The Return by Victoria Hislop Read Free Book Online Page B

that erupted from a one-armed bandit next to their table. Since entering they had listened to the perpetual warbling of the fruit machine, and now one of the café’s customers happily scooped a handful of coins into his pocket. He walked away whistling.
     
    Sonia and Maggie both ate hungrily. They watched as the workmen left the bar, leaving behind them a pall of smoke and dozens of tiny screwed-up paper napkins carelessly scattered on the floor like a snow storm.
     
    ‘What do you think James would make of it all?’ asked Maggie.
     
    ‘What? This place?’ responded Sonia. ‘Too grubby. Too earthy.’
     
    ‘I meant the dancing,’ said Maggie.
     
    ‘You know what he’d think.That it’s all self-indulgent nonsense,’ replied Sonia.
     
    ‘I don’t know how you stand him.’
     
    Maggie always went for the kill. Her open dislike of James almost drove Sonia to his defence but she did not really want to think about her husband today and quickly changed the subject.
     
    ‘My father, on the other hand, used to love dancing. I only discovered that a few weeks ago.’
     
    ‘Really? I don’t remember anything about that when we were growing up.’
     
    ‘Well, it was all over by then anyway, because of Mum’s illness.’
     
    ‘Of course it was,’ said Maggie, slightly embarrassed. ‘I forgot about that.’
     
    ‘When I last went to see him,’ continued Sonia, ‘he was so enthusiastic about my salsa lessons it almost made up for James’s cynicism.’
     
    Sonia’s visits to her elderly father were usually timed for when James was having a golf day. It seemed a good opportunity, given that the two men had very little to say to each other. Unlike James’s parents, a visit to whom involved a three-hour drive out of London, the packing of green Wellington boots, occasionally evening wear and an obligatory overnight stay, Sonia’s father lived a mere thirty-minute drive away, in the outer suburbs of Croydon.
     
    It was always with a pang of guilt that she rang his doorbell, one of a set of twenty outside the characterless block of nineteen fifties flats. Each visit, it seemed to take even longer before the buzzer went and the outer door, which let visitors into the pale green, uncarpeted communal hallway, opened. It was then a disinfectant-scented climb up to the second storey of this building, and by that time Jack Haynes would be standing at his open doorway ready to welcome his only daughter in.
     
    Sonia recalled that last visit and how the seventy-eight year old’s round face had creased into a smile as she came into sight. She had embraced his stout frame and kissed the top of his liver-spotted head, making sure she did not disturb the few remaining strands of silver hair, which he had carefully combed back across his pate.
     
    ‘Sonia!’ he said warmly. ‘How lovely to see you.’
     
    ‘Hello, Dad.’ She hugged him tighter.
     
    A tray with cups and saucers, a jug of milk and a small plate of Rich Tea biscuits was already set out on a low table in the living room, and Jack insisted that Sonia took a seat while he went into the kitchen to fetch the teapot, which rattled noisily as he carried it through and set it down. Pale liquid slopped from the spout and splashed the rug but she knew not to ask him whether he needed any help. Such a ritual as this preserved the dignity of old age.
     
    As her father held the tea strainer above the cup and the brown liquid streamed through, Sonia began the usual line of questioning.
     
    ‘So how—’
     
    Her question was interrupted by the rumble of a train going past, only a few feet from the back wall, causing enough of a vibration to send a small cactus plant on the window-ledge crashing to the floor.
     
    ‘Oh, what a nuisance,’ said the elderly man, struggling to his feet. ‘I’m sure these trains are getting more frequent, you know.’
     
    Once the dustpan and brush had been fetched and the scattering of gravel, dry soil and spiny cactus