Read Online Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell - Free Book Online Page B

moment or two, trying to gauge its significance. It meant something to her, in some odd way, either from her past – had she seen it when she was in Soho with her mother all those years ago? – or in her future. She was sure she’d seen that door before, seen that oversized ‘9’, those obscured windows.
    She shook her head slightly and carried on her way. In the library she thumbed her way through twelve London telephone directories. In a small notepad she wrote down the numbers of seventeen people called C Pickle. She didn’t even bother with the C Joneses. Then she bought chocolate bars, tobacco and chewing gum in three separate shops, paid for with notes, breaking them up for change.
    When she got home, she came upon a man in logoed polo shirt and a matching fleece doing something to the telephone in the hallway.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’
    The man did not return her greeting, just looked up at her and then back again to the wires trailing from the innards of the phone unit.
    ‘Are you fixing it?’ she asked.
    ‘No,’ he said dully, ‘I’m vandalising it.’
    She peered at him through squinted eyes for a second, silently measuring his tone.
    ‘Ha ha,’ she said, ‘but seriously? Are you?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am attempting to fix your telephone. In fact,’ he plucked a red wire and then plucked a yellow wire and then leaned back and appraised the situation, ‘I’m pretty sure I have just fixed your telephone.’ He pulled a mobile phone from his bag and pressed in a number. The phone in the hallway rang. He smiled. Then he pulled a twenty-pence piece from his pocket, punched a number into the payphone and the phone in his other hand rang.
    ‘Sorted,’ he said. ‘All yours.’
    Betty stared at the phone in some surprise for a moment or two after the engineer had left. She had a phone. And seventeen phone calls to make. What a piece of luck.
    Betty dialled all seventeen numbers for C Pickle that morning. Of the thirteen people who answered not one had ever heard of Clara. The other four numbers were either disconnected or had not replied. But Betty had suspected as much. There was no way it could have been that easy. If it had been that easy, she mused, then Arlette would have tracked Clara Pickle down years ago. Betty appraised the five twenty-pence pieces left in her hand and called Bella.
    ‘Guess who’s calling you, live, from their Soho penthouse?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Berwick Street. Top floor. Just around the corner from the Raymond Revuebar.’
    ‘Seriously?’
    ‘Yes! I just moved in! Yesterday!’
    ‘Wow! I don’t believe it. Finally!’
    ‘I know, at the ripe old age of twenty-two.’
    ‘So, how is it?’
    ‘It’s … fine, it’s …’ Betty was about to say, ‘it’s amazing’ but as she started to form the words in her mouth she felt tears suddenly overwhelm her.
    ‘Oh, Betty, sweetheart, are you OK?’
    ‘Yes!’ said Betty, trying to pull the tears back down inside. ‘Yes! I’m fine. It’s just all a bit, you know … Arlette dying, the funeral, coming here, everything’s changed so quickly, after being the same for so long.’
    ‘Oh, Bets, of course you’re feeling weird. Are you alone?’
    ‘Yes, just little old me.’
    ‘No flatmate?’
    ‘No,’ she sighed, ‘no. It’s a studio.’
    ‘Wow,’ said Bella, ‘that must be costing you a fortune.’
    ‘Kind of,’ said Betty. ‘I guess. Arlette left me a thousand pounds. This place is four hundred a month. I’ve paid for two months up front …’
    ‘So you’ll have blown the lot on rent by the summer? And then what?’
    ‘Oh God, I don’t know. I’m going to get a job. And …’ she paused. She’d been about to say,
if I can’t find the woman in Arlette’s will I’ll be getting ten thousand pounds, so I don’t need to worry too much about money
, but kept the thought to herself. She
would
find the woman in the will. She was determined to. ‘I’ll get a job,’ she said.
    ‘No! Betty