Read Online River Deep by Rowan Coleman - Free Book Online

Sarah knew that he was not the sort of bloke who’d want anything serious to do with a mother of two, but Sarah didn’t seem to care. In fact she seemed to actively prefer the men who wouldn’t hang around long. ‘Love, my love,’ Sarah often told Maggie over the years, ‘just gets in the way of the game plan. You’re much better off without it, you’ll see.’ Oh well, thought Maggie, I am seeing and I don’t like it.
    Maggie felt a tap on her shoulder and he was there again. Scruffy blond hair and flashy blue eyes that he probably thought got him in anywhere he wanted with anyone. Well, not with her.
    ‘No,’ Pete persisted. ‘I mean, I have actually seen you before, but without all the … stuff on your face.’
    He looked closely at her and for a moment she wondered if one of the false lashes that Sarah had remorselessly glued to each eyelid had begun to unstick and curl up like a dead caterpillar.
    ‘I know!’ Pete clicked his fingers. ‘I saw you in the street this morning. You were crying.’ His face softened and behind her Maggie could hear the barman ask her for some money as she carefully rearranged her face into a perfectly blank mask. ‘I wondered if I should go up to you or something,’ Pete blundered on, ‘but you seemed like you wanted to be alone. And also, in my experience, women don’t like strange men approaching them in the street.’ Maggie turned away from him. ‘Or in bars, for that matter …’ Pete kicked himself, belatedly realising his clumsiness.
    ‘I had something in my eye,’ Maggie said abruptly, handing over her note to the barman and taking two bottles and some change. Disconcerted, she made her way back through the crowd. Why didn’t she just say that it wasn’t her? Why did she openly admit to blubbing in the street? Why was it that after having her heart pulverised into mush, her dreams ripped almost to shreds and her hopes thoroughly dashed, she was also left with a compulsive desire to jump to the front of the queue whenever a chance of public humiliation was on the horizon? She hurried over to Sarah, sensing the crowd close over the strange man as she headed back to her table.
    ‘Christ, talk about a busman’s holiday,’ Maggie said to Sarah as she sat down. ‘That’s the trouble with working in the pub – it makes going out seem like work. Except here there are customers. Mum and Dad don’t really have customers.’
    Sarah didn’t answer, but instead waved a long bare arm at Maggie in agreement, which Maggie considered a privilege as her face was almost entirely submerged under the ravenous attentions of the rugby player.
    ‘Oh God, couldn’t you at least hold on until last orders?’ Maggie said bleakly. She wanted Sarah to reassure her about the crying in the street thing. She wanted her to say something down-to-earth and blunt like she usually did. Instead her hand offered Maggie a ‘What can I do?’ apology and Maggie settled back in her chair, nursing her bottle and regarding the ravenous crowd eyeing each other with a barely concealed ferocity. It hit her then, like a sharp slap: she had nothing to do with any of these people any more. No one here, except Sarah, knew who she was, or cared.
    Before Christian, before Maggie had allowed herself to believe it was safe to love him, she’d followed Sarah, hunting in bars just like this one, constantly looking, searching for that chance, for that certain blue eye, a particular kind of mouth, a sensitive nature, and she’d have dated whatever approximation presented itself. Until Christian, with his self-taught upper-class accent, his manners and his hang-ups. All these things made her love him, gradually more each day they spent together. Now here she was again, turned loose back into the field, and she couldn’t stand it – couldn’t stand the thought of going through it all again. She felt too tired and too in love, still, with Christian. She had to make her plan work, she had too. It was too