Echoes of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

mini-collage beneath it that she’d been so anxious to keep from her father.
    The photo was a still from that fateful programme in the last series of Walt at the Weekend . It showed Walter and Cassandra face to face, each looking as if they could cheerfully murder
the other. The caption read, Still confronting issues head to head – Cassandra Wentworth sniffs out the sleaze in high places in our new series. Don’t miss it!
    Anna jumped as the door to the hut flew open and Mallory, tears streaming down her face, burst in.
    ‘How can you just sit down here like nothing’s happened?’ she sobbed. ‘You know what? Dad’s only gone and agreed to rent our house to those people
—’
    ‘He did? It’s agreed? Thank God!’ So just possibly, her dad wouldn’t have to declare himself bankrupt.
    ‘What do you mean? How could you say that? It’s just not fair!’ She flung herself down on the chair opposite Anna and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
    ‘Can’t you stop him?’ Mallory looked up pleadingly.
    ‘Even if I could, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do,’ Anna replied as gently as she could. ‘We can’t afford to stay here. If the Crofts hadn’t taken it,
someone else would have.’
    ‘Mummy would never have let this happen,’ Mallory sniffed. ‘Us going broke, I mean.’
    ‘I know,’ Anna sighed. ‘But she’s not here and we just have to make the best of it.’
    ‘I’m scared,’ Mallory whispered. ‘I won’t know anyone in Eastbourne and Charlie . . .’
    She choked back a sob. ‘If I’m not around, he might find someone else and I really love him.’
    Anna got up and put an arm round her sister. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Anyway, if he was the type of guy to dump you just because you moved house, he wouldn’t be
worth having in the first place. If you’re really right for one another, this won’t change it.’
    ‘You don’t know anything,’ Mallory retorted. ‘You haven’t been out with anyone since Felix – and that was ages ago.’
    Anna bit her lip.
    ‘Do you still miss him?’ Mallory asked with rare sensitivity.
    Slowly Anna nodded. What was the point of pretending? ‘Yes. Every day. I guess I should never have listened to what anyone else said – letting them persuade me to finish with him, it
was stupid.’
    ‘You’re right!’ Mallory leaped to her feet. ‘And I’m not going to mess up my life because of what other people do. Dad wants to move, fine. But he’s not
dragging me with him.’ She pulled her mobile phone from the back pocket of her jeans and punched in a number.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Anna asked. She knew full well that, however big a tantrum her sister threw, nothing would change.
    ‘Calling Charlie,’ Mallory replied. ‘Come on, come on, pick up.’ She tapped her foot impatiently.
    ‘Hang on a minute,’ Anna began, glancing out of the hut window. ‘He’s coming here.’
    ‘Where are you, for God’s sake?’ Mallory shouted at the unanswered phone.
    The door of the hut swung open again and Charlie Musgrove, grinning from ear to ear, held up his shrilling mobile.
    ‘Hiya babe – how’s that for instant response?’
    ‘Charlie!’
    In a moment, Mallory switched from impatience to pathos. She flung herself into Charlie’s arms and began sobbing with an intensity that, had she been on the West End stage, might have been
considered over-acting.
    ‘Charlie, the most terrible thing . . . and I can’t bear it . . . and no one understands except you . . . can’t cope . . .’
    ‘Hey, hang on – what’s happened?’ He cast an anxious eye in Anna’s direction and raised one eyebrow questioningly.
    Charlie, who at nineteen looked two years younger and had the cheeky grin of a small boy caught stealing cookies, was totally besotted with Mallory and either didn’t realise, or
didn’t care, that making a drama out of a crisis was her preferred way of operating.
    ‘My entire life is in ruins,’ she sobbed. ‘As if