An Accidental Shroud Read Online Free PDF

only kinds of jewellery she really liked.
    Finally, she took a small flat package from her shoulder bag. After staring at it uneasily for several minutes, she pushed it into the box underneath the jewellery.
    From outside came the sound of a motorbike drawing up on the gravel by the front door. She jumped up to look out of the window. Cassie!
    In two minutes she was downstairs.
    Christine, taking a bowl of salad from the kitchen to the dining room, heard the cries of welcome and stopped to watch the two girls through the open dining room door. For a moment she felt a stab of jealousy. How long was it since Lindsay had been so forthcoming with her? What was it about this strong, stocky girl with her smouldering dark eyes, her mass of black hair and, let it be said, her sometimes undesirable manners, that so attracted Lindsay? She didn't care who she offended and seemed oblivious of the fact that Jake neither liked her nor made her welcome. She would certainly invite herself to supper, and Christine wasn't best pleased about that; apart from buying the pistachio ice-cream Lindsay doted on, she'd gone to some trouble to prepare a special meal. There was just enough, which would mean eking out. Cassie ate a lot, as Christine knew to her cost, for she'd continued to come here in Lindsay's absence, having somehow formed an odd sort of friendship with Matthew as well. Friendship was all it was, Christine didn't believe there was anything more than that between them. Cassie Andreas was secretive; despite the fact that she'd been coming to the house on and off for several months, Christine knew virtually nothing about her, except that she was half Greek and that she and her mother had only recently come to live in England, and that Cassie now worked part time on the petrol pumps at the Esso station down the road – and most of this had been dragged out of either Matthew or Lindsay. It wouldn't have made her feel any better to learn that neither of them knew much more about Cassie than she did – the difference being that it didn't matter to them.
    Ostensibly watching Friday Night with Callaghan with Jake, after the two girls and Matthew had wedged themselves into Matt's car and roared away like 1920s bright young things, Christine found herself thinking again about the situation and growing tight-lipped. The time for finesse had gone. This was their house, hers and Jake's, Matthew and Lindsay were their children. As parents, she and Jake had a right to know who it was they brought home.
    'Good, isn't he?' Jake broke into her thoughts, lounging back and watching Tom Callaghan on the box, a suave figure with wavy, prematurely white hair and twinkling grey eyes. The show was very popular at the moment, the ratings were high. Jake liked to watch it because Callaghan was his old school chum, one of a once inseparable trio: Jake, Tom and Jake's cousin, Nigel Fontenoy. That was possibly why Jake wasn't as critical of the programme as Christine, but didn't explain why millions of others liked the show, too. Christine, however, wondered how long it would last. Callaghan probed serious issues, but with a smiling urbanity and an impression of such thorough investigation, that his viewers were left with the comfortable feeling of being absolved from the disagreeable necessity of having to do anything personally about it.
    Tonight, he had been interviewing victims of street crime – mugging, assault, rape, one survivor of a bomb attack. The rape victim was being asked whether she didn't honestly think it possible that some women did in fact provoke such attacks by the way they dressed. The woman answered shortly that no, she didn't, women had the right to dress as they wished, less than delighted with the hoary old question but looking Callaghan straight in the eye. The camera zoomed in on her tight red top, short leather skirt and long, long legs. 'I'm sure we all agree with you,' said Tom Callaghan sincerely, and launched smoothly