Windfallen by Jojo Moyes Read Free Book Online

tipped her face up to the light. Even so many years on, she still got a faint thrill of excitement to be at the seaside.
    “So what are you going to do, Joe? While we’re inside?” Celia, in the back of the car, was applying lipstick with a new compact.
    Joe blushed slightly and pulled out through the level crossing that separated the two sides of the town. Although Arcadia House was, as the crow flies, less than a mile from Woodbridge Avenue, to get there by road one had to dip into the town, past the municipal park, and come out again on the winding coast road.
    “I’ll go to Bardness Point.”
    “What, by yourself?” Celia snapped her compact shut. She was wearing little white gloves and a bright red dress with a circle skirt that nipped in almost painfully at the waist. Celia didn’t need a girdle, although her mother was forever trying to persuade her to wear one. It would, apparently, hold her in “properly.”
    “It’s just for if your mother asks me anything about the weather when I drop you back. I shall need to know what it’s been like up there, so I can say so without messing up.”
    Lottie felt a sudden pang of conscience at their using him in this way. “I’m sure you don’t have to do that, Joe,” she said. “You could just drop us outside when we get back. She won’t get a chance to ask you anything.”
    Joe’s jaw set, and he signaled to turn right into the high street. “Yes, but if I do that, my mother will want to know why I didn’t pass on her good wishes, and then she’ll be in a temper.”
    “Good thinking, Joe,” said Celia. “And I’m sure Mummy will want to say hello to your mother.”
    Lottie was pretty sure Mrs. Holden would want to do nothing of the sort.
    “So what’s going on at this house after all? When do you need picking up?”
    “If it’s a garden party, I’d imagine they’ll be doing tea, don’t you, Lots?”
    Lottie found it hard to imagine sponge cakes and scones being laid on at Arcadia House. But she couldn’t imagine what other form a garden party might take.
    “I suppose so,” she said.
    “So about half past five? Six o’clock?”
    “Best make it half past five,” said Celia, waving at someone through the window before remembering that it was Joe’s car she was in and sinking quietly down on the backseat. “That way we’ll be home before Mummy starts going on.”
    “We won’t forget this, Joe.”
    There were only two cars on the drive when they arrived, a paltry total that, when Joe remarked upon it, prompted Celia, already snappy through overexcitement, to observe that it was “just as well he wasn’t invited, then.” He didn’t snap back; he never did. But he didn’t smile, even when Lottie squeezed his arm with as much apology as she could muster while they climbed out. And he drove off without waving.
    “I do hate a man that sulks,” said Celia cheerfully as they rang the doorbell. “I hope they don’t have coconut cakes. I do detest coconut.”
    Lottie was feeling faintly sick. She had none of the appetite for social gatherings that Celia displayed, largely because she still felt uncomfortable explaining herself to those who didn’t know her. People were never satisfied if she said she lived at the Holdens’. They wanted to know why, and then for how long, and whether she missed her mother. At Mrs. Holden’s last garden party (Poorly Children in Africa), she made the mistake of admitting that it had been over a year since they had last met and subsequently found herself, uncomfortably, an object of some pity.
    “They’re outside,” said Marnie, who looked, if it were possible, even more grim-faced than usual as she opened the door. “You won’t need your gloves,” she muttered as she followed them down the hallway, gesturing toward the back.
    “On or off, then?” whispered Celia as they walked toward the light.
    Lottie, her ears already trained on the voices outside, didn’t answer.
    It was not your standard garden