The Old House on the Corner by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

now that Steve had a proper look he reckoned Bert was right. Her voice was different and she looked smaller, thinner, not so haughty, now that he was looking down on her and not the other way around. Her brown hair was shoulder length, very thick and wavy, making a perfect frame for her beautiful, delicate face: fine nose, perfect lips, high, moulded cheekbones. Her grey eyes were very large and rather sad.
    ‘I thought you recognized me earlier.’ After fining him a small fortune, she had the temerity to smile.
    ‘If I had, I’d driven right past.’
    ‘I hope you don’t expect me to apologize for what happened in court. You only got what you deserved.’
    ‘I hope you don’t expect me to be grateful for all this.’ He indicated the clothes, the coffee pot and a plate of sandwiches on the table. ‘Because I’m not. If you hadn’t taken your foot off the clutch, there’d be no need for it. By the way,’ he added childishly, ‘I prefer tea.’
    ‘Then tea you shall have,’ she said with a gracious wave of her slender white hand. ‘Sit down and I’ll make it. Have you warmed up after the bath?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said grudgingly. The kitchen had its own little dining area in an alcove in the corner. He sat on a padded bench in front of a dark oak table and thought how much Jean would have loved it. The room was about twenty feet square, modern, but made to look Victorian, like the rest of the house: oak units, copper pans on the wall, cream lace curtains suspended from a brass rail, through which the snow could be seen, falling heavier now. Lights gleamed underneath the vast array of wall cupboards, making the room look faintly exotic, more like a nightclub than a kitchen. An Aga kept the place comfortably warm. The music came from a small radio on the stainless steel draining board.
    ‘Do the clothes fit?’ Lady Muck enquired.
    ‘Where they touch.’
    ‘I thought as much. My husband has smaller feet and is much slimmer than you, that’s why I gave you the tracksuit, it stretches. I’ll fetch your shoes down in a minute and put them on the Aga to dry and find you an anorak or something to go home in.’
    ‘Ta.’
    Her back was to him while she made the tea, and he was horrified to find himself admiring her slim ankles, her neat bottom, the way her hair flicked up at the endsand how the lights made it appear more red than brown. He’d always considered magistrates to be barely human, let alone sexual beings.
‘I wouldn’t mind giving her one
,’ Bert had said.
    She turned, caught Steve’s gaze, and the world seemed to stop as something indefinable passed between them. Apart from the hum of the fridge, the silence was total. Then, ‘Oh, dear,’ she said shakily when the tea slopped into the saucer. Blushing, she changed it for another. He guessed she wasn’t as sure of herself as she made out. His flattened ego raised its head a little. He’d been overawed, first by the car, then the house, and the fact she’d turned out to be Justice of the Peace, but the blush had shown she was just an ordinary woman.
    ‘What does your husband do?’ he asked.
    ‘He’s a doctor.’ She put the tea in front of him and slid into the bench opposite, rather reluctantly, he thought. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ She waved a pack of Dunhill’s at him.
    He shrugged. ‘It’s your house.’
    ‘So it is.’ She lit the cigarette, breathing in the smoke and letting it slowly out, as if it was the first ciggie she’d had in years. ‘What about you? What do you do?’
    ‘I
was
a miner, now I work in a hospital as a porter.’
    ‘Of course, the pit closed, didn’t it?’
    ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’
    She blushed again. He was enjoying her discomfort. She shouldn’t have told him to grow up. ‘I couldn’t help but notice, could I? I’m a doctor too. I was suddenly inundated with miners’ wives suffering from depression.’
    One of them could have been his own. Jean had been taking tablets ‘for her