The Sudden Departure of the Frasers by Louise Candlish Read Free Book Online

but she’d noted the affection in their voices.)
    Physically, he was not striking, at least at first glance, being short and wiry and possessed of the kind of gentle colouring that would fade prematurely, but Christy knew herself well enough to understand that she did not have the self-confidence to handle a conspicuously attractive man – were she to have caught his eye in the first place, which history suggested she would not. Integrity, kindness, intelligence: those were the attractions that mattered to her, and Joe had them in such quantities that they
glowed
. And while he was not one of those people who had reinvented themselves so convincingly it came as a discombobulating experience to meet their parents, twelve years in a City law firm had nonetheless smoothed the accent somewhat and furnished him with most of the cultural references his colleagues had possessed from childhood. (She’d done her best to keep pace.)
    Still, he’d suffered for his lack of an expensive education. Once the euphoria of winning the JR training contract had faded, he’d intuited swiftly that he had not made the cut as a one to watch. That decentness of his was no advantage; he was too useful a wingman in the ever-more dangerous flying environment that was Mergers & Acquisitions to ever be given a crack at lead pilot.
    ‘I’m starting to think I have to work twice as hard as them just to get the same credit,’ he said of his socially superior counterparts.
    ‘Now you know how it feels to be a woman,’ Christy told him.
    It was not until the end of the first week that she had her first encounters with the neighbours – or, in the case of the guy upstairs, ‘sighting’ was a better definition. He was an unkempt figure, it transpired, and of indeterminate age: either young and out of condition or older and
in
condition, it was hard to tell with someone so bedraggled. His black hair was an overgrown thicket that obscured his eyes, and the rest of his features and neck were buried beneath a pelt of facial hair. Tall, almost towering, and heavy of gait, he was a bear of a man – but not the cuddly, protective kind; more the kind that came down from the mountain to rampage through your bins.
    Christy was in the front garden, enjoying the novelty of weeding, when he came out of his house and paused at the gate, fishing in his jacket pocket for something or other, his back to her. He did not respond to her call of hello from barely ten feet away, and when he ignored a second, louder greeting, slipping away without so much as a glance over his shoulder, she seriously wondered if he might be deaf.
    But of course he wasn’t deaf; he was just rude.
    Oh dear. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a disappointment had not the woman on the other side been so cool with her the next day.
    Caroline Sellers introduced herself when she and Christy were leaving their houses at the same time and came face to face on the pavement. Older than Christy by about five years, she gave an immediate impression of bluntness, short not only in stature but also in facial feature, nose a little flat, brow abbreviated, jawbone not quite strong enough. Ponytailed, heavily mascaraed and dressed in jeans, blazer and high-heeled ankle boots, she had the capable but burdened air of someone in middle management who regularly threatened to walk out of her job but never actually did.
    ‘Sorry I haven’t had the chance to say hello before,’ she said, and her voice was exactly what Christy had expected of her Lime Park neighbours: fine-grained accent, tone of utter dauntlessness. ‘We were away over Easter.’
    ‘Anywhere nice?’ Christy asked.
    ‘Just our place on the Ile de Ré. The kids went back to school this week.’
    ‘How old are they?’
    ‘Eleven next week, almost-but-not-quite eight and a half, and just turned four.’
    Christy wondered why she didn’t just say eleven, eight and four.
    ‘Do you have any?’ Caroline asked.
    ‘No, it’s just my husband