Precious Time by Erica James Read Free Book Online Page A

cleaner off so lightly.’
    ‘If it’s any of your business, I got rid of the last woman after I caught her stealing from me. I didn’t object to her helping herself to the odd bit of loose change lying about the place, but I drew the line at her sneaking out of the house with my best single malt whisky stuffed up her knickers.’
    ‘How long ago was that?’
    ‘Nearly a year.’
    ‘And no other help since then?’
    ‘What is this? Twenty questions and then you file your report to Social Services?’
    They juddered over the cattle grid at the end of the track where two stone pillars marked the entrance to Mermaid House, then joined the main road. ‘Tell me about your family. Do they live nearby?’
    Gabriel shifted the seat-belt that was cutting into his neck. ‘Are you asking me why they don’t act the part of doting children and pop in every other day to see how the old man’s doing?’
    ‘I might be.’
    A slight pause hung between them before Gabriel said, ‘We have a perfectly balanced relationship: they can’t stand me and I can’t stand them.’
    Dr Singh slowed down for a sheep that was nonchalantly crossing the road. ‘Those are harsh words,’ he said. He turned to face Gabriel, looked at him gravely. ‘Do you not feel the heavy weight of them?
    Do you not wish it could be otherwise?’
    Seconds passed.
    ‘The sheep’s gone now,’ Gabriel muttered. ‘You can drive on.’

Chapter Six
    With no class before lunch, Jonah decided to bunk off school. He pulled on his jacket and took the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, pressed against the lockers in a slobbering, face-washing clinch, he found Tim Allerton wrapped around Shazzie Butler. They hadn’t heard him coming, so he stood perfectly still, just long enough to induce in them the right level of embarrassment when they noticed him. He gave a discreet little tap on the locker beside them. ‘A-hem.’
    They sprang apart, which wasn’t easy, given the tangle of arms and legs.
    Assuming a deadpan expression, he said, ‘On the basis that by now you’ve fully explored each other’s dental work, perhaps you would be so good as to find your way to whatever lesson you should be attending. You know how I value your input as regards helping the school to sprint up the league tables.’
    He strode off, leaving them to wipe themselves down.
    Outside in the car park, he opened the rusting door of his J-reg Ford Escort, wondering, as he always did, why he bothered to lock it.
    Half the kids he taught at Deaconsbridge High - or Dick High, as its inmates affectionately referred to it - would have it open without the aid of a key in seconds flat.
    He turned right out of the school gates and took the Lower Moor Road towards the centre of town, passing a dismal housing estate and an even uglier industrial complex. Back in the early 1970s, liberal town-planners had been assiduously fair with their unimaginative architectural handouts and had given Deaconsbridge High the same ugly status as its immediate neighbours. At roughly the same time as decimalisation had made its mark on the country, the evils of cheap flat-roofed urbanisation had hit Deaconsbridge. Since then, and in the last decade when restoration had become the watchword, money had been lavished on the small town centre so that it might compete with rival tourist attractions like Castleton and Buxton, but the outlying areas had received no such philanthropic gestures.
    Occasionally there were calls for a bypass, since the hordes of lucrative trippers had been successfully drawn to the town, but the seasonal density of traffic didn’t yet warrant such outlandish expenditure.
    And it was just as well that the traffic was so light, as Jonah was in a hurry. In the centre of the town, he joined the one-way system, drove along the war memorial end of the market square, then up towards Hollow Edge Moor. He was going to see his father, and had planned it this way deliberately. With only an hour and a half