Obscured by Charlotte Mills

Author:Charlotte Mills [Mills, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER 20

The Croft Hall was still packed an hour after the short church service had ended. A service that was attended by the immediate family only, on their request. It all seemed a bit rushed to Johanna: first the service on Sunday, now this pseudo funeral the following Saturday. Dan’s body had only been discovered two weeks ago, but after waiting so long for closure, she figured they couldn’t wait any longer. Dan’s parents had decided to skip the wake, although Barney and his family were in attendance. Maybe his parents had the same feeling she did, that someone in the town was responsible for Dan’s death. And standing around eating sausage rolls and carrot sticks with those people certainly wasn’t going to make that feeling go away.

Her mother had seemed a little snubbed at first when she’d told Johanna; she said she understood, but Johanna had heard the edge of disappointment in her tone. Yet she’d still managed to outdo herself in organising a team of people to prepare a banquet for the occasion.

Johanna occupied a space near the buffet tables, scanning the crowd for familiar faces. The Croft Hall, with its ancient, exposed timber trusses holding up the roof, were still only painted on one side, the place hadn’t changed much since she attended the first few Girl Guide meetings. It was her mother’s idea; a way of making new friends after they left Compton Way. It only took a couple of weeks for her to realise it wasn’t for her, too girly-girly.

She took a sip from her wine, struggling to find a recognisable face in the room. Twenty years was a long time for people to age and change shape. By contrast, her parents seemed to know everyone in the room; they were social butterflies, or at least her mother was. Her father had made his excuses and left as soon as politely possible, preferring to spend the evening on his own. Johanna was just about to find her mother and do the same when the profile of a woman hovering at the adjacent buffet table caught her eye. She was pulling the clingfilm from a tray of sandwiches and used her free hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. Except her hair was short; there was nothing to move. She looked closely at the woman; she was of a similar age, slightly shorter than herself, her cropped, dark hair stark against her pale skin. She was just about to walk over and introduce herself in the hope that she would remember her when the woman turned towards her. Johanna immediately looked away, avoiding her searching eye. The other side of the woman’s face was horribly scarred and inflamed. Moments later, Johanna placed her drink on the table and risked another look at the woman, who was now rearranging the sausage rolls. Her scars still appeared inflamed. She looked like two different people fused together. Her eyes locked with Johanna’s and there was something there, recognition maybe.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.