Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton Read Free Book Online Page B

over the painted white lines, delphinium blue sky above.
    ‘Gracie…’ she said, giving me a hug, a proper bear-hug kind, none of this air-kissing.
    ‘I’ve come to give Rowena a lift home,’ she said, beaming. ‘She texted me a little while ago, said the tubes were up the spout. So Chauffeur-Mum to the fore!’
    I told her that Rowena had gone to get the medals from school and that Addie was getting his cake; an M&S chocolate tray-bake we’d turned into a World War One trench scene.
    ‘Fantastic!’ she said, laughing.
    Maisie, my surprising kindred spirit. Our daughters, those chalk-and-cheese little girls, never became friends but Maisie and I did. We’d meet on our own and share small details of our children’s lives: Rowena’s tears when she didn’t make the netball team and Maisie offering Mr Cobin new team outfits or sex if he’d make Rowena wing attack – and having to explain the second offer was
a joke!
Rowena’s horror when her big teeth came through and demanding the dentist give her small ones again; exchanged like a gift with my dentist story of Jenny refusing to eat or smile when she got a brace until we found a make that was bright blue.
    And it was Maisie I turned to when I started my third miscarriage at Jenny’s seventh birthday party, when you were away filming.
    ‘Listen to me, kiddly-winks! Jenny’s mummy has to go and visit Father Christmas now – yes, it is three months early! – but he needs advance warning of REALLY GOOD children – and because you’ve all been so FANTASTIC this afternoon she wants to make sure you’ll all get an extra special present in your stocking
.’
    Aside to me. ‘Materialism and Father Christmas, usually works.
    ‘So it’ll be me now doing musical bumps, alright? Everyone ready?!’
    And it was alright. And nobody knew. And she kepttwenty children entertained while I went to hospital; had Jenny to stay that night.
    Three years later, she waited for those twelve weeks with me till Adam was safely inside and likely to go to term. Like our family, she understood how deeply precious Adam is to us; our hard-won baby.
    And now she’s sitting next to me, my old friend, crying. She cries all the time – ‘
Stupidly soppy!
’ she’d say at carol services – but these are painful tears. She tightens her grip on my hand.
    ‘It’s my fault,’ she says. ‘I was inside, going to the loo, when the fire alarm went off. But I didn’t know Jenny was in the building. I didn’t know to call for her. I just went looking for Rowena and Adam. But they were fine, outside in no time.’
    At sports day I’d told her Adam and Rowena were at the school. If I’d said, ‘
And Jenny
,’ she’d have called for her too, made sure she was out before the fire took hold.
    Two words.
    But instead I’d wittered on about Adam’s cake.
    Her voice is a whisper. ‘Then I saw you running towards school. And I knew how relieved you were going to be when you saw that Addie was safe.’
    I remember Maisie outside, comforting the reception teacher, Rowena comforting Adam by the bronze statue of a child, as black smoke was swirled by the wind, dirtying the blue sky.
    ‘And then you shouted for Jenny and I realised she must be in there. And you ran inside.’ She pauses for a moment, her face pale. ‘But I didn’t go to help you.’ Her voice is staccato with guilt.
    But how can she think I blame her? I’m just movedthat she thought, even for one moment, of going into a burning building after me.
    ‘I
knew
I should help you,’ she continues. ‘Of course I should. But I wasn’t brave enough. So I ran to the fire engines that were still on the bridge instead.
Away
from the fire. I told them there were people inside. I thought if they knew they’d get there more quickly, that it would be more urgent. And they did. I mean, as soon as I told them, one of the fire engines drove at a parked car and shoved it off the road onto the pavement. And then people parked behind them