Dishonour Read Online Free PDF

ignored her.
    ‘Your poor old pregnant mother?’ She emptied a handful into a bowl. ‘A mother who worries about her son all day if he hasn’t a decent meal inside of him.’
    Sam poked the box. ‘That’s hardly a decent meal.’
    ‘Better than that.’ She nodded to the biscuits.
    Sam grabbed the bowl, the dry hoops rattling around the bottom, then yanked the milk from the fridge.
    ‘You, Sam Valentine, are an angel,’ Lilly laughed.
    ‘Whatever.’
    Something was going on with Sam. He was sullen and uncooperative. The child whom every school report described as ‘sunny’ had morphed into a shadow.
    When his face first darkened, Lilly had assumed it was the baby troubling him and had taken every opportunity to assure him that he wouldn’t be pushed out.
    ‘There’ll still be lots of time for you,’ she’d said.
    ‘There’s no time now,’ he’d moaned.
    Lilly had acknowledged the truth of this. She was always busy, pushed for time, trying to juggle everything. Poor Sam often got pushed to the sidelines.
    And yet something told her now that it wasn’t the arrival of a new baby brother or sister that was bothering him.
    ‘Is everything all right at school?’ she fished.
    Sam rolled his eyes theatrically.
    ‘If there were any problems, you know I’d go straight up there,’ she said.
    ‘Everything’s fine,’ he mumbled.
    She watched her son drag himself and his breakfast up the stairs. She certainly didn’t have the strength to follow up the ‘no eating in the bedrooms’ rule. No doubt she’d find the remnants stuck to the windowsill, the discarded bowl making a perfect white circle on the freshly glossed wood.
    After a fire in the cottage had left every room blackened by smoke, the insurance company had agreed to cover the cost of redecoration. For three weeks two handsome Polish men filled the cottagewith their indecipherable chatter and the smell of undercoat.
    The place hadn’t looked this good in years. The walls were still uneven and the hall filled with bags for recycling, but everything seemed much less shabby. Although Lilly had been terrified by the fire she had to admit that there had been this one small silver lining.
    Penny had suggested she invite some of the Manor Park mums over for a coffee morning. ‘Show the place off,’ she said.
    Hmm. The lining wasn’t that bloody metallic.
    Lilly fingered her new kitchen curtains. They were gingham and wonderfully kitch. They made her smile.
    ‘I never took you for a woman so interested in soft furnishings.’
    Lilly turned to Jack, who had slipped into a chair.
    ‘Think of the hours you could while away in John Lewis picking some cushions to match,’ he said.
    Lilly threw a dishcloth at him. It landed on his lap with a wet thump.
    ‘And there was me going to make you a bacon butty,’ she said. ‘But you can whistle for it now.’
    Jack laughed and threw the cloth back. It hit the window behind her.
    ‘Fried pig,’ he patted his stomach, ‘I don’t think so.’
    Lilly had to admit that Jack’s current regime of running ten clicks a day had paid off and he was looking pretty buff, but his refusal to eat anything remotely bad for him was bloody irritating. She had always loved to cook and he had always loved to eat. A match madein heaven. Now all he would countenance was salad and soup.
    He grabbed a banana and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Get plenty of rest today.’
    Lilly waved him away. His healthy lifestyle was unattractive enough without his constant worrying.
    ‘I’m not ill, Jack.’
    ‘Don’t be so defensive, woman. I just thought that since you’ve no work to do you may as well put your feet up.’ He peered at them, spilling over the sides of her slippers. ‘They look like they need it.’
    She knew full well he was just trying to be nice but as she watched Jack peel the banana and take a bite, her annoyance rose.
    ‘I do have work to do,’ she said.
    ‘Is that right?’ Jack’s mouth was full of