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Back The Family Next Door Save as PDF
Chapters (117)
  1. Also by
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Epigraph
  5. PROLOGUE
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
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  114. 109
  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“It’s not up to you.” A flare of anger ambushed her. “And I prefer to be on my own.” It sounded harsher than she meant.

PC Quick’s face fell. He put down his mug with care and reached for his bag. Wildeve’s hands began to shake, spilling tea onto her thighs. The stain spread across her pajama bottoms, darkening the cotton, scalding her skin, but she didn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

He held an envelope in his hand.

Wildeve closed her eyes, the reservoir behind them as dry as sand. She ought to say something, a thank-you, if nothing else. But how could she bring herself to do that when she felt no gratitude?

Pain began to rake its nails across her jaw, clawing at the back of her head. The drugs were wearing off. For two or three minutes, she gave herself over to it, allowing the firework bursts of agony to crowd out everything except the clarity of sensation. She screwed up her eyes, dug white-knuckled fingers into the sofa and rode the storm.

When the hurt had retreated and she managed to wrench apart her eyelids, Simon was gone and all that remained was a mug of cold tea and a letter that held the words of a ghost.

22

22

Step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.

Now

Birdie disappeared when I was eighteen. It was a relief for both of us.

One day she was there, making bitter coffee and comments, the next she had gone, her cup still on the counter, a ring of scum imprinted on its inside.

She had not made a will, but as her only surviving next of kin, the shop and the house became mine.

No one knew what had happened to her. Not the couple of friends she had failed to alienate. Or the neighbors wrapped up in the cloth of their own lives. Not her new lover who insisted it was “completely out of character” for her to up and leave without saying good-bye. He made a bit of a fuss. But, as I explained to the police, she had threatened to walk out before. That was the God’s honest truth.

On that first night without her—my first night without her—I could breathe again. She had always kept a thick roll of cash in a tin in her wardrobe and I was used to a frugal life.

In any case, I had fallen in love. We lived in Birdie’s house together, pooling our resources, creating our own happy home. I closed the shop as a mark of respect.

And so the waiting began. Seven years until her death became official. But I was in no hurry. What was seven years with a lifetime ahead of me?