Still Waters by Judith Cutler Read Free Book Online Page B

his car that would distract the driver or limit visibility, the other woman was upon him too. And that was how it felt, as if he was about to be overwhelmed by the sheer force of their personalities. He and Fran both – he’d rarely seen her looking so punch-drunk. She threw him an ironic smile.
    As for Caffy, she wandered off on her own, soon to be followed by the woman Fran had introduced simply as Paula, as if she were a long-lost cousin. He’d certainly been Mark immediately, though that was possibly Fran’s doing.
    Occasionally they could hear the women exclaiming over something, for good or for bad.
    He gathered Fran to him for a kiss and a hug, the sort he and Tina had once shared when they’d entrusted a sick Sammie to the care of a hospital consultant. ‘It’ll be all right now it’s in their hands,’ he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    ‘If there’s really something wrong with the mains supply, I want to know what Invitaqua are doing about it,’ Fran declared, unloading litre upon litre of bottled Malvern water from the car. Half of her couldn’t understand why a pair of old toughies like them had become so obsessed with the issue of pure water; half of her, having seen so many deaths as a result of neglecting elementary precautions such as wearing seat belts, knew all too well.
    ‘You’re quite right,’ Mark agreed, hefting the shrink-wrapped batches into Fran’s utility room. ‘Cost apart, this isn’t at all environmentally friendly, is it? All this plastic, when you should be able to turn on a tap?’
    ‘Not as bad as buying Fiji water – think of all the food miles that involves. All the same, I want proper home-grown Kentish stuff,’ she declared, little-girl stubborn, stamping her foot.
    ‘For the time being, you can have it, and you’re welcome to it. You can have my share too,’ he said, stowing the last load. ‘At least we can shower at work… Nice cup of tea?’
    ‘I think we’ve earned a beer,’ she said.
    He couldn’t argue. On the way home from the Rectory, they’d called in at his house in Loose to collect the post – he’d only just got round to having Royal Mail redirect it – and encountered, after the calm firmness of the two Pact women, the quasi-hysteria of Sammie, rendered helpless by her credit card bill. Had it been her financial profligacy that had caused such a rift in her marriage? Neither he nor Fran now bought the theory that Lloyd had thrown her out: little things she let slip suggested that she had left in a major tantrum and now secretly wished she hadn’t.
    Mark had insisted that Fran went to the house with him, though she had offered to stay in the car.
    ‘You’ve rights too,’ he’d said, ‘one of which is to be treated courteously. And I’d like you to meet my grandchildren.’
    ‘I’m not very good with babies,’ she said cautiously.
    ‘Who is, without practice?’
    In the event, she’d had to learn very quickly, Sammie leaving her in charge of them while she dragged her father off to see the bill, which for some reason couldn’t travel to the living room. The gist of what she was saying was that she couldn’t pay even the nominal rent he’d asked for; the subtext, he was sure, was that he should offer to settle her debts. Nearly four thousand pounds on one card alone, none of it, as far as he could see, on anything except clothes and shoes, apart from a manicurist and hairdresser. He was quite sure that Fran had at least half that on hers some months, as he did, since they both used plastic like cash, but they both, he knew, always paid off the complete balance. Fran’s excuse was that the National Trust benefited from card use, while his chosen charity was Oxfam. The onlypeople gaining from Sammie’s recklessness were the bank’s fat cats.
    ‘Cheers,’ Fran said, passing him a bottle, which he clinked against hers. She wasn’t usually a beer-from-the-bottle woman, despite her usual air of mucking in with whatever the boys were doing.