I Found You by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online Page B

No earrings. A paper bag of sweets. The awkwardness of her gait as she followed behind that boy (her brother? There was a resemblance and she didn’t seem to have any need to be physically close to him).
    Kirsty and Gray continued on their way and the man thought about following them, but in a town this small their paths would be sure to cross again so he walked on, a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, as though enjoying a private joke with himself.

Eight
     
    Alice feels strange in her room at the top of the house. All day yesterday she’d felt strange because that man was sitting on the beach in the rain. Now she is feeling strange because that same man is in her shed. His presence is benign but somehow unnerving. The emptiness of him. All the spaces and gaps. But more than that, the pure maleness of him. Somehow his lack of identity has distilled him down to an essence of raw masculinity. The fact of his gender is irrefutable and Alice . . . well, Alice has not had sex for a long, long time and Alice is a woman who likes to have sex. Her whole life has been shaped – virtually destroyed – by her sexual desires.
    She pulls on her reading glasses and she positions a map of Saint-Tropez under the anglepoise lamp. She has already sketched out the pieces of the rose petalsand she slices through them now, slowly, adeptly, with a scalpel. The thought of Saint-Tropez, of steamer chairs and chilled champagne by an aqua pool, of waiters in white linen and tanned men in swimming trunks, is stirring her. She can almost hear the background murmur of muted conversation, feel the hands of some unknown lover rubbing cream into her shoulders, and soon enough those anonymous hands become the hands of the man in the shed and Alice is thinking of those same hands as they used a knife to saw effortlessly through the thick slab of farmhouse toast she’d made him earlier. Good hands. Good wrists. And then she is thinking of all of him, because clean and dry, in Kai’s hoodie, he cuts an impressive figure. Not too tall, probably just an inch or two taller than her, but solid. No weak points in his physiology. And his hazel eyes, soft with need and confusion.
    Apart from that moment, when she’d suggested taking him to the police station. She’d seen something entirely different pass over him then. A wash of fear and anger, gone before she’d had a chance to analyse it, leaving her wondering if she’d imagined it.
    She pushes the thought of him from her mind. Men are no longer on her agenda. Her children are her priority now. Her children and her job. She excises the petal-shaped pieces of map from the sheet and places them side by side. Avenue des Canebiers. Chemin de l’Estagnet. Rue Cavaillon. Names that talk of palm trees and open-top cars, hotels with striped awningsand valet parking. She shouldn’t feel jealous, though. She has so much here. There are even palm trees on the other side of the bay. Two of them.
    A ringing of the brass bell above her front door below makes her jump slightly. This is followed by the clatter of three sets of dog claws against the wooden stairs and some exuberant barking. She peers over her desk and looks downwards where she sees the distinctive hennaed topknot of Derry Dynes.
    ‘Coming!’ she calls out. She has to part the dogs forcefully at the front door to reach the handle and then hold them back to prevent them from knocking Derry down.
    ‘Hello, friend,’ she says. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
    Derry is peering over Alice’s shoulder with body language that doesn’t appear very social. ‘I saw Jasmine earlier,’ she says. ‘She told me that man is in your house.’
    Alice sighs and pushes some hair behind her ear. She’s angry with herself for not briefing the children to keep Frank a secret. She doesn’t mind Derry knowing, but if anyone else found out . . .
    ‘He’s not in the house ,’ she snaps. ‘He’s in the shed.’
    She holds the door open and the