When Harriet Came Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

seat. “Um, what?”
    “Adam said he’d be visiting me after work today. I’ve been worried about the two of you meeting, but now your differences have all been sorted, it’s a load off my mind.”
    Fan-bloody-tastic. What was she going to do now? Confess to her dad things were as bad as ever between her and Adam? She couldn’t do that, not when his eyelids were drooping with exhaustion and his skin looked all sallow beneath the purpling bruises.
    She chewed on her lower lip. Dad was right about one thing. She’d been avoiding Wilmot for years mainly because of Adam. It didn’t seem right he should stop her from feeling comfortable with her own father.
    No, somehow between now and whenever Adam knocked off work she would find a way of getting him to accept her apology and forge some kind of ceasefire. She was tired of letting the past beat her.
     
    Growing up, Harriet had sometimes wondered what genetic mix-up had made her and Cindy sisters. Five years her senior, Cindy had always been light years away from Harriet. They were so dissimilar there could be no possibility of jealousy. Titian-haired, willowy Cindy had followed in her mother’s footsteps and done modelling for a couple of years before returning to Wilmot to marry Brett Mitchell, her most faithful of worshippers, who made a comfortable living working at his father’s car dealership.
    Cindy and Brett lived in a new subdivision just outside Wilmot on a “lifestyle” rural acreage. Harriet got out of her newly repaired hatchback and surveyed the place. For her sister “rural” didn’t mean modest. The white Gone-with-the-Wind house reared up like a giant wedding cake, and when she rang the gold-plated doorbell she could hear it echoing through acres of space inside. The sharp clickety-clack of stiletto heels heralded Cindy’s arrival before the door swung open.
    Cindy gave her a lazy smile. “I heard you were back. Mum already driving you crazy?” She lifted one plucked eyebrow before giving Harriet her usual perfumed air-kiss several inches short of Harriet’s cheek.
    “You’re looking good.” Harriet surveyed her sister’s taut figure encased in ripped, skin-tight jeans and tiny, midriff-baring T-shirt. Harriet had lost a lot of weight but knew she would never be as svelte as her sister. To look at Cindy you’d never guess she was the mother of a three-year-old. “How’re Brett and Jarrod?” Harriet asked as they walked through the soaring hallway.
    “Brett’s at work, as usual.” They passed a huge living room lavishly furnished in black and white and continued down the passageway toward the back of the house. “Jarrod’s in here somewhere.” Cindy aimed a kick at a Tonka truck as they entered a vast kitchen- cum -family-room. A small boy lay on the carpet watching television. As soon as he heard them he jumped up and came hurtling toward them.
    “Jarrod!” Cindy’s red-tipped fingers shot out to grab the boy before he could bury his grubby face in her jeans. “How many times have I told you not to do that!” The boy promptly burst into loud, blubbery tears. Cindy sighed. “Look who’s here to see you. It’s your Aunty Harriet.”
    Harriet winced at her sister’s wheedling voice. Jarrod took one look at her and ran off and threw himself on the sofa. The last time Harriet had seen her nephew he’d been a tiny wrinkled baby wrapped up in a blanket. Cindy rolled her eyes and marched over to the kitchen sink where she bent to retrieve something from the cupboard beneath the sink.
    Harriet watched in stunned surprise as her sister lit up a cigarette. Cindy had always seemed so effortlessly, unfairly beautiful, a princess who accepted everyone’s admiration as her mere due. But now there was something forced and plastic about her beauty. Everything about her seemed hard, from the gym-toned muscles in her abdomen, to the gel in her hair, to the spiky lashes lining her eyelids, to her pink-glossed lips which pursed as she sucked