Read Online Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) by Issy Brooke - Free Book Online

can tell me
stuff.”
    Cath was a police officer who lived in Upper Glenfield, and
she had been friends with Penny since Penny had moved to the area. Their
friendship had occasionally been strained by Cath’s professional obligations,
and by Penny’s alarming tendency to poke her nose in where it was not wanted.
    But they remained close, and perhaps their relationship was
all the better for the storms that they had weathered.
    “It’s been awful,” Penny confessed. “And I accept that I am
to blame for the dodgy ladder. I’m not responsible for health and safety at the
Christmas Planning Committee any longer. I do feel incredibly guilty.”
    “Oh, mate, you shouldn’t. You didn’t force anyone up that
ladder … did you?”
    “No!” Penny half-shouted in shock.
    “Okay, okay, just checking. Look, me and you, we need a
good catch-up. I’m not officially on the case, so we can meet up and it will be
just like old times.”
    “That would be lovely.”
    “Great!” Cath said. “How about tomorrow night?”
    “What did you have in mind?” Penny asked, imagining a
girlie night out in Lincoln.
    “Er … well, it’s the Christmas play at my kids’ school. My
husband has to work, all of a sudden. I’ve got a spare ticket and I don’t think
I can cope with that many badly-played recorders on my own. Do you want to come
with me? And can you bring a hip-flask? Put something character-building in it,
like brandy.”
    Penny rolled her eyes, but she agreed.
     
     
     
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
    Penny had missed a carol concert practise because of
feeling ill, but they assured her that it was fine; various folks had been
struck by colds and flu. She worked out how to charge her phone, and entered
all the most important numbers first.
    She even experimented until she could use it to make an
outbound call. She remembered her first smartphone; it had seemed impossible to
use. Now, with each upgrade, she picked up the tips and tricks a little more
quickly.
    You can teach an old dog new tricks , she thought. You
just had to keep at it.
    On Friday she had a short session of text-message-tennis
with Drew, and discovered her phone could add a whole new set of symbols and
pictures to the messages. She annoyed him for a little while, and then let him
go back to work.
    He popped over after his afternoon at the emerging Forest
School, and gave her a pair of gloves with a matching hat. They appeared
hand-knitted, and had gone a little bobbly with age and wear, but they were a
nice colour of rusty brown and she wasn’t going to refuse. He left after a
short time, citing some research work he had to do about how to motivate
unwilling learners.
    She, too, had work to do. She was looking forward to seeing
Cath, and this motivated her to get on with fulfilling the latest website
orders. She had some more prints that had arrived which needed framing and
mounting.
    With Kali supervising, she pushed the murder out of her
mind, and got on with things.
     
    * * * *
     
    “Don’t laugh! Don’t laugh! Oh no, help, don’t let me laugh
either…” Cath whispered, her hand jammed over her mouth and muffling her
hiccupping giggles.
    Penny was crammed onto a small and uncomfortable chair
beside her, in the centre of a packed school hall. Up on stage, one of Penny’s
boys was dressed as a sheep but he was not sticking to the script. He had
either forgotten his lines, or he was wilfully misbehaving.
    “It’s not a star,” he was telling the confused shepherd
with the obligatory tea-towel head-dress. “I think it might be a plane.”
    “It is a star,” the shepherd informed him loftily.
“It is a star of wonder. And we will sing about it.”
    The sheep shrugged and then bent his head to pretend to eat
grass, ignoring everyone else around him.
    At the side of the stage, one of the teachers was frantically
waving her arms. The shepherd glanced at her, and then looked to the audience
and announced, “We are going this way,” and strode