Read Online Unforgotten by Clare Francis - Free Book Online Page A

inherited just as surely as blue eyes or red hair? In which case Charlie would be battling the odds for the rest of his life, only ever a spliff away from falling over the next precipice.
    Above the din of the water he heard Lizzie’s voice and turned to see her blurred outline through the shower door. The familiar happiness bobbed up in him only to be overtaken by an acute, nameless anxiety, a sense of dangers padding up around them like wolves, and he came out hurriedly, with a clang of the door. Lizzie was holding up a towel to him.
    ‘Hello, you,’ she said.
    ‘Hello.’
    As he wrapped the towel round his waist she craned forward to kiss him without getting wet. He kissed her with equal care, then, forgetting caution, pulled her into a damp all-enveloping hug.
    She gave a small muffled laugh and tilted her head back to give him a questioning look. ‘All right?’
    ‘All right.’
    They embraced silently, swaying very slightly as if to some half-remembered dance music. When they finally drew apart he looked into her gentle honest eyes and followed the outline of her beautiful smile, and felt his anxiety slip away.
    ‘How did it go today?’ she asked.
    ‘Okay. Well, I think so. Desmond Riley seemed pleased anyway.’
    ‘And Tom?’
    ‘One of his fretful days.’
    ‘Well, he’ll always find something to fret about, won’t he?’ she said sympathetically. ‘No point in you fretting too.’
    ‘I can’t help it. I always think that if anything’s going to go wrong, it’ll go wrong for Tom.’
    ‘But you’ve done everything you can, darling. It’s out of your hands now.’
    This was another reason he loved her, because she brought him back to earth, she made him see things in proportion.
    ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Lots of happy customers?’
    She made a so-so movement of her head. ‘Never as many as I’d like.’ Kissing him lightly, she made for the door. ‘It’s pasta and salad, if that’s all right.’
    It was a family joke that he would eat anything put in front of him. ‘Pasta and salad sounds all right to me.’
    She called from the bedroom, ‘What happened to your suit?’
    ‘I got caught in the rain.’
    A short silence while she puzzled over this. Then: ‘How did you manage that?’
    ‘Being in the wrong place.’
    ‘An umbrella problem?’
    ‘A stupidity problem.’
    She laughed, then after a minute or two he heard the radio come on in the kitchen.
    It had so nearly not happened, their getting together. He could never remember quite how close it had been without a shiver of relief. He had been in his second year’s training in London when he’d come back to Bristol for a party. The party had been hot and noisy and overcrowded. The next morning, hoarse from the shouting and the smoke and too much rough wine, four of them had gone into the country for lunch. It was Andy, an old university friend of Hugh’s, who’d suggested the pub high on the Quantock Hills, and a friend of Andy’s called Sam who’d insisted on a full roast lunch in the dining room because he was bloody hungry, but it was Hugh alone, taking his first conscious decision of the day, who’d left the others to their food and gone outside for some air. The day was cold, with a fierce biting wind, the terrace deserted except for a hardy couple hunched over a table at the far end. Hugh went to the railing and, gazing out over the sweep of the flood plain to the hazy line of the coast, let the wind chill his skin and sharpen his brain. After a minute or so the couple got up from the table. Hugh had an impression of a striking-looking girl with a curtain of hair blowing across her face, and a man a generation older. Only when the man gave Hugh a smile of recognition and came forward to greet him did Hugh realise it was his old public law tutor, Professor Askew. As the professor asked after Hugh’s progress, Hugh glanced towards the waiting girl with her flying hair and dark eyes. Something made him keep looking – the