The Wicked Girls Read Online Free PDF

silent as she opens the door and breathes in the scent of
     the pot-pourri on the hall table. She glances into the living room, runs an automatic eye around it. Quiet and dark and neat:
     the sofa throws in place, the glass-and-wicker coffee table empty save for the couple of coasters that have their home there,
     papers put neatly away in the magazine rack. Rug hoovered, pictures straight, TV off at the wall, not just on standby. Everything
     is as it should be. All that’s missing is Vic. ‘Hello?’ she calls.
    From the back of the house, faintly, a chorus of yips. The dogs are still out in the garden. They’ve probably been out there
     all night again. It’s not that he does it deliberately; it’s just that the dogs aren’t figures in his emotional landscape.
     They’re
her
dogs,not his, and Vic has a talent for simply editing out things that don’t engage him.
    Amber is bone-weary. She plants her bag on the hall floor and walks through the kitchen – hard-saved-for IKEA cabinets, a
     vase of flowers on the gateleg table, yellow walls that fetch the sun inside even when it’s overcast – to open the back door.
    The day is already warm, but Mary-Kate and Ashley shiver among the pelargoniums like the pedigree princesses they are. She
     bends and scoops them up in her arms: surprised again, as she is every time she does it, by the fact that they really don’t
     seem to weigh any more than the butterflies their breed is named after. Delicate, curious noses, fur soft as thistledown.
     She squeezes them close to her cheeks and is rewarded by great bursting wriggles of love.
    She feeds them, makes a mug of tea and goes up to give it to Vic. She needs him. Needs to know the world is still the same.
    He’s still asleep. Vic’s working day on the rides at Funnland starts at three, ends at eleven, and he often goes out to wind
     down afterwards – just like an office worker, only six hours later. Their lives are turned upside down from the rest of the
     world’s, and from each other’s. Occasionally they’ll see each other as her shift begins, but sometimes the only words they’ll
     exchange in a week will be on the phone, or as she gets into bed. It’s the price they pay for the life they’ve made. And it’s
     a good life, she assures herself. I would never have dared to think I’d have a life like this.
    Mary-Kate and Ashley follow on her heels, shuffle about the carpet, sniff Vic’s discarded clothes in the half-light through
     the thin curtains. Amber stands at the foot of the bed for a moment, the mug warming her fingers, and studies the familiar
     features. Wonders, again, what a man like that is doing with her. At forty-three he’s still handsome, his dark hair still
     full, the fine lines that are beginning to creep across his weather-tanned skin just making him look wiser, not more tired
     as her own are doing to her. You’d never tell we were seven yearsapart, she thinks. What’s he doing with me, when he could have anyone?
    She puts the mug down on his bedside table. Steps out of her sensible work shoes, sheds her jacket on to the chair. Catches
     the musky scent of her own armpits. Feeling another rush of weariness, she remembers the girl’s purple face, the burst capillaries,
     and wants to weep.
    Vic stirs and opens his eyes. Takes a moment to focus. ‘Oh, hi,’ he says. ‘What time is it?’
    She checks her watch. ‘Ten past eleven.’
    ‘Oh.’ He disentangles a weight-toned arm – an arm that filled her with lust back when they were getting together; that made
     her weak as he wrapped her into it – from the bedclothes and runs his fingers through his hair. The sleep-tangles fall instantly
     away. That’s Vic: a single grooming gesture and he’s ready to face the world.
    ‘You’re late,’ he says, and there’s an edge of reproof to the statement.
    ‘There’s a mug of tea.’ She waves her hand at it, sits down on the bed and rubs at her tired calves. ‘Didn’t you get my