Read Online The Liberation of Alice Love by Abby McDonald - Free Book Online Page B

it smash on the stone-paved floor and explode in a burst of fragments. “Put something on your feet,” Jasmine warned, reaching for a large bowl. “Your father got a nasty shard of glass in his foot last week.”
    “All right,” Alice answered faintly.
    “There’s some quinoa if you’re hungry!” Jasmine called helpfully, now picking through the rubble for shards of particular interest. “And I made a gluten-free pasta bake the other day.”
    “I think I’ll go into the village,” Alice decided, finding a lone apple in the corner of the fridge. “Is Dad in the garden?”
    “I think so.” Jasmine looked up with an absent frown. For a moment, she looked identical to Flora, with the same expression of pale confusion.
    “It’s OK,” Alice reassured her. “I’m sure I’ll find him somewhere out there.”
    ***
    After waiting twenty minutes for the hot water to get going, Alice showered and pulled on some jeans and a jumper, assembling a matching pair of wellies from the mud-splattered jumble in the porch. It was a clear, sunny day, and as she ventured out into the overgrown back garden, she had to admit that being stuck in the middle of the countryside had some advantages: the house backed onto open fields, and the patchwork of grass and crooked hedges stretched in front of her, wide and windswept.
    She headed toward the dilapidated shed, tucked away behind flower beds and an overgrown vegetable patch. “Hello?” Alice tapped at the peeling doorframe and peered in. As usual, her father was in his old rocking chair, surrounded by an avalanche of research notes and unfinished manuscripts. The sunlight dappled his thin face; gray hair stuck out in tufts as he pored over one of his red-and-black, spiral-bound notebooks.
    “Pumpkin!” He blinked in surprise from behind large, grandpa-style spectacles, as if he’d forgotten she was even visiting. “Everything all right?”
    “Good enough.” She slipped inside, careful not to disturb the mess. “Jasmine is tearing the place apart again.”
    Her father smiled slightly. “Ah, yes, she said something about a new mosaic for her studio…”
    “That would explain the china.” Alice looked around. The last time she’d been down, the room had been full of Revolutionary War paraphernalia, but now the muskets were being edged out by new curiosities. Small, model hot-air balloons spilled from the narrow window ledge, and blueprints trailed over his wide wooden desk. “Starting a new project?” she asked. Now that Alice thought about it, her father was looking different: his threadbare jumper had been replaced with a shirt and blue scarf, tied at his neck like a cravat, and there was a sense of energy and purpose about him that always meant he’d found some new fascination.
    “Maybe, maybe…early days yet.” He tapped one finger to his lips and winked.
    She smiled. “I’m just going into the village to stock up. Did you want anything?”
    “Hmm…” He paused. “Maybe some twine, and peppermint creams?”
    Alice raised her eyebrows.
    “The Montgolfiers were big believers in peppermint creams.” Her father nodded. “Look out for the good sort, would you? They should have some at Bishops.”
    “Peppermints and twine, coming up.”
    ***
    Alice decided to walk the half-mile into the village, and set out along the winding country lane with one of Jasmine’s tie-dyed cloth bags over her shoulder and a long list in her pocket. She was relieved the revolutionary period was over; for months, she’d been half expecting a call from Jasmine to say he’d accidentally shot himself in the leg with one of those antique muskets. Not that hot-air balloons were much better. God knew what damage he could do if he took it on himself to actually build one…
    Her father had always been an eccentric. The question “And what do your parents do?” would bring a different answer every year. He wasn’t an academic, or a writer, or anything so easily defined. No—Alice