On the First Day of Christmas by Faith Hogan

Author:Faith Hogan [Hogan, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781803287751
Publisher: Head of Zeus

10

‘Hello, Liv?’ Barbara rang that afternoon, which was unusual, because normally when she rang Eddie, it seemed she made a point of not even asking after Liv, much less actually speaking to her and certainly never ringing her up for a friendly chat.

‘Yes, Barbara, how are you?’ Liv was just washing the dishes after lunch. Her parents had ambled out for a walk about the farm and Maya was still at the office.

‘Well, I’m not great, obviously,’ Barbara said and Liv wasn’t sure what to reply next. ‘I’m stranded here without so much as a drop of milk and I’m too nervous to walk up to the supermarket with the state of the footpaths.’ It had frozen over the night before, although, it seemed to be thawing a little more now the winter sun was shining.

‘Oh.’ It took a minute for Liv to realise what she was meant to say next. ‘Well, would you like me to pick up some shopping for you and drop it off?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind?’ Barbara snapped. ‘Only, Eddie had to go on an errand and I don’t know when he’ll be back.’

‘An errand?’ Liv asked a little guiltily, because she didn’t want to alert Barbara to the notion that he might have done a disappearing act after their disagreement on the beach earlier. He regularly did that in Dublin – stormed out after an argument, probably went to the pub and then slept on someone’s sofa for a day or two until he needed to come home for clean clothes and a proper bed to sleep in. In the beginning it had really upset Liv – the idea that he could just walk out the door and leave an argument hanging for days on end, but like everything else about living with Eddie, she’d gotten used to it, and now it didn’t bother her so much.

‘He was bringing Anya back up to Dublin. She has to move out of her apartment apparently.’ Barbara had even less interest in Anya than she had in Liv, presumably. ‘Just so you know, I’m very particular about my shopping…’

It was no surprise that the list was a lot longer than just a bottle of milk and a pound of butter. Outside, snow had fallen even more heavily, so once she had the list taken down, with each of the specific instructions about each item, Liv grabbed the keys of the jeep and headed for the village. Ballycove was breathtakingly pretty this afternoon, Liv thought, as she drove onto the main street. Everything was so crisp and white, idyllic really, beneath another layer of freshly fallen snow. But underneath it, she knew that the ground could be treacherous. She’d already felt the jeep sway on an icy patch as she’d rounded some of the bends on the journey from the farm.

The supermarket was fairly quiet, so Liv grabbed a trolley and began to fill it with the items on the list. Barbara really was very particular; everything was specified down to the last millilitre and flavour.

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