright but lacks application. She has consistently failed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by this school.’
    I have never been so ashamed of anything in my life as I was the day I watched my father read that report. He and Grandma