Bad Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page B

The narrow patio outside had been sprayed down and weeded in his time, the windows washed with vinegar and newspaper, the plants on the sills watered, the curtains taken to the cleaners every so often. Now the flagstones were cracked almost to splinters in places, straggled dandelions forcing their way through the gaps. The glass of the windows was smeared and dirty, and in place of a curtain, the front lounge had what looked like a tablecloth half-pinned up over the bay window.
    Bill would hate this
, she thought instinctively. She craned her head sideways to look into the long thin stretch of back garden; the wall that separated his semi from the house next door was in worse repair than ever, and it was easy to see into the garden. Unsurprisingly, considering the state of the house, it looked as if no one had touched the garden since Bill’s time in residence. The grass was so long you could have plaited it, waving in the wind like a green sea, weeds growing high through it now there was no Bill to pop out every Saturday with his Argos strimmer and keep it in order.
    And the sycamore tree was still there. Its roots had already been tearing up the wall of their back garden when they’d lived there; Bill had reported it to the council, but no one had cared then, and clearly nothing had changed in the eighteen years since Bill’s death. The tree was much taller now, and, by the crumbling brickwork she could see in the garden next door its roots had clearly reached further, undermining the neighbours’ walls too.
    Bill’s death
. A shiver ran right through Deeley, rippling up her spine, chilling her blood.
It’s not just Mum
, she thought, feeling suddenly panicky now she was so close to what had happened eighteen years ago.
There are so many things the McKenna sisters don’t want to remember
. . .
    ‘You lost?’
    A voice beside her made her jump almost out of her skin. She turned, nearly tripping, to see a woman standing right next to her.
How did she get that close to me without my noticing
? Deeley wondered.
I must have been in a complete daze
. . .
    ‘You’re not from round here,’ the woman said. A statement, not a question, made in the strong local accent that, even after all these years, Deeley had no difficulty in understanding.
    ‘No,’ Deeley admitted. ‘I’m not.’
    The woman’s hair was scraped back into a tight high ponytail, like a poor person’s attempt at a facelift. It hadn’t helped much, particularly as the style was too young for her, just like the big gold hoop earrings she was wearing. Deeley felt a rush of familiarity looking at her, even though she didn’t recognize her; but she was so archetypically like the women from this town, this area. The greyish skin, lined and leathered prematurely by smoking before she was even in her teens; the tight, pinched mouth and perpetual frown; the scrawny frame in t-shirt and denim jacket; the slight smell of beer on her breath. So many women round here looked just like her. The only difference in the last eighteen years was that instead of jeans, the woman wore velour tracksuit trousers in a bright shade of pink, tucked into flopping Ugg-style boots.
    All probably bought from the local market
, Deeley thought, remembering what a huge deal the thrice-weekly market had been. How she and her sisters had craved and saved up for the cheap make-up, the knock-off L’Oréal eyeshadow palettes labelled in Chinese that caked as soon as they applied them, the ‘fashion tights’ that had no lycra in them and bagged around their ankles halfway through the first wear.
    ‘I know you,’ the woman said, the crow’s feet around her eyes deepening even further as she squinted at Deeley. She took a long drag on the cigarette she was holding in a nicotine-stained hand, its fingers tipped with long elaborate acrylic nails. ‘You used to live round here. I never forget a face.’
    Her narrow gaze took in Deeley from head to toe. It wasn’t pleasant; Deeley found