Freeing Grace Read Online Free PDF Page A

me.’
    She looked at me with a new interest. ‘Seriously. What are you planning on doing? You must have a plan.’
    ‘I don’t. I know you can’t imagine that, Luce, but I don’t. In fact, that’s the plan. Not to have one. I’m going to drift around the world, sitting outside cafés in a Panama hat like a pommy toff, reading thrillers.’
    Lucy tipped back her chair, head on one side. She does that when she’s thinking. In fact she was plotting, as it turned out.
    ‘So. You’re a free man, and you’re no longer my boss.’
    ‘Yeah. Your place or mine, darlin’?’
    ‘In your dreams.’ She regarded me steadily for a little time and then seemed to come to a decision. ‘When does Anna want you out?’
    I shrugged. ‘I’m out already. My life is all packed up in the boot of a flashy car I never had time to drive and can no longer afford.’
    ‘Where are you going to stay?’
    ‘Not sure. Most of my mates are mutual friends. You know. I expect they all think I’ve strung Anna along.’
    She nodded. ‘Yes, well. No comment.’ She reached over and pulled a bit of loose cotton off my sleeve. ‘Look. I don’t like to think of you sleeping in Lincoln’s Inn Fields under a copy of The Sun. Might get bullied, pretty boy like you. I’m heading home again tonight, for the weekend—I mean home home, to Suffolk. You can come too.’
    ‘I can’t just—’
    She waved an airy hand. ‘No, shut up. My father will welcome you with open arms. There’s only him and my brother there at the moment. In fact I’ll phone right now and tell him.’ She started rummaging in her handbag.
    ‘Hasn’t there been some drama, though? They won’t want me clattering around the place.’
    She smiled indulgently. ‘It’s just my brother, as usual. Little Matt’s been getting himself into a bit of bother.’
    ‘Off the rails?’
    ‘Well, slightly. But he’s a bright wee sod, he’ll be fine. We’ve taken him out of boarding school and he’s finishing his education locally, where Dad can keep an eye on him.’ She drew breath to say more, but then she shut her mouth again, and I didn’t ask. None of my business.
    That’s one of the bits of baggage I’ve inherited from my parents. They obsessively practised what they called ‘minding their own business’, to the point of insanity. The neighbour could have cut his own leg clean off with a chainsaw and be writhing on the ground, screaming, the lifeblood hosing out of his femoral artery, but they wouldn’t take a look across the fence because it would be none of their business what he was doing on his own property. Seriously. The next time they saw him, hopping down the street on his one remaining leg, they’d pretend nothing had happened. All interest in other people, as far as my parents were concerned, was just nosy gossip. I could never quite throw that off.
    Good old Lucy, I thought fuzzily, as she got out her phone. I was quite touched. We’re great mates at work, but I hadn’t expected her to invite me into her family home. It all sounded quite tempting. I imagined a freezer full of decent food from the local deli, and Old Man Harrison throwing open the drinks cabinet. I was curious, too. I wanted to see where Lucy came from. I should have known better—after all, we know what curiosity did to the cat. But I said thanks, and let her phone her dad.
    And I suppose if I hadn’t, none of this would have happened.

Chapter Two
    She was in a hurry, and under siege.
    The worst thing about being a clergyman’s wife, Leila thought heatedly, is the way people look at you when you come in here. They count how many bottles you buy, and when you’ve gone they sidle over to the counter and mutter, ‘Poor Mr Edmunds, his wife does let him down.’
    She wasn’t just the new curate’s wife. She was the new curate’s black wife. She was a curiosity. White elephant, black curate’s wife. Things were expected of her, preferably lurid. Gossip was currency, in the