Bones in the Nest by Helen Cadbury Read Free Book Online Page B

Doncaster. She looks around her, like a child who’s wandered into a room where she’s been forbidden to go, then hurries towards Platform 1.
    A woman with a sticky toddler in a buggy is fanning herself with a free paper. Chloe shrinks back into the shadow of the metal fence. When she was released from prison, her licence clearly stated that she must not go within ten miles of where it happened. She waits for the York train, willing it to hurry up, while she imagines what she’ll say to Darren back at the hostel. If she’s breached her licence, she’ll go straight back to prison and she won’t see Taheera or Halsworth Grange again.
     
    The road map is on the table between them. Darren purses his lips and traces his finger along the road that leads from Doncaster to Halsworth Grange.
    ‘It looks OK to me,’ he says and shrugs.
    Darren mostly shrugs. Chloe reckons he comes to work half-stoned. She wishes Taheera was here, but she’s still on leave.
    ‘Mr Coldacre says I can start on Monday, but I’m not going down there just to be pulled by the police and end up back in jail for breaching my licence.’
    It comes out in one breath and Chloe hears her voice leap up to a high-pitched whine. Control. Get it under control.Darren doesn’t notice. He twists his fingers into his hair and plucks a long, greying strand.
    ‘Here.’
    He tightens the hair between his fingers and lays it on the map, curving it round each bend in the road. It straightens on a stretch of the A1(M), and bends off again into the town.
    ‘Not the centre,’ Chloe says. She points to a mass of dark shapes towards the M18. ‘There.’
    Darren stretches the hair to where Chloe’s pointing and lifts it carefully, keeping the measurement precise. He lays it along the scale rule in the corner of the map and folds it back on itself three times.
    ‘Fifteen miles,’ he looks up at Chloe and smiles. ‘Your licence says you must stay ten miles outside the location of your offence, so you’re fine. Just make sure you don’t get on the wrong train home.’
    ‘No chance.’
    Chloe sits back and lets herself relax. Her stomach’s been so tight it aches to let go. She thinks of the lawns at Halsworth Grange and the monkey-puzzle tree zigzagging across the view. Soon she’ll be going there every day.
    ‘Does Taheera know you’ve got the job?’
    Chloe shakes her head.
    ‘Phone her from here if you like. She’ll be pleased.’
    He dials from the office phone, hands her the receiver and soon Taheera’s voice is whooping in her ear, congratulating her.
    ‘Amazing! Oh my God, I love that place. I knew you’d get it.’
    Chloe holds the phone a little distance away to protect her eardrum.
    ‘The trees are lovely in the spring. We used to go for picnics when we were kids.’
    ‘Oh,’ Chloe manages. ‘That’s nice.’
    Of course it’s a place that means something to someone else. It hasn’t been magicked up just for her benefit, and it’s cool that Taheera loves it too.
    ‘If you’re starting Monday, then maybe I could pick you up and give you a lift back to York on your first day,’ Taheera says. ‘I’m back at work on Tuesday.’
    ‘If you’re sure it’s not out of your way,’ Chloe says.
    ‘Not at all. I go past the door and it’ll my make my mum happy if I stay on another night. She wants to cook a family meal on Sunday night and my sister’s coming over with my baby nephew, he’s so sweet!’
    Chloe pictures Taheera’s family as a mass of colour, with a mum in a bright pink and gold sari, their home like a Bollywood film set, everyone dancing and laughing. She hands the phone back to Darren and beyond the soundtrack in her head, she hears him telling Taheera that everything’s fine at the hostel, there are no problems and she should enjoy her time off.
    ‘Stay safe, Miss T,’ he says and puts the phone down.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Doncaster
    Sean worked for three solid hours. The kitchen floor was two shades lighter and Jack was