Read Online Night Music by Jojo Moyes - Free Book Online Page A

and the smell of bread and fruit that suffused the air.
    ‘Not what you expected, perhaps?’
    She didn’t know whether she was irritated by his enquiry, the assumption that he had known better, but there was something so gentle about him that she replied honestly. ‘It’s awful,’ she said miserably. ‘So awful. I can’t believe anyone was actually living there.’
    He nodded sympathetically. ‘Things always look worse on days like this. You might find it’s better in a good light. Most of us are. Here.’ He took her basket from her. ‘Sit down. I’ll get Henry to make you a cup of tea.’
    ‘Oh, no, thanks.’ Suddenly she was picturing newspaper headlines of vanished girls and wondering about his motives. She knew nothing about these people. She wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting food or drink from any London shopkeeper. ‘I’d – I’d better—’
    ‘Hello again.’ The other man, Henry, emerged from the back of the shop. ‘How are you getting on? Anything we can help with? We can order stuff in, you know, if you can’t see it on the shelves. Anything. Waders, waterproofs . . . I’ve heard you might need them where you are.’ He spoke kindly and lowered his voice, even though there were only the three of them in the shop. ‘We’ve got some really good mousetraps. They don’t actually kill the little beggars, just trap them. You can take them for a drive a few miles down the road and let them out into the wild.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Like a little touring holiday for them, I like to think. Saga for rodents.’
    Kitty looked up at the first man, who had started to fill her basket with candles and matches. She thought of the drive home down that track. She thought of her father’s hand reaching across to straighten the steering-wheel. Several times on the way up she’d thought she might burst into tears.
    ‘The first basket’s on us,’ said Henry. ‘A housewarming present, isn’t it, Asad? But if you accept it you agree to a legal obligation to come in and tell us everything at least three times a week . . .’ He winked.
    His friend, Asad, looked over his shoulder. ‘And listen to Henry when he tells you what passes for news around here.’
    ‘You’re so cruel.’
    Kitty sat down and raised a wan smile, possibly for the first time that day. ‘Actually, I’d love a cup of tea,’ she said.
    ‘It’s all very romantic,’ said Henry, as they were closing the shop. ‘Dead husband, poverty, violins . . . a bit more interesting than the last lot who moved into the village, the Allensons.’
    ‘Everyone needs loss adjusters, Henry.’
    ‘Oh, I know.’ Henry double-turned the key, then checked the handle to make sure he’d secured the door. ‘But you can’t help wondering what’ll happen to them down there. Especially with McCarthy’s nose so severely out of joint.’
    ‘You’re not suggesting . . .’
    ‘Oh, I don’t think he’d do anything, just that they might find themselves a bit isolated. It’s a big old house in the middle of nowhere.’
    ‘It makes me very glad for our cottage.’
    ‘And central heating.’
    ‘And you.’
    They peered up at the hilltop where a bowed line of scraggy pines trooped across the horizon, leading to the wood, into which Kitty had disappeared. Asad held out his arm, and Henry took it. As the two streetlamps of Little Barton flickered into life, they walked up the road to their home.
    At certain points of the year, when the deciduous trees had lost their leaves and only the pines remained clad, it was just possible to see the Spanish House from the McCarthys’. Matt nursed a tumbler of whisky and gazed at the light that shone from one of the upper windows.
    ‘Come to bed.’
    Laura admired her husband’s muscular back, the exquisite machinery of his shoulder muscles as he lifted the glass to his lips. Matt never aged; he still wore some of the clothes he had owned when they’d first got together. Occasionally, faced with