Love-40 by Anna Cheska Read Free Book Online Page B

and the heavy throb of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon took over. Goodness knows how, but it energised her just to have it on in the background; she could hear the thrust of it deep in her senses, over and above everything else. Either that, or she was having an eighties reversion. She’d better be careful, if she went any further back she’d be needing therapy and wearing love-beads.
    HOUSE CLEARANCES WANTED , the advertisement read. With a jokey illustration of a man bent double carrying a wardrobe – but still with a smile on his face. CLEAR THE DECKS … START ANEW … FAIREST DEALERS IN TOWN.
    Estelle sat down heavily on Aunt Mo’s old rocking chair, practically the only piece of furniture she owned, despite the shopful downstairs. The chair seemed more at home here than it had in Liam’s garret, Estelle reflected, remembering the childhood evenings she’d spent curled up on the sofa, telly down low, faintly aware of Auntie Mo in the corner, scribbling on a notepad, rocking for all she was worth. ‘Helps me think,’ she used to say. Every now and then the steady rhythm of the creaks would change and she would come back to the real world, ask Estelle, ‘Do you want anything, ducks?’
    But Estelle would long ago have got hungry and helped herself. She shook her head at the memory. Such loneliness. It was easier all round when she started spending her time at Suzi and Liam’s.
    She rocked slowly, looking around the small living room that was at least hers – for a while. She might paint it, she thought, something decadent and seriously seductive like chocolate and cream, or fruity like tangerine and cranberry. Something that reminded her of youth and having fun. Only, who was she being seductive for? And was she over-reacting to the fact that she was nearly forty?
    Though Auntie Mo had never been a bad parent substitute, Estelle reminded herself. She had taken her brother’s child in without hesitation, given her as much time and love as she could spare – for a woman obsessed with the other world of the romantic fiction she created. And best of all, she had left what money she had – not a lot, writing fiction clearly not being as lucrative as one might have thought – to Estelle, when she eventually died. Not of a broken heart or something faintly romantic like leukaemia, but of a stroke that wiped her out quickly and cleanly, shortly after she’d written the words, THE END.
    Sad though Estelle was to lose her, she was grateful on Auntie Mo’s behalf for the timing (for imagine how distressed she would have been to leave her hero and heroine entrenched in misunderstanding) and certainly grateful for the small legacy that had enabled her to join forces with Suzi to create Secrets In The Attic. She was just getting to the point in the customer complaints department she worked in – customer services really, but complaints summed it up more accurately – when she was likely to lose her cool. Just about to reach that career point of no return, when she might adjust her headphones one day and say to some moaning old git, look, why don’t you just fuck off? It wasn’t easy working in a complaints department. After all, listening to abuse all day couldn’t possibly improve one’s self-esteem.
    And when all was said and done, Estelle agreed with most of the customers who were complaining – they were being overcharged by a bureaucratic, autocratic monopoly of a company. And they still got lousy water when they turned on their taps. The River Pride still flooded and there was always a hosepipe ban come August, even when it had rained all through July. So who could blame them for complaining?
    What a relief then, to leave it all behind. To be, with Suzi, her own boss. And to be living next door to the fairest dealers in town.
    Fairest dealers in town? Estelle folded the paper with a sigh. They’d be the only