The Accidental Mother by Rowan Coleman Read Free Book Online Page B

and instantly regretted it. It was like interrupting the queen. “Sorry, Gillian, I just meant that I can handle it. No one needs to step in. It’s only fourteen days, and that includes two weekends!”
    “You normally work weekends, don’t you?” Gillian said.
    “Well, sometimes…,” Sophie said, wondering why she was being made to feel guilty just for being dedicated. “My point is, it’s not for very long. How hard can it be?”

Four
    F or the first ten minutes of the taxi ride to Mrs. Stiles’s house, Sophie and Tess did not speak to each other.
    Sophie was too busy fretting about the looks on Lisa’s and Cal’s faces when she had told them what was happening and wondering what the implications of those looks were. They were like theatrical masks. Lisa’s face had been the tragic one, and Cal’s had been pure comedy. He’d neatly glossed over the whole dead-mother-of-two element to see the funny side and to give Sophie a rundown of all the hilariously calamitous events that were bound to befall them.
    “Look,” Tess said, breaking the silence as the cab turned onto Upper Street. “I think you are doing an incredible thing here, I really do, and I want you to know I’ll be there to help you. It’s not as if you’re on your own.”
    Sophie half-smiled at her. “Thanks,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and looking out the window. The record shop where she and Carrie had spent so much time peeping at boys over the tops of Stone Roses LPs had long since been replaced by a cell phone shop. “I want to help, I really do. I might not have come across like I did, but I do. It was just the surprise of it all. You know, it all happened so quickly, for me anyway.”
    “I know,” Tess said, studying her profile. “That was my fault. I did bungle it a bit. It’s not like me at all. I’ve never worked on a case like this before.” She held out a hand to Sophie, who turned and looked at it. “Let’s try to work together, try to do something good for these children—okay?”
    Sophie nodded and shook her hand. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’ll give it my best shot.”

    Mrs. Stiles’s house, her life, and a large part of Sophie’s past had already been packed away. There were several crates in the hallway marked “Storage,” and a host of cardboard boxes stacked against any available wall space. The house where Sophie had spent so many hours, laughing and plotting and dreaming with Carrie had been swept away, leaving only faint shadows and outlines to prove that it had ever been there. Even Mrs. Stiles herself had faded to the point where she was almost translucent.
    When Sophie had seen her at the christening, she had been looking older and tired, but the last three years seemed to have shrunk her away almost to nothing. She was inches shorter, and her skin was papery thin and gray.
    “Mrs. Stiles,” Sophie said. “I just couldn’t believe it when I heard. I’m so sorry.”
    Mrs. Stiles nodded and gestured for Sophie to sit down on the same beige velour sofa that she and Carrie had giggled on the night of the christening and countless times before that as girls. “We tried so long for Caroline, her dad and I,” she said. “Everyone else was having baby after baby except me. Five years went by, then it was fifteen, and I thought it just wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t in Jesus’ plan, you see. When she came, I was so unprepared that I thought it was the change! She was my miracle. My gift.” Mrs. Stiles’s smile faded. “I don’t why loving her so much wasn’t enough. I don’t know why she went away, why she let that… man ”—she spit out the word—“ruin her life just like her father ruined mine.” She coughed and gagged as if she might choke on her bitterness. “And now the lives of those poor children too. Everything that has happened to them has happened because of him. If he’d been at home like he should have been, supporting his family, Carrie