Read Online Bad Blood by Aline Templeton - Free Book Online
Authors: Aline Templeton
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Contemporary Fiction, Police Procedurals
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Hearing his voice had been the sort of fix for her addiction that did no more than keep it alive. She knew she should go cold turkey, yet she also knew the flimsiest excuse to call him would prompt a craving she couldn’t resist, whatever it might cost her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Marjory Fleming set her mobile into the hands-free slot before she set off home to Mains of Craigie. She didn’t always remember but today she was anticipating a phone call – had hoped for it sooner, in fact, and she kept glancing at the phone as she drove as if by the power of the human will she could not only force it to ring but make it say what she wanted to hear when it did.
When at last it obliged, she answered it instantly. ‘Cammie?’
‘They’ve picked me. I’m to be in the team on Saturday, Mum.’ His voice, securely bass for years now, was so high with excitement that he sounded suddenly thirteen again.
‘Oh darling, that’s fantastic! Well done! What—’
‘Can’t talk now. Speak later.’
As she drove on, Marjory couldn’t stop beaming. The Scotland under-20 team! Playing for his country had been Cameron’s dream since he learnt there was a game called rugby and a national side, aged about three; the baby present his father had brought Cammie in the maternity ward had been a miniature rugby ball, not a teddy.Bill would be – she didn’t want to say ‘over the moon’, but somehow it was the only phrase that covered it. He’d been no mean player in his own day and she knew that it had cost him to turn his back on the game for the sake of the farm and the family, but then Bill would never have sacrificed anyone else for his own ambitions. She wished she could say the same for herself – though not so much, she had to admit, that she’d do something about it.
She knew Bill would be putting a bottle of champagne in the fridge even now, but Cammie was staying with friends in Edinburgh tonight so perhaps it had better wait till he got back. There was something faintly sad about a celebration that involved only two people and more than a couple of glasses of champagne always gave Bill indigestion anyway.
No doubt Cammie would be away a lot more now. Hoping for just this, he’d taken a gap year doing farm work before going to agricultural college. Mercifully the veggie phase had passed as the charms of Zoë of the soft brown eyes had faded.
The Darby-and-Joan life lay just ahead of them. Catriona was back in Glasgow studying social work, her planned career as a vet abandoned. Cat seemed very busy with her life up there and with the evening bar job she’d taken on to help pay the bills; they didn’t see much of her.
Marjory tried not to see it as an estrangement, though her conversation with Cat about her choice of a new career had given her the sinking feeling that at least part of its attraction was to be able to take the side of criminal clients against the wicked police. Bill with his usual calm good sense had told her she was being paranoid: she might be, but it didn’t mean her daughter wasn’t gunning for her.
She wasn’t going to let thoughts like that cloud her happiness for Cammie today. Her eyes misted a little as she thought how quickly the funny, affectionate little boy had become this six foot five giant, broad with it, who towered over his tall mother and made even Bill, a very respectable six foot one, look puny.
That was Mains of Craigie now. As she went up the drive she could see that Bill had draped the blue-and-white saltire usually pinned to Cammie’s wall out of his bedroom window, and as she got out of the car sheep scattered in the near field as ‘Flower of Scotland’ blasted out at ear-splitting level.
She’d chosen the Glendale bed and breakfast in Kirkluce for its cheapness not its decor but even so the dingy wallpaper and the random vases of dusty plastic flowers had a lowering effect on Marnie Bruce when she returned chilled from sitting in a bus in her damp clothes. Passing cars
CHAPTER FOUR
Marjory Fleming set her mobile into the hands-free slot before she set off home to Mains of Craigie. She didn’t always remember but today she was anticipating a phone call – had hoped for it sooner, in fact, and she kept glancing at the phone as she drove as if by the power of the human will she could not only force it to ring but make it say what she wanted to hear when it did.
When at last it obliged, she answered it instantly. ‘Cammie?’
‘They’ve picked me. I’m to be in the team on Saturday, Mum.’ His voice, securely bass for years now, was so high with excitement that he sounded suddenly thirteen again.
‘Oh darling, that’s fantastic! Well done! What—’
‘Can’t talk now. Speak later.’
As she drove on, Marjory couldn’t stop beaming. The Scotland under-20 team! Playing for his country had been Cameron’s dream since he learnt there was a game called rugby and a national side, aged about three; the baby present his father had brought Cammie in the maternity ward had been a miniature rugby ball, not a teddy.Bill would be – she didn’t want to say ‘over the moon’, but somehow it was the only phrase that covered it. He’d been no mean player in his own day and she knew that it had cost him to turn his back on the game for the sake of the farm and the family, but then Bill would never have sacrificed anyone else for his own ambitions. She wished she could say the same for herself – though not so much, she had to admit, that she’d do something about it.
She knew Bill would be putting a bottle of champagne in the fridge even now, but Cammie was staying with friends in Edinburgh tonight so perhaps it had better wait till he got back. There was something faintly sad about a celebration that involved only two people and more than a couple of glasses of champagne always gave Bill indigestion anyway.
No doubt Cammie would be away a lot more now. Hoping for just this, he’d taken a gap year doing farm work before going to agricultural college. Mercifully the veggie phase had passed as the charms of Zoë of the soft brown eyes had faded.
The Darby-and-Joan life lay just ahead of them. Catriona was back in Glasgow studying social work, her planned career as a vet abandoned. Cat seemed very busy with her life up there and with the evening bar job she’d taken on to help pay the bills; they didn’t see much of her.
Marjory tried not to see it as an estrangement, though her conversation with Cat about her choice of a new career had given her the sinking feeling that at least part of its attraction was to be able to take the side of criminal clients against the wicked police. Bill with his usual calm good sense had told her she was being paranoid: she might be, but it didn’t mean her daughter wasn’t gunning for her.
She wasn’t going to let thoughts like that cloud her happiness for Cammie today. Her eyes misted a little as she thought how quickly the funny, affectionate little boy had become this six foot five giant, broad with it, who towered over his tall mother and made even Bill, a very respectable six foot one, look puny.
That was Mains of Craigie now. As she went up the drive she could see that Bill had draped the blue-and-white saltire usually pinned to Cammie’s wall out of his bedroom window, and as she got out of the car sheep scattered in the near field as ‘Flower of Scotland’ blasted out at ear-splitting level.
She’d chosen the Glendale bed and breakfast in Kirkluce for its cheapness not its decor but even so the dingy wallpaper and the random vases of dusty plastic flowers had a lowering effect on Marnie Bruce when she returned chilled from sitting in a bus in her damp clothes. Passing cars
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