Barefoot in the Dark Read Online Free PDF

thick. Healthy-looking. And he’s got a very handsome face. Puts me a little in mind of Paul Newman in that film. What was it called? Cool Hand Luke , that was it. No, it wasn’t. That was the egg one. He had it cropped in that, didn’t he? No, it must have been Hud . You know.’
    ‘I don’t.’
    ‘Yes you do . That one with Patricia Neal.’
    ‘What time did you put the fish fingers in?’
    ‘And that black shirt. I’ve always liked a man in a black shirt.’
    ‘Mum? What time?’
    ‘Oh, ten past. They’ll be done by now, I should think. I put them on two-twenty because your oven’s so cold. I don’t know what possessed you to get electric. You’d have been so much better with gas. You know where you are with gas.’
    She had known where she was with being married to Iain. Or so she’d thought. Electricity was different from what she was used to. And so better, by default.
    ‘ Twelve? ’ she said now, pulling the baking tray from the oven.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Mum, why have you cooked twelve fish fingers, for goodness sake?’
    ‘What? Oh. I just did what was left in the packet. I had to make space for Suze’s bolognaise sauce. Did I tell you she’d popped in with it?’ Hope rolled her eyes. ‘And there’s no point in putting two fish fingers back in the freezer now, is there? Besides, Tom’s a growing boy. You never seem to give him any proper food these days. Now, shall I mash these, or what?’
    It was silly. But there was no telling Madeleine that. And she got to be reunited with her trainer, which was an unexpected bonus. Thank God she hadn’t thrown the other one away. But speaking on the radio. Now that was a scary concept.
    ‘So that’s the plan then, is it?’ her mother asked now, while doling out beans on to plates for the children and reminding Hope to ring her sister-in-law to thank her for the bolognaise sauce. That she hadn’t asked for in the first place. That she didn’t even want. ‘Friday? I’ll need to know when it is you’re going to be on, exactly, because I’ve promised your Aunty Doris I’ll tape it for her.’
    Hope pulled the almost empty ketchup bottle from the fridge and started banging it upside down against the table top.
    ‘Half-past twelve, I think. Or just after. That’s when they’ve told me to get there, anyway. God. I’m going to feel such a prat. But Madeleine seems to think there might be something in it for us – what with the fun run and everything – and she does have a point. And I get my trainer back. But, ugh. I can’t imagine anything more silly. Prince Charming, indeed. I mean, how sad is that?’
    ‘But he is.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Charming.’
    ‘Who is?’
    ‘Jack Valentine! ’
    ‘We’ll see. He’s got a very silly name.’
    Hope had never been to the BBC before but, even so, she hadn’t expected to be so nervous. Or find that she was the sort of person who’d try on eight different combinations of tops and bottoms before seven in the morning. Her stomach was lurching unpleasantly. Going to the BBC was something other people did. People with aggressively styled hair and all-over tans. People who could open their mouths in front of microphones and be confident that long strings of sensible words would come out. People not like her, in fact.
    She negotiated the last roundabout and tried to slow the anxious thumps in her chest. The buildings, which were of a late-sixties persuasion and many in number, reared imposingly at the intersection of two roads, surrounded by towering Scots pines. She pulled in at the entrance to find a man staring balefully out at her from the doorway of a Portakabin.
    ‘I think I’ve got a space reserved,’ she told him.
    He nodded with the gravitas of a person for whom the parking space shortfall was the bane of his existence. Which, Hope reasoned, it probably was. ‘Just as well, my lovely.’ He shook his head. ‘Just as well.’ He directed her up to the front of the biggest building, and, just as the