The Other Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

dust coats her lips and eyelids. She moves her leg and a twig catches her ankle, then something trails across her face. She swipes up a hand and pulls something sticky off her cheek – a big, brown, flickering spider drops down the front of her T-shirt. She jerks away, yanking herself off the branch, hearing the fabric rip; bits fall out as she flaps her shirt. A silver people carrier is reversing out of the next-door driveway, and she finds herself standing by its open passenger window.
    ‘Hey.’ The man leans over the passenger seat, grinning. ‘Everything OK?’
    ‘I was . . . I was just . . .’ She brushes herself down, unable to think of a reasonable explanation for hiding in a shrub. ‘We just moved in.’
    ‘Oh, you’re English! I think I’ve seen your husband coming and going a few times – at least, I assume he’s your husband? Tall, dark hair?’
    ‘Yes, that’s Greg. He’s been out here setting things up.’
    His smile stiffens. ‘My wife’s met him.’
    Greg talked about signing the lease, getting keys, doing inventories with the realtor, blowing up mattresses, but he never mentioned meeting the neighbours.
    ‘Well, I’m Josh.’
    ‘Tess.’
    ‘Nice to meet you, Tess. Welcome to the neighbourhood. And now I have to get my girls to music camp.’
    She steps back and he reverses fully into the street, yelling to his girls through his open window.
    She walks over to the swing set and perches on it. There is a triangular rip in the expensive white fabric of her T-shirt and it is smeared with dirt. She rocks, anchored by her toes, turning her face to the sky. Her ankle stings where the twig scratched it. This does not feel like a good start. A cloud floats across the sun and small dark birds swoop to and fro as if lost.
    ‘Hello, beautiful!’
    She opens her eyes. Greg is striding across the lawn, his shirt a broad white sail against the sea of grass. She leaps off the swing and he drops his bags, catching her in his arms, pulling her against him. She smells the staleness of airports on him, feels the warmth of his chest beneath the crisp cotton and presses her nose into the crook of his neck where he only smells of himself. He pulls back, they look at each other at arm’s length, holding hands in the sunlight, and everything feels energized again, full and round and back in its rightful place.

Chapter Three
     
    It has only been four weeks, but already this is the time of day she dreads the most. The women gather in sub-groups, holding travel mugs, wearing Lycra and Nikes, khakis and loafers, embracing, calling out to each other across the playground, making arrangements, sharing frustrations, information and stories as their eyes skim over her.
    She has never enjoyed the school gate, even at home. Nell, a member of the PTA, used to try to co-opt her into organizing cake stalls, quiz nights and promises auctions, but even she gave up eventually. ‘You’re just not a joiner,’ she’d said, ‘are you? You’re a lone wolf.’
    But this level of discomfort is something else entirely. It is like being a gatecrasher at a party you never wanted to attend. The only other person standing alone is a woman in an ice-blue shift dress, on the edge of the playground. Tess squints through the sun and realizes it is the next-door neighbour, Helena.
    She looks more groomed than she did at 5.30 this morning, when she was outside their house, talking to Greg.
    Tess had woken up much earlier than usual, starving, with not a trace of nausea. She got up and rolled up the new blinds in the bedroom to find the street below bathed in rosy dawn light – and there was Greg, in running gear, with this woman. Her thick hair was in a ponytail, her body curved but athletic, and as the two of them talked, she raised her chin and ran both hands over her hair in a gesture that lifted her breasts in their Lycra vest. Greg glanced, then looked away.
    When she heard the front door open she went downstairs.
    ‘Hey – what