Chapters (42)
- Cover
- Half-title Page
- Dedication
- Also by Celia Imrie
- Title Page
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Part Two
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Part Three
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Part Four
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Part Five
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Part Six
- Twenty-seven
- Postscript
- Acknowledgements
- Also available by Celia Imrie
- Nice Work (If You Can Get It)
After they had gone, the house descended into an eerie silence, with only the ticking of the kitchen clock to break the monotony. Theresa wandered around for a while. She sat on Chloe’s bed and pulled out the drawers hoping something would prove to be a clue to her whereabouts. But it was only the usual things you’d find in a teenage schoolgirl’s room: socks, T-shirts, pants and weekend clothes.
Theresa went downstairs, made herself a coffee and flopped down on to the sofa. She tried to put herself into Chloe’s mind. But the impossible thing was to imagine her mind under the influence of some bald old man. She felt sure now that Cressida was fantasising or confused about his wearing a brown dress. Unless perhaps this Laurence was a transsexual teacher …
On the shelf beneath the coffee table there was a pile of magazines and the orange spine of a photo album, exactly like her own, which she had been so worried about during the night.
She wondered if she hadn’t gone mad and inadvertently thrown the photo album into her bag and brought it with her and not left it on the counter back in the kitchen of La Mosaïque. As she reached forward and pulled it out, she vaguely recalled a Christmas when she’d absent-mindedly bought two for the price of one albums, gave one to her daughter and in the end kept the other for herself.
Theresa flicked idly through the pages of fading photos of christenings and children’s parties. Chloe in a fancy-dress costume, dressed as a witch. A goose-pimpled Lola, blue with cold, standing by the school pool, holding up a swimming medal. Cressida, shy and knock-kneed, in a huge school hat. Probably her first day, thought Theresa. Some pictures of a pantomime. It was hard to see through the make-up and work out whether any of her grandchildren were involved. She presumed they must be. Why else were the photos in here? She felt happy that Imogen kept up this book. After all, in these days of camera phones, very few people kept hard copies of photographs.
Theresa turned the page to a lovely full-length photo of Chloe in her costume as Juliet. She wished she could have seen the production. Chloe looked perfect in the part. So eager and innocent. Her hair down, flowing over the shoulders of a beautiful ivory and gold gown.