The Crooked House Read Online Free PDF

music. Rosa looked hurt as she stood to leave.
    Thank God for Kay, she thought. But even woozy with the wine and waving Rosa off across the room, Alison didn’t confide in her friend. Maybe there’d come a time when she didn’t have to be obnoxious to naive, curious girls like Rosa. Maybe not.
    As the wedding drew closer, Alison told herself she could always fake illness as a plan. She could even poison herself with something: old pâté or laxatives. She wanted to see Paul but five nights out of six she still made herself take the bus down through the West End, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, over the river.
    Herbedsit looked better for it. She had put everything away, in drawers and cupboards, under the bed, so that the room seemed one big window, filled with the luminous green-yellow tree. But as she tidied, and straightened the bed, she wished for Paul: she found herself doing everything as though he was watching her. It was dangerous.
    Since the wedding invitation, too, crossing the water did something to her insides. From the top of the bus she always looked downriver, to the clustered skyscrapers that stood between her and the estuary.
    He called her at work, the week before the wedding. Which was unusual: mostly they sent each other very brief, functional text messages if arrangements needed to be made, which was down to Alison’s habit of holding back and Paul’s distrust of mobile phones – his age, he always said, though he was only forty-odd. They did their talking in person, face to face, long peaceful silences, then he’d look up and say, ‘But did you like it?’ about some book he’d given her, searching her face, wanting to know, patient. Long, lazy conversations about books and movies and work, eating dinner at his big wooden table or leaning against each other on his old sofa, but silence in between. It was more exciting that way, she told herself, and messages and phone calls were for teenagers and never satisfactory anyway, but sometimes she wished for a sign, some kind of softer communication.
    ‘I’ve booked somewhere,’ he said. She could hear alertness in his voice.
    ‘Where?’ she blurted, knowing he meant Saltleigh, knowing he meant the wedding, but her mind abruptly, crazily, seesawing at the thought. Hotels, in Saltleigh? She could only remember the pub. It wasn’t the kind of place for bed and breakfast, even, not a tourist spot, what with the mud and the power station. Before anything was said she felt herself rise to its defence, the tufted grass of the dykes and the wide grey horizon, theplace where you could see the sun come up over the sea. Aware of a head raised across the cramped open-plan offices, Alison turned on her chair with the phone to her ear. Her heart bumped in her chest: he would find her out. How could he not? She waited for him to answer.
    ‘The wedding,’ he said. ‘You haven’t forgotten?’
    ‘No,’ she said, trying to sound bright. Normal. ‘Do we … um is there a wedding present list?’
    ‘The wedding’s on Saturday but I thought we’d go a few days ahead of time. Tuesday,’ said Paul, his voice warm now, reassured. ‘Make a, you know, a little holiday of it. There’s a place, it’s on the edge of the village, apparently, it’s even got a website. The Queen’s Head, an old Edwardian roadhouse, must have been done up quite recently. It looks all right, actually. Look it up.’
    ‘I’d have to talk to work – it’s short notice.’
    ‘Sure,’ he said equably. ‘But it’ll be fine, won’t it? Gerry’s always telling you you need a holiday.’ Gerry owned the company: he was also an acquaintance of Paul’s, and of course Paul was right, that was no escape route. ‘We can get you something to wear, if you like. Get a present. Do that together. If you’d like.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t need … I’ve got things to wear,’ she said, thinking of what Kay would say. Her eyes would open wide,
He’s hooked, all right. Wants to take you