Read Online The Accidental Family by Rowan Coleman - Free Book Online Page B

if this woman was about Louis’s age, some old school friend or something, then there was no way she could look the same as she had at sixteen. Not unless she’d had wrinkles and dark roots back then too.
    “Daddy, who is this lady and what does she want with us?” Bella returned her attention to the stranger. “And why is she staring at us as if we are animals in a zoo?”
    Sophie beamed at her; she could always rely on Bella to ask the pertinent questions.
    “This,” Louis said, finally tearing his eyes off Wendy’s face, “is my old friend Wendy Churchill. We used to go to school together.”
    “And we were a little bit more than friends,” Wendy said, smiling coyly, which made Sophie want to slap Wendy Churchill quite hard.
    “Oh well,” Louis chuckled, and Sophie was dismayed to see him flush. “You never wrote, you never called. You broke my heart, Wendy Churchill!”
    “You never tried to find me,” Wendy added, her tone a touch more serious than Louis’s.
    “Hey, you were the chucker, I was the chuckee,” Louis said. “And that reminds me, this is my fiancée, Sophie Mills.”
    Finally Wendy removed her gaze from Louis’s face and looked at Sophie.
    “Wow, you don’t let the grass grow, do you? I thought you said your wife only just died.” Sophie found it rather hard to maintain her fake smile.
    Louis laughed awkwardly. “Carrie and I had been apart for three years when she died,” he explained, his smile faltering. “Sophie was there for me and the children when it happened. She saved all of us.”
    “I, oh, see, ” Wendy said, nodding, as if the mysteries of the universe had suddenly all become clear.
    “Well anyway, Wendy.” Louis’s smile vanished. “It was nice to see you again. Take care of yourself.”
    “I’ve always had to.” Her reply implied something that Sophie could not fathom, except that it was barbed with just a hint of resentment. “Good-bye, Louis.”
    She stood there looking at Louis for a second longer than Sophie deemed appropriate and then made her way out through the crowds.
    “What a charming lady,” Sophie said, exchanging a knowing look with Bella.
    “Who was that funny lady?” Izzy asked, emerging from her food and slinging an arm around Sophie’s neck to kiss her, leaving a tomato-ketchup kiss on her cheek.
    “She was a rude lady,” Bella said. “I didn’t like her.”
    “She’s just someone I used to know,” Louis said as he watched her go, but there was a look in his eyes that belied his casual dismissal of her, a look that reminded Sophie of the fact that she knew hardly anything about Louis’s life before Carrie. He never talked about it. There were years, decades, of his life that were a mystery to her.
    “When I knew her, she never used to be quite that intense.”Louis leaned over and wiped away the smear of ketchup from Sophie’s cheek with the ball of his thumb. “I’m sorry, Soph. She was pretty rude to you, ignoring you like that.”
    “Was she? I didn’t notice,” Sophie lied, more interested in finding out about this relic from Louis’s past. “Childhood sweetheart, was she? She’s probably been pining for you all these years and is put out that you’re with me. Pure jealousy, and who can blame her, hey, bridesmaids?”
    As Sophie expected, the word sent the girls into paroxysms of hysteria and the Wendy interlude was soon forgotten as Louis had to catch Izzy as she raced around the pub in excitement, her loo paper bridal train fluttering behind her.
    That afternoon back at Louis’s house, the electric fire on and the lights blazing against the driving rain that pelted the house’s whitewashed pebbled exterior, Sophie sat near her cat Artemis and waited for Louis to come back from the kitchen with a cup of tea for her. She would have liked to sit next to Artemis, but she’d learned, after many claw-related injuries, that you never approached the cat, you waited for the cat to approach you, and this afternoon