Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

Author:Lissa Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

10

Before leaving the flat, Vee sprinkled a little rose water on to her handkerchief. She and Noel had made three further visits to Hornsey Rise over as many weeks and Mrs Gifford had happily donated sixty-three pounds seven shillings and a bone button, but on the second occasion she had unearthed an album of photographs from some crusted corner and had spent a good forty minutes going through it – a barmy flow of half-completed anecdotes: this is Bunny you met her in Dorset such a lovely girl with hair down to her unmentionables she survived the Lusitania by climbing up on a table and this is Celia at the march can you see how tall she is she could throw a stone clear over the statue of this is Alethea, we’ll be seeing her later she’s popping over from Little Venice if she’s back from Ralfie Henderson’s house party, well of course you were there, weren’t you, did you try the punch, I believe it contained absinthe . . . In the dim light, one grey smudge had looked much the same as the next and Vee had staggered out into the twilight with spots before her eyes and the smell of unwashed knickers clinging to the folds of her coat. ‘Next time she gets out the album, tell her we’ve got to go because we’re meeting Bunny at Ralfie’s in ten minutes,’ she’d said to Noel, but he hadn’t found it funny; he was still rather po-faced about the old besom.

The banknotes were in a secret hiding place in Vee’s room; one more visit to Hornsey and she’d take them to the garage. She was looking forward to seeing the shock on Harry Pedder’s face. The small change she’d already spent on a black-and-white scarf in La Mode and a pair of grey leather gloves from the stall at the good end of the market. The gloves were as pale as ash and as soft as a baby’s bottom; she hadn’t worn them yet – just kept them in her bag and touched them every now and again. She’d bought a book of detective stories for Noel too, from the second-hand shop under the flat, and he’d read them in an evening, deaf to conversation, not even looking up when she’d dropped a tray. ‘I might try reading one myself,’ she’d said, though she didn’t quite mean it, couldn’t imagine having the time to sit and flip through pages. In any case, spending the money had been as good as a holiday. If she’d had to choose between a week at the seaside and the opening snap of a purse full of coins, she knew which she’d settle for . . .

‘Here, sonny,’ said a man who’d squeezed on to the train at West Hampstead. ‘Do you want this? I found it on the platform. I know what you kids are like about shrapnel.’ Noel took the heavy brass disc, one side shiny, the other dull and stinking of explosive.

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