The Wrong Mother Read Online Free PDF Page B

once warned me not to tell her anything that really needs to stay secret: ‘If it’s a good story, I won’t be able to resist telling everyone.’ I had the impression she was using the word ‘everyone’ in its fullest sense.
    ‘So you don’t think I need to . . . tell the police or anything?’
    Esther squawks with laughter. ‘Yeah, right. What are they going to do, appeal for witnesses? I can see the headline now: “The Notorious Bus-pushing Incident of 2007”.’
    ‘I haven’t even told Nick.’
    ‘God, don’t tell him!’ Esther snorts, as if I’ve suggested telling my window cleaner: someone entirely irrelevant. ‘By the way, that story about the neighbour and the agonizing back-ache? Complete crap. The woman’s got six-month-old twins, right?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘So, she’s been breast-feeding like the clappers and her tits have gone all droopy. She wants to swap them for new, perky ones. The medical gubbins is strictly for emotional blackmail purposes, a way of forcing her husband to part with the cash.’
    I hear Nick yelling my name. I ignore him, but he keeps calling me. Normally he gives up almost immediately. ‘I’d better go,’ I tell Esther. ‘Nick wants me. It sounds urgent.’
    ‘Nick? Urgent?’
    ‘Unlikely but true. Look, I’ll ring you back.’
    ‘No, take me with you,’ Esther orders. ‘You know how nosey I am. I want to hear what’s going on in real time.’
    I make a rude face at the phone, then balance it on the side of the bath as I wrap a towel round myself. Too late, I realise it’s white and might end up with smears of red on it. I know we’re out of Vanish, so that’s two new items for my list: buy more stain-remover, wash blood out of towel.
    I take the phone up to the lounge. Nick is still sitting beside the mounds of shepherd’s pie on the carpet, still watching BBC News 24. ‘Have you seen this?’ he says, pointing at a photograph of a woman and a young girl on the screen. A mother and daughter. Across the bottom of the picture there’s a caption that tells me their names. They are dead; the caption says that too. I try to take it in: the words and the photograph together. The meaning. ‘It’s been all over the news for days,’ said Nick. ‘I keep forgetting to tell you. Not often Spilling makes the national headlines.’
    Through a fuzzy layer of shock, I become aware of several things. The woman looks like me. It’s frightening how similar we look. She has the same thick, long, wavy dark brown hair, so brown it’s almost black. Mine feels like wire-wool when it gets too dry, and I bet hers does too. Did. Her face is long and oval-shaped like mine, her eyes big and brown with dark lashes. Her nose is smaller than mine and her mouth slightly wider, and she’s prettier than I am, but still, the overall effect . . .
    Nick doesn’t need to explain why he wanted me to see her. He says, ‘They lived about ten minutes from here—I even know the house.’
    ‘What’s going on?’ Esther’s voice startles me. I wasn’t aware I had the phone pressed to my ear. I can’t answer her. I am too busy staring at the words on the screen: ‘Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick deaths: police suspect mother killed herself after killing her daughter.’
    Geraldine Bretherick. No, it can’t be her. And yet I know it must be. A daughter called Lucy. Also dead. Oh, God, oh, God. How many Geraldine Brethericks can there be who live in Spilling and have daughters called Lucy? Geraldine Bretherick. I nearly pretended it was my name today after my accident, when I didn’t have the guts to tell the women helping me that I’d rather be left alone.
    ‘Are you okay?’ Nick asks. ‘You look a bit odd.’
    ‘Sally, what’s going on?’ demands the voice at my ear. ‘Did Nick just say you look odd? Why, what do you look like?’
    I force myself to speak, to tell Esther that everything is fine but I have to go—the kids need attention. People who don’t have children never