Read Online Liverpool Love Song by Anne Baker - Free Book Online

better job at that. It made him disheartened to see how preoccupied they were with each other. Their relationship had developed apace and it had put Chloe out of his reach. He felt she was lost to him. But would it last?
    Helen moved them all to the dining room and asked Rex to carve the leg of lamb. It was presented on an enormous platter surrounded with roast potatoes and thyme and parsley stuffing. It had a great bone sticking up, which made it look a more complicated job than last week’s beef had been.
    Rex hesitated as he approached the table. Chloe noticed and said brightly, ‘Adam’s good at carving. Would you rather he did it?’
    Rex capitulated and said yes. Adam took his place and with great confidence gave a theatrical display of clashing the carving knife against the steel to sharpen it. He then proceeded to carve the joint with professional ease and arrange the servings neatly on the plates. It made Rex feel thoroughly inadequate.
    It was a sunny afternoon, and when they’d eaten the apple pie and cream that followed, Helen took them all over to the summerhouse for a cup of coffee.
    ‘I thought it would look better than this inside,’ Marigold said. ‘Aren’t these your old garden chairs?’
    ‘Yes, I’d like to smarten it up, but how best to do it?’
    ‘It needs bright colours.’ It was Adam who held forth about a colour scheme of orange, yellow and brown for rugs and curtains.
    ‘Curtains?’ Marigold asked suspiciously. ‘Why on earth would you want curtains in a summerhouse?’
    On a hot day, you might be glad to draw them against the sun,’ Adam said. ‘And bright colours would bring it to life.’ He went on to recommend shops in Manchester where they stocked suitable furniture. ‘I’ll take you and Chloe and help you choose if you like,’ he offered.
    ‘Mum, that would be lovely,’ Chloe said. ‘The three of us could go one Saturday and have a day out.’
    More than anything else that drove home to Rex that Adam was indeed squeezing him out of the place he’d had in Chloe’s affections.
     
    A few weeks later, Rex found the summerhouse had been transformed. It now looked smart enough to provide photographs to grace the centre pages of a luxury magazine. Helen and Chloe said they were delighted with it.
    After that, when Rex was invited to take tea in the summerhouse, he’d say to Helen, ‘Gardening is dirty work. I don’t want my clothes to spoil your lovely cushions.’
    ‘You won’t hurt them,’ she’d say, but he’d insist on having a clean towel to spread over the seat of the large, well-padded cane chair before he sat down. The primary colours and the cube patterns reminded him of Adam. He didn’t care for them.
    Adam was coming to Liverpool even more often to take Chloe out, and Rex saw less and less of her. She told him Adam was great fun and that through the summer he’d taken her on trips to the beach at Southport and Morecambe, and he was planning to take her to the Peak District next month. Rex knew she was having a more exciting time than he could give her.
    Helen continued to confide her worries to him; they were working together in the garden one Saturday when she told him Chloe was going to Adam’s house almost every weekend and that she’d taken the train to Manchester again this morning.
    ‘Marigold is almost out of her mind. She’s convinced Chloe will make the same mistake she did.’
    ‘You must trust her,’ Rex said.
    Helen had gone indoors to make them some tea when she came tearing back across the lawn, clearly very upset.
    ‘Chloe’s just rung me. She says she’s staying the night with Adam and she won’t be home until tomorrow. I couldn’t make her see reason.’
    Rex knew this amounted to a crisis in the Redwood family. He threw his arms round her in a comforting hug.
    ‘The world has changed since we were young, Helen. The pill is changing everything. Young people can live like this now. It’s going to become normal