The Silk Factory Read Online Free PDF Page B

awkwardly and stood looking after the hoop as it rolled past the post. May’s eyes didn’t follow its motion; she stared as if looking straight through the scene as the hoop wobbled and settled flat on the grass.
    Rosie tried again. ‘Do you remember coming to stay with me in London? I only had Sam then, he was just a toddler – your great-nephew? Well, I have a little girl too now, called Cara. I’ll bring them to see you next time.’
    May looked back at her and seemed to be listening so Rosie ploughed on. ‘Do you remember when we went over to Kew Gardens and had a picnic? Helena and you, and Sam and Josh and I?’
    May nodded, at first tentatively and then more vigorously. ‘Hothouses,’ she said. ‘Flowering cacti. Pelargoniums. The child was cutting a tooth.’
    Rosie was surprised; she had forgotten that herself. What she remembered was how distracted Josh had been, how he kept getting up from the picnic rug and striding away every time he got a call. She had been annoyed because he was supposed to be taking time off so that they could have a family day, and instead of helping her entertain their guests he was dealing with work queries every five minutes and champing at the bit to go home – to get back to his computer, Rosie had imagined. Now she wondered if he hadn’t even then been keen to take the messages because they were from Tania; maybe they had even been seeing each other, arranging to meet, Josh estimating when he could get away … Was it possible? Tears came into her eyes. ‘That’s right,’ she said weakly, ‘Josh took us in the car.’
    As though May read her mind, at the mention of Josh she leant forward and said, as if confiding a secret, ‘Why you ever married him I don’t know.’ Then, looking around the room as if seeking an audience, she announced loudly, ‘The man’s an absolute arse!’
    Rosie, tickled by May’s colourful language, began to laugh.
    ‘Arse! Arse! Arse!’ May chanted. Rosie could do nothing to quieten her and laughed uncontrollably, finding a release. The lady dozing at the other end of the room stirred and blinked at them like a waking owl and then subsided back into sleep.
    ‘Pain in the arse!’ May ended triumphantly, slapping her knee. ‘And that is my considered opinion. Where is my bag?’ She cast about her and found it under her seat. ‘Do you like Maltesers?’ she asked, calm again.
    Rosie, dabbing her eyes, said that she did.
    May pulled a black leather handbag the size of a shopping bag out from under the chair and up on to her knee. She rummaged inside and then lost patience and began to unpack its contents on to the coffee table beside her.
    ‘What on earth have you got in there, May?’ Rosie said as the clutter of objects grew: a seed catalogue, several framed photographs, a
Radio Times
, a thriller with a bookmark in the first page, a crude piece of sewing in colourful felts with a needle dangling from it, a tube of indigestion pills … Rosie picked up a toothbrush, covered in fluff. ‘Why have you got your toothbrush in your bag?’
    ‘I’m not staying,’ May said. ‘I’m going home soon.’ She pulled out a box of Maltesers and offered it to her.
    Rosie took one and then, seeing that May was struggling to pick one up, trying to capture it between her fingers and the base of her stiff thumb, picked out another and popped it into May’s mouth. ‘Isn’t it heavy to carry around with you – your bag?’
    May shook her head. ‘There are thieves,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘They come in your house. They send her to unlock the door and let them in. They hide behind doors and round the bend in the stairs.’ She grew more agitated and began pulling things from her bag as if searching for something else.
    ‘Who do they send?’ Rosie said.
    ‘The child. The bad child.’
    ‘What child?’ Rosie said uneasily, feeling a prickle at the back of her neck.
    Suddenly May upended the bag, tipping the remainder of its