Read Online Cradle to Grave by Aline Templeton - Free Book Online Page B

to me? She couldn’t have gone to the big house, where another mouth to feed wouldn’t even be noticed – oh, no! Stumbles in here in the middle of the night, so there’s no way—’
    Maidie cut across him, horrified by his attitude. ‘Apart from anything else, she’s well worth her keep for the help she’s giving me with Calum.’
    The whisky was starting to take effect. ‘What’re you needing help with Calum for?’ he said belligerently. ‘Should be able to take care of your own child.’
    Today, for the first time, Maidie had told her mother-in-law what she thought of her, and it had been a heady, liberating experience. Instead of meekly backing off, as she would normally have done, she said, ‘If it was just Calum, aye, I could. But your mother deliberately makes work for me and I’m getting fed up of it. She’s perfectly fit to live on her own – she’s not seventy yet, for heaven’s sake, and she doesn’t need waiting on hand and foot, like she expects here. Having help from Beth’ll stop me telling her she can leave right now and take her money with her.’
    Alick blinked at her in owlish astonishment. He’d never known Maidie answer back before.
    And she didn’t wait for his response. ‘What’s worrying me is how on earth we’re to break it to Beth.’
    Alick drained the tumbler and got up, a little unsteadily. ‘That’s your problem. I’m away to have a bath and get the smell of death off my hands.’ He topped up his glass and went to the door.
    ‘She was so sure her partner wasn’t there,’ Maidie said, almost to herself. ‘She wasn’t worried at all.’
    Alick swung round. ‘Aye, and that’s a funny thing, if you ask me. People that go out sometimes come back unexpectedly.’ He paused, and his eyes darkened as if he was reliving a bad experience. ‘And he did. Poor bugger.’
     
    Beth was tired of bloody walking. She’d walked more recently than she had done in the whole of the rest of her life put together. If you could bank exercise, the last month would mean she could go back to London and never take another step that wasn’t on concrete. Back to London – if only!
    London. Beth had lived there all her life until— Well, afterwards she hadn’t. She’d been too scared to stay, but with what she knew now, she’d have been better to try to lose herself among the millions of people who lived where nature came in neat little packets called parks. Nature there knew its place; it didn’t threaten you, like it did here.
    She was on a little track now, skirting a sort of thicket of scrubby bushes, dripping dankly. She didn’t know where it was leading, but it was off the road, where she might meet people. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out, either. She wasn’t wearing a watch, and time had gone weird since yesterday. Then again, in her world, things had been going weird for a long, long time.
    Beth had hated moving house. At first it had been a relief just to settle at all, here in the odd, dark little cottage that had been Granny Kenna’s, even though it meant putting her head in the crocodile’s mouth. She’d been prepared to take that risk; it was better than going on looking over her shoulder, feeling her heart pound at a footstep behind her on a quiet street for the rest of her life. And she’d believed Lee Morrissey totally and utterly—
    And how clever had that been? What had Beth done with her brain the day she’d met him in the little corner shop?
    She’d been afraid to go out these last few weeks. Women had lined up to scream and spit as she was driven away from the court, and the press had orchestrated a frenzy of anger.
    The little ground-floor flat that had been home to her until her mother died, and after that somewhere to stay, was up for sale. She was exhausted and terrified by the constant ringing of the doorbell and banging on the windows and the assault of a battery of flashlights if she stepped outside. Even once she wasn’t a story any