A Place in the Country by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page B

needed help. Was James doing his duty? Did Issy need anything? Of course Caroline always said she was fine and refused any help. She had made her choice and must live with it.
    Now she looked unhappily at herself in the mirror. Her sweater was too snug; she’d bet she’d gained five pounds since she’d become a cook. She rinsed her face, dabbed in some perfume—Cartier’s So Pretty, a gift from the ex that she had not used in years—and put on a clean white shirt, and a pair of gold sandals (it was cold but she was still hot from cooking), ran a brush through her hair, fluffed up her bangs, cleaned her red glasses and put them back on. Oh, she’d forgotten lipstick. She smoothed on Revlon’s Just Enough Buff, then took a deep breath and went downstairs.
    â€œYou haven’t changed,” were Mark’s first words, when he saw her.

 
    chapter 11
    Still sitting on the couch upstairs, Issy lifted her eyes from the tweet she’d just gotten from Lysander, an older boy (seventeen for God’s sakes, and cute with it—and with whom she hoped to get a date) just in time to see her mom hurrying past the open door in a clean white shirt, hair combed and, Issy could swear, wearing lipstick.
    â€œSam?” Issy turned to look at her friend, thinking Sam had a perfect nose, small and straight with a short upper lip that made her mouth appear to smile all the time, and blue eyes with long dark lashes. How a blonde like Sam got dark lashes while she, the dark one, got pale, was something that bewildered Issy. Life, she had decided, long ago, simply was not fair.
    â€œWhat?” Sam’s gaze hovered between a dance program on the telly where a skimpily-dressed young woman was being twirled around by a man in tight black pants while the audience applauded and scores were tallied, and a text message from a boy who Sammy knew fancied her, though she did not fancy him. “Do you think she’s wearing Spanx under that dress?” she asked.
    Issy studied the woman. “I don’t see how she can. I mean she’s almost not wearing anything.”
    Sam twisted her blond pigtail, thoughtfully. “I wish I was her,” she said. “I’d like to be a dancer.”
    â€œYou’re too short,” Issy said, though of course she would never have hurt Sam’s feelings by telling her she was also too plump. Which was the truth. Sam was. A bit.
    â€œAnd you’re too tall,” Sam said. “Do you think Rob Maclean fancies me?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOh.”
    Issy frowned. “Sam? Something’s going on with my mom. She just dashed up here, then dashed back down again, all done up.”
    This time Sam turned to look at her. “You mean, like, in a dress and heels?”
    Issy hadn’t seen her mother in a dress and heels since Singapore. “No. But she’d changed her sweater and combed her hair, and put lipstick on.”
    Sammy laughed.
    â€œYou don’t get it!” Sam had not seen her point. “Mom was going downstairs to the pub with lipstick on and her hair combed. That means she was going to see a man. ”
    â€œWhat man ?” Sam had never seen Caroline with any man.
    â€œI think it might be my dad.”
    Shocked, Sam sat up. “Are you sure?”
    â€œWho else would she dash downstairs to see without even stopping to tell me?”
    She picked up Blind Brenda and buried her face in the cat’s scrappy fur. “I’m scared to go and look,” she mumbled. “Imagine, Sam, I’m scared in case it’s my own dad.”
    â€œI’ll go.” Sam got up, turned the TV volume down and tripped over the pizza box. “I remember what he looks like,” she added, because of course Issy had shown her photos of her good-looking father who Jesus called, when Sam wasn’t meant to hear, “a deadbeat dad.”
    Alone, Issy waited, anxiously stroking the cat for comfort. It