Kiss by Jill Mansell Read Free Book Online

characters lulling their landladies into a false sense of security and then either making off with the entire contents of the house or finishing them off with machetes? Gina, only too easily able to envisage her remains bundled into the chest freezer alongside the sole bonne femme , took a hefty gulp of her drink. Then she realised that she was going to pieces. The tonic was flat.
     
     
    ‘I still don’t understand,’ said Katerina in challenging tones, ‘why you’re doing this. Why did you go back to see my mother and ask her - us - to come and live with you?’
     
    It was a shame, Gina thought, that the daughter hadn’t inherited her mother’s happy-go-lucky nature. She thanked God that her house was a large one.
     
    ‘I didn’t ask her to come and live with me,’ she replied coolly. ‘I offered her a place to stay, and she accepted.’
     
    Katerina dumped the assortment of cases and bags on to the narrow bed and gave the rest of the room a cursory glance. Magnolia walls, beige-and-white curtains, beige carpet; not awfully inspiring but exceptionally clean.
     
    ‘But why?’
     
    Gina decided to play her at her own game. ‘If you must know, it was sheer desperation. If you really have to know,’ she continued, her tone even, ‘I need the money.’
     
    ‘Of course,’ murmured Katerina, not even bothering to sound scathing. Moving across to the window, she looked out over leafless treetops at the roofs of the elegant houses lining the street, and at the gleaming, top-of-the-range cars parked outside them. Gina’s claim to ‘need the money’ was so ridiculous it was almost laughable, but she wasn’t in a position to laugh. And Izzy had insisted that she behave herself.
     
    ‘Well thanks, anyway.’
     
    ‘That’s all right,’ said Gina awkwardly. ‘I hope you’ll both be happy here.’
     
    ‘We’ve always been happy,’ Katerina replied simply. ‘Wherever we’ve lived.’
     
    Then, glancing out of the window once more, she spotted an ancient white van hiccuping down the road. ‘Great, here comes Jake with the rest of our things. I’d better go down and guide him into the drive.’
     
    ‘Into the drive,’ echoed Gina, paling at the sight of the disreputable vehicle being driven by a man whose hair was longer than her own. Marjorie Hurlingham was cutting back her forsythia next door. She prayed that Jake and the van wouldn’t stay long.
     
     
    ‘I can’t get over it, this is fabulous!’ declared Izzy later that afternoon. Seeing her new home for the first time, and observing with some relief that relations between her daughter and their new landlady weren’t as bad as she had feared, a smile spread over her face. Katerina had obviously decided to behave, the house was wonderful and there was real central heating that actually worked . . . It was eight-thirty in the evening. Izzy, her plastered leg flung comfortably across Jake’s lap, was still regaling everyone with tales of her stay in hospital. Rachel, Jake’s wife, had opened another bottle of wine and was singing happily along to the music playing on the stereo - which appeared to be the only electrical appliance Izzy possessed. Katerina, lying on her side on the floor, was eating raisins and looking through an old photograph album, pausing from time to time to show off the more embarrassing snaps of Izzy during her flower-power days.
     
    Gina perched unhappily on the edge of a chair. She felt rather like a hostess no longer in control of her own party. Not having had time to think about Andrew - and the ritual of brooding over her past life with him had become comforting, even necessary - she was also feeling somewhat dispossessed. And Izzy, Katerina and their friends were so utterly relaxed in each other’s company, laughing and teasing and giving the impression of being entirely at home in Izzy’s bedroom, that she felt even more of an outsider than ever. This was her own home, she reminded herself, yet already her