Old Dogs, New Tricks by Linda Phillips

Author:Linda Phillips [ Phillips, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-00-745534-8
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

Although a very busy man, Ian Ericson insisted on a full cooked breakfast every day, his favourite being large spicy pork sausages, preferably well-charred under the grill, cut up into half-inch slices and layered between two thick pieces of bread. If a fried egg was also incorporated, then so much the better, and to the whole he liked to add tomato sauce in thick red flowing streams and blobs of English mustard.

Biting into this concoction with his napkin tucked under his chin one sunny morning he still managed to ask Stella why she was not yet dressed. For some time now she had been sitting opposite him at their pine table with her chin in her hand, her eyes staring into space as though she was miles away in her thoughts, as indeed she was. Her hair had not been combed, and her old brown velvet dressing gown was wrapped around her thin body and tightly knotted to one side as if winter had arrived.

Ian, perspiring in a short-sleeved shirt that exposed his ham-like forearms, looked her over, vaguely concerned. ‘Isn’t it your day for the … you know?’ he asked.

Stella roused herself to focus on him. Why could he never bring himself to say the words ‘charity shop’?

‘It is, yes. But …’

Ian chewed and waited for her to continue but she left the ‘but’ in the air, hoping he wouldn’t press her further, and he seemed to be in two minds as to whether or not he should. He cleared his mouth of food, and drank half a glass of orange juice, but just when Stella thought he was about to pursue the question – perhaps ask her if she was unwell – he took another bite of his sandwich.

The smell of fried food that hung about the kitchen was enough to make her gag. She couldn’t bear even to nibble at the square of toast on her plate. She felt thoroughly sick inside, but not ill in any way that Ian would understand. Nor did she understand herself, come to that. What was the matter with her? Did she have some sort of antipersonnel device clamped to her forehead? She must have, or why had her promising friendship with Marjorie Benson come a cropper already?

When the dinner party had come to nothing she was able to accept it, though it was a disappointment, but now that her new friend had failed to take her turn at the charity shop on two consecutive occasions, things were looking a bit suspicious. Marjorie hadn’t even phoned to make excuses about not being able to do her stint, so what was Stella to make of that? She surely couldn’t still have a headache.

Apparently Marjorie’s husband had phoned the night of the dinner party and spoken to Ian. Said something about his wife having a migraine. He’d been very apologetic about it, and neither she nor Ian had thought it anything but a genuine excuse at the time, only now …

And why invite

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