The Other Child by Charlotte Link Read Free Book Online

what the agony aunts in women’s magazines suggest to readers with the same problems as Gwen: do something! Go beyond your comfort zone! Meet other people!
    Gwen must really have the feeling, thought Dave, that in the blink of an eye she had been as successful as they promised. Sometimes she herself seemed barely able to believe it. She had gathered her courage and driven to the Friarage School, and on her very first day there she had met the man whom she was now going to marry and spend the rest of her life with.
    She was happy. And yet he also sensed her fear – the fear that something could still go wrong, that the dream could still burst like a bubble, that everything looked too beautiful to be true …
    And when he thought of that, he felt rotten. Because he knew that her fear was justified.
    As if she could guess that he was going over and over the relationship in his head and that his thoughts were not all completely happy ones, she asked out of the blue: ‘The engagement is still on for Saturday?’ She sounded apprehensive.
    Dave managed to ease her worries with a smile. ‘Of course, why ever not? Unless your father suddenly boycotts the whole event and doesn’t let us leave the house. But then we can still find a restaurant.’
    Please, not that! A friend, of Gwen’s was coming from London, then the married couple with their two Great Danes who happened to be holidaying on the Beckett Farm right then, and Fiona Barnes, the old family friend. He could not quite see how she fitted in with the Becketts. Seven people! He had almost no money left. He would not be able to afford a visit to a restaurant. If old Mr Beckett caused a ruckus, he would be in a real jam.
    He tried to not let his worries show. ‘Nothing will wreck our engagement,’ he reassured her.
    Gwen reached a hand out to him, and he took it in his. It was ice-cold to the touch. He turned it over, drew it to his lips and breathed warm air onto her palm.
    â€˜Trust me,’ he said. Those words always worked well, he knew that. They worked particularly well with women like Gwen, not that he had ever met such an extreme example of this kind of woman before. ‘I’m not playing with you.’
    No, it was not a game. It certainly was not.
    She smiled. ‘I know, Dave. I can feel it.’
    Not true, he thought. You are afraid, but you know that you cannot give in to your fear. We have to go through with it. Both of us get something out of it. Each in our own way.
    It had now grown completely dark around them. They drove on into the lonely night and Dave felt like he was driving through a black tunnel. His throat tightened. He would feel better after the first whisky, he knew that; after the second even better, and he did not care whether or not he would still be fit to drive by then.
    Just as long as these thoughts stopped hammering so hard in his head. Just as long as his future started to feel more bearable.

Friday, 10th October
    1
    Jennifer Brankley was reminded of her school days – not so much of the years when she dressed in a blazer, pleated blue skirt and wore a big brown satchel on her back, but rather the years when she herself taught. Every morning she would arrive at school ready for action and looking forward to the day that lay ahead of her. It felt as if it were decades ago; sometimes it felt as if it were a memory of another life. And yet only a few years separated her from that time which she privately called ‘the best time of my life’. A few years … and now nothing was like it had been once.
    She had leant the plastic bags with the shopping – mainly dog food for her Great Danes, Wotan and Cal – against a tree just behind the high black wrought-iron fence which surrounded the Friarage Community Primary School. It was a large complex, with a number of one- or two-storey red-brick buildings. All with blue blinds in the windows. Up to the left behind the school rose