11 The Teashop on the Corner Read Online Free PDF Page A

divorced her. Who gets married to a second woman when you’re not divorced from the
first one?’
    I can’t blame Andrew, thought Carla. It wasn’t a subject that would normally have raised its head when you mainly kept in touch via the medium of Christmas cards. Martin hadn’t
really liked Andrew all that much. Then again, Martin hadn’t really liked anyone that much. He’d taken being anti-social to an art form.
    ‘I need a large drink,’ Andrew said, taking hold of Carla’s arm. ‘I suspect you do as well.’
    And he led her out to the Ship, where Carla endured all the ‘sorry for your losses’ she was offered, attempted to ignore all the gossip happening around her and tried her best to get
through the next hour without throwing herself on the carpet and screaming out her pain.

Chapter 6
    ‘Honestly, Molly, this house is far too big for you to manage. Gram and I do worry about you.’
    Molly’s daughter-in-law, blonde, buxom Sherry Beardsall, angled the teapot over Molly’s cup, topping it up to full, whilst launching into what had become, over the past weeks, an
all-too-familiar speech. ‘I mean, what do you really need with three bedrooms?’
    And Molly answered as she always did, with a timid smile. ‘Well, it’s not really all that big.’
    Molly wasn’t half as daft as Sherry thought she was. She wasn’t taken in by the mask of concern that Sherry wore over her heavily powdered face because this conversation
always
steered towards the words ‘Autumn Grange’, just as surely as if it had been a destination programmed into a sat-nav.
    The house
was
too big for Molly, although it wasn’t a fraction as large as her sister’s next door. Margaret lived in a very old, grand house with six bedrooms and a small
lake in the grounds. Her husband Bernard had inherited The Lakehouse from his parents and it was he who’d had Willowfell built for Molly on their land many years ago. Houses in the village of
Higher Hoppleton commanded a greater price with every passing year. Molly’s house, with no mortgage on it, was worth a ridiculously pretty penny and her son Graham and his wife Sherry were in
an unobstructed line to inherit it.
    ‘Here, have a slice of cake.’ Sherry cut them both a piece of sponge. ‘I won’t give you too much to start with,’ she simpered, handing Molly a slice which was half
the size of her own. Sherry shoved the cake into her mouth and devoured it in two bites. Cream and icing sugar stuck to her red lipstick and when she dabbed it away with her serviette, the colour
strayed over her lip-line. She looked like she had blood, rather than make-up, on her mouth.
    Molly nibbled delicately at hers, not really wanting to eat cake, and certainly not with Sherry, who had begun these Tuesday morning visits a few weeks ago out of the blue. The attention she
paid to her mother-in-law had gone from nought to sixty and Molly knew there had to be a reason for it. She doubted it was money because Graham had his own business; he and his wife both had flash
cars and a new-build double-fronted house painted monstrous pink and yellow. But whatever Sherry wanted from her, it hadn’t raised its head properly yet; it remained shrouded in gifts of
cake, small talk and subtle mentions of Autumn Grange.
    Sherry usually started by alluding to how Molly was getting on a bit and how worried Gram and she were that she was coping okay.
    Graham, although Sherry always called him Gram, obviously wasn’t
that
concerned because he seldom visited; only when he had to, at Christmas, birthdays and Mother’s Day
– unless they happened to be on holiday in their Greek villa. He left all the social stuff to his wife, a woman named, by no coincidence, after a drink that was sickly-sweet and best
encountered in small quantities once a year at Christmas.
    ‘I mean you’ve still got a bedroom reserved for Gram and he isn’t likely to sleep in there again,’ chuckled Sherry.
    ‘No,’ replied Molly