What Men Say Read Online Free PDF Page B

there’s a double bed in her room.”
    Sam shook his head, his face suddenly slack and preoccupied. “I have to stay here, keep an eye on those guys . . .” He glanced downstairs again and brightened; Loretta turned and saw that Stephen had gone back into the garden, leaving Janet Dunne and the beefy PC in the hall.
    â€œMy turn,” Janet called up ruefully.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Sam spread his hands wide, indicating regret at his inability to intervene.
    â€œSam?” Loretta touched his arm, anxious to leave.
    â€œYeah, I’m—” He shook her off, then seemed to rememberwho she was. “Sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry, Loretta.” He led the way upstairs, the worried look returning as he tapped on the door of his and Bridget’s bedroom.
    â€œHoney, it’s me.”
    â€œCome in.”
    Bridget’s voice was faint and tremulous. Loretta pulled her hair back from her face, massaged the back of her aching neck and followed Sam into the room.
    â€œMore wine?” Audrey Summers held up the bottle, reading the label aloud as she waited for Loretta’s reply. “
Mor-bi-do,
what’s that mean?”
    â€œSoft,” said Loretta, looking for her glass. “It’s Italian for soft. Now where did I . . .”
    â€œAre you fluent? I’d like to be but I don’t have a gift for languages.”
    â€œI get by.” She spotted her glass on top of the bread bin and passed it to Audrey, who filled it. Behind her a pan of tomato sauce started to bubble on the hob and she turned to lower the heat. “This’11 be ready in a couple of minutes. I wonder if Bridget’s still asleep?”
    â€œIf she is we’ll just have to wake her up. She must eat something after all that vomiting. Have you got a tray?”
    â€œIn there.” Loretta nodded towards an old pine dresser in an alcove to the right of the fireplace. “I’ll drain the pasta.” She gripped a large stainless-steel pasta boiler by its handles and carried it to the sink.
    â€œInteresting kitchen you’ve got here, this mixture of old stuff and all that white.” Audrey gestured towards the modern bit of the kitchen. “Was it here or did you have it done?”
    â€œI had it done—I wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise.” Loretta divided the pasta between threeplates and began spooning tomato sauce on top. She had bought the house almost exactly three years ago when Southmoor Road was still coming up, as the estate agent informed her; many of the houses were occupied by a transient population of genuine Oxford undergraduates and students of obscure private colleges which traded on their connection with the city. It had been Bridget’s idea, her excited response to Loretta’s glum account of trailing round a dozen unsuitable and hugely expensive maisonettes in London. “Move to Oxford! It’s not
that
much cheaper than Islington, but if you buy in the right place . . .” Loretta had not treated the suggestion seriously until Bridget sent details of the house in Southmoor Road with the chief attractions picked out in yellow highlighter: the long, pretty garden with a landing stage at the far end, and the fact that it was within walking distance of her own house.
    â€œYou’ve got all that money coming from America,” Bridget wheedled on the phone, recklessly inflating the sum for which Loretta’s literary agent was likely to sell the rights to her Edith Wharton biography in New York. “What else are you going to do with it? You could put the kitchen here”—by now Loretta had weakened and was standing in the gloomy basement room at the front of the house—“knock an arch through into the dining room, which would give you more light, and then have French windows opening into the garden.” Bridget had rushed from room to room, wishing away partitions and