Read Losing You for Free Online Page A

crowd. ‘Ashleigh! Ashleigh, you have to tell me now. Has Charlie got some secret plan she’s going to spring on me? Is that why she’s not here?’
    Ashleigh shrugged and raised her perfect eyebrows. ‘She didn’t say anything to me, Nina. Honestly. She just said come to your birthday party at eleven, and don’t smoke.’
    ‘So you haven’t heard anything from her?’
    ‘Hang on.’ She pulled out a pink phone the size of a matchbox and jabbed at it with casual expertise. ‘No,’ she said, after a few seconds. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘Happy birthday, gorgeous Nina,’ said a portly man, ambushing me from the side and giving me and the laundry a bear-hug. ‘Bet you didn’t expect to see me here, did you?’
    ‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘I didn’t. Did Charlie – ’
    ‘Yup. Lovely girl, your daughter. Growing up, isn’t she?’ He winked.
    ‘Will you excuse me for a minute?’
    I wriggled free and crossed the room to the washing-machine, pushed in the sheets and selected quick-wash. That way I’d still have time to hang them out before we left. A cork shot past my face as I stood up, and there was another knock at the door. I squeezed my way through the crowd to get to it. A woman with untidy dark hair and a flushed red face was standing on the step. I had been so destabilized by the shock of the party that for a few seconds I didn’t speak, even though I knew her and had been expecting her. ‘Nina, what’s going on? It was today I was meant to arrive, wasn’t it?’
    Renata was my cousin, or a sort of cousin. I’d known her all my life without really knowing her, and now she was here to look after Sludge while we went to Florida. Or that was the excuse. She had just been left by her husband, having tried and failed for ten years to have children, and she had spent the last two months crying, unable to get out of bed. I’d thought maybe our house on Sandling Island, so far from her own where she’d been humiliated and abandoned, might do her some good. She had clearly put on her country clothes: green wellingtons, sensible trousers, a waxed jacket that looked brand new with a scarf tucked tidily into it. But nothing was quite right on her: it was as if she was acting a part whose lines she hadn’t properly learned. She had lost a lot of weight, so that her clothes hung off her. Her face was a bit puffy; there were wrinkles that hadn’t been there a few months ago. Her smile was too bright and brave. I’d always found her rather brisk and bossy, but now I softened. I hugged her, kissed her icy red cheeks. ‘How lovely to see you. Come in out of the cold. It’s the right day. Sorry. It’s all a bit mad, an aberration, but we’ll be gone soon and so will all of them.’
    ‘I’ll get my luggage, shall I?’
    ‘Do you mind if I leave you to it? I’ll put the door on the latch.’
    I edged back into the house. Someone pushed a glass of wine into my hand and I put it down on the nearest shelf. I sat on the stairs, half watching Karen jabbing the vicar repeatedly in the chest, making a point I couldn’t hear through the din. I had first met him the day after we arrived on the island. He had sat in my kitchen and drunk coffee, said I should call him Tom and told me about the best local shops and beaches. Right at the end he had wondered in an almost guilty murmur whether he might see us occasionally at St Peter’s. Everything in me wanted to say yes. I had already spotted and loved his church, a small medieval building, worn soft and smooth by the north wind and centuries of devotion. I could imagine being there and singing hymns alongside the islanders, except that, almost with regret, I lacked the belief. He had said with a smile that that didn’t stop most people. I had promised myself that I would go to his church at Christmas, but things had turned out differently and I would instead be on a beach in Florida.
    If we ever got there. I called Charlie’s mobile again. This was getting ridiculous.