The Crooked House by Christobel Kent Read Free Book Online

convenience store at the foot of the building, with a security-grille for a window. Often a queue.
    Three paces and she was inside the bedroom. She skimmed the shelves with her hand, coming away with dust; she looked at the objects on his side of the bed. An old watch with a heavy link strap, two books, both by colleagues of his, a packet of paracetamol in the little drawer. She turned. Unhesitating as a burglar, she went to the walnut chest. A single silver-framed photograph stood on it; she’d glanced at it a dozen times but had never picked it up. Nosy: never be nosy, you might get him nosy back. It was a picture of Paul, alone on a clifftop, arms folded across himself, shirtsleeves rolled. He must have been thirteen or fourteen; he stared at the camera, composed. She pulled open the top two drawers, the place everyone hid secrets.
    Striped cotton boxers in rolls and two unopened packs on one side, on the other black socks, grey socks, a belt, ties, everything neat. A small box sat inside the curled belt; she lifted it out, didn’t even need to open it to know that it contained a ring. A large square stone that looked to her like a diamond, a setting from early last century. His mother’s? Quickly she put it back: the socks shifted and she saw something else, disguised among them. Something wrapped in a heavy woollen cloth, khaki, not clean. She cleared the socks and looked down at it nestling there, bewildered as she saw an outline that seemed ridiculously familiar. A child’s toy? She picked up the small bundle, and its weight was alarming, it was too heavy to be a toy. She set it down again with clumsy hands and stared at it. Then unrolled it. It was a gun. A real one.
    An old gun. She grasped for an explanation. A memento? Old but she didn’t know how old: it was chunky scarred black metal with a cross-hatched metal grip, a handgun. It had
Herstal Belgique
stamped above the trigger, and there were some numbers. The khaki it was wrapped in looked old, certainly. Had his father served? Now she was embroidering, a dead mother who’d given him her engagement ring and a war hero for a father. Too young to have had a father in the war. She searched through their conversations, coming up only against how little she knew. One thing she was sure of, as she heard a sound from the stairwell, was it was none of her business. A gun. He’d find her with it in her hands and there was nothing she could do.
    The doorbell rang and her heart jumped, hammering. He hadn’t taken his keys: she was saved.
    Carefully, Alison replaced the gun in the bag and pushed it under the socks, slid the drawers closed quietly, went into the bathroom as unhurriedly as if sleepwalking, flushed the lavatory, walked out again. She picked up the slip from the sofa as she passed, to explain the rush of blood to her face.
    Not a crime, to own such a thing. Or was it? Was it odd? A historian might own such a thing, a teenage boy might. A farmer or the owner of an isolated house might, to shoot rats. More of a crime to be searching through someone’s drawers.
    Had it been loaded?
    She opened the door.

Chapter Seven
    It’sGina from her childhood that she dreams of, the night before they go, or at least she thinks so. Even awake, somewhere in the recesses of her mind Alison confuses Gina with Kay; they both share the sly sharpness, the knowingness, looking sideways at her, laughing. They both tug at her with their promises of friendship.
    In the years between Alison has often wondered about Gina – she thinks about her more often than she does her mother, or the twins. Joe is the worst, she hardly dares ever approach Joe in her mind, she is terrified of remembering his smile, the frayed edges of his jeans at the heel, the way he would swing himself on to his bicycle. She didn’t even dream of him: it was one thing she did ask the therapist in that stuffy little room with the plastic flowers on the table, and the box of tissues. ‘Why not?’ The woman