Read Online Cherry Pie by Leigh Redhead - Free Book Online Page B

idea, but I asked if we could meet up anyway. He was a student at RMIT, doing the same course as Andi, and told me he could meet me there at one thirty. It was a date.
    Since I had a few hours to kill I pulled on my winter exercise outfit of black tights, faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt and grey hooded top, laced up my runners and jogged down the canal toward the beach. On the way I decided that I was absolutely not ringing Chloe to apologise after our first ever fight, she could call me, and I was going to spend the day finding out everything I could about a certain arrogant chef. I powered up the Elwood hill, calves aching, and checked out the bay as I leaned against the old wooden lookout, foot to butt, stretching out my quads. The water was choppy and steely blue and when I turned my head to look at the city skyline, I saw that the tops of the buildings were obscured by dark wispy clouds.
    I decided to stop for supplies on the way home, and by the time I ducked into the Ormond Road IGA, pellets of freezing rain were attacking my head.
    Bypassing the stuff I really wanted—crusty ciabatta bread, unsalted butter and frozen lasagne—I bought a cauliflower, homebrand tuna and a tub of cottage cheese. It was too cold for salad and I’d recently figured out I could mash the three ingredients together for a cheap, low fat, no carb dish that was just like tuna mornay. But not.
    I lived on Broadway, a wide, tree lined street with renovated bungalows on one side and a mixture of units, townhouses and thirties flats on the other. Rain pocked the surface of the canal as I crossed the bridge and a fishy smell rose from the water.
    There was no shelter under the bare branches and by the time I retrieved a couple of soggy bills from my letterbox, I was soaked and shivering. I’d just turned to walk up the path to the security entrance when I heard a voice behind me.
    ‘Simone.’
    I turned. Detective Senior Constable Alex Christakos stood on the footpath, rain pattering the fabric of his large, dark blue umbrella.
    Alex always looked good and that day was no exception.
    Thick dark hair swept back from his forehead, his eyes were their usual dark chocolate and his wide mouth was just plump enough to bite. A slight five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw even though he must have shaved only a few hours before. He wore a long charcoal wool coat, a well cut suit and navy tie with a subtle pattern of little squares.
    My hair was plastered to my scalp and water ran down my face.
    ‘Alex. Shit. Haven’t seen you for months.’
    ‘Been a while,’ he agreed.
    ‘You here about the court case?’ Alex and I were going to be prosecution witnesses in a major trial later in the year.
    ‘No.’
    ‘What then?’
    ‘I can’t make a social call?’
    ‘Ha. Suzy wouldn’t let you.’ I blinked through the rivulets of rainwater running into my eyes. ‘You are still engaged, aren’t you?’
    ‘Wedding’s in November. Why don’t we go inside. You look like a soggy Chihuahua.’
    Thanks. ‘I warn you. Place is a mess.’
    ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad.’
    ‘This place is a shitfight!’ Alex hung his coat on the back of the door and surveyed the room with his mouth turned down.
    ‘It’s not that bad.’
    I switched on the gas heater, dumped my shopping bags on the kitchen counter and ran back in to the combined lounge/dining room to gather up newspapers, copies of Australasian Investigator magazine, and bowls encrusted with cauliflower mash. Alex was about to sit in the overstuffed armchair I’d found in the street on hard rubbish day, looked behind him and plucked something from the cushion. A pair of my oldest, daggiest knickers dangled from his index finger.
    Faded black, elastic peeping through holes in the fabric, not entirely clean. I snatched them off him so fast I nearly dropped the bowls.
    ‘It’s cold. I get dressed in front of the heater.’
    ‘I can see that.’ With one shiny black lace-up he nudged the flannelette PJs