The Country Set by Fiona Walker

Author:Fiona Walker [Walker, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

30

Ash was late again setting off for college when Carly got back to the estate, still revving the pick-up in front of the house with the stereo blasting, having a loud conversation through the window with one of his cousins, Jed. Carly tapped her watch at him as she passed. He blew her a kiss and roared off, cranking the stereo louder.

‘You still up for coming out lamping some time?’ Jed called after her, as she wheeled the buggy up the path. Low-browed, with eyes like steel blades, he was among the Turners she mistrusted most, renowned for dirty deals, misogyny and poaching.

‘Bit windy, isn’t it?’ She played it cool as they both watched a wheelie-bin lid flap open in a gust. ‘What about the dogs?’

‘The secret is to lie low and wait until it’s just passed over,’ he explained, sucking at a gap where he’d lost a tooth, pale eyes distant. ‘The minute it’s calm, Bambi and his mates all come out from their hidey-holes. Rich pickings.’

There had been a storm the night before Pricey was found, Carly remembered. Janine had insisted Jed wouldn’t be out in it, that it had to have been townies, but the opposite was true. He loved nothing more than waiting out a storm, like a looter after a riot.

‘Our lords and masters will be tucked up in their four-posters,’ Jed told her, with relish. ‘They don’t like getting wet, and drones can’t fly in this.’

‘Count me out.’

‘Scared of storms?’

‘Terrified.’ She gave him a sideways look. ‘You just ask Ash to go?’

‘Not his thing, is it? Never was.’

‘No.’ Carly smiled to herself as she turned back up the path. She’d had a niggling worry that the late nights with his mates might be taking in some less than legal detours, but if they had, no off-roading, guns or lamps had been involved.

In the house, he’d left the radio on, the debris of a large cooked breakfast spread around the kitchen, his appetite laying waste to the sausages and eggs bought for the kids’ tea. Maddening, but another positive sign – if he’d cooked a fry-up, he felt good. Carly quickly cleared it up and gathered the day bags of nappies, snacks and formula to take over to Nanna Turner with Sienna and Jackson.

Ash had left his phone on the shelf in the hall when he was putting on his coat. The battery-low warning was beeping. She plugged it in to charge for him, the screen lighting up and unlocking as she did so, a photograph of herself greeting her, an old pouty one with take-me-to-bed eyes. She wished he’d put the kids on there instead. She hardly recognised herself without dark under-eye bags and a nagging remark on her lips.

‘What you two need is a date night,’ Janine told her, half an hour later, as they Cif-ed the glossy black kitchen of one of the flashy new builds on the Broadbourne road. ‘It’s drink-the-bar-dry at the Jugged Hare tonight. They’re closing down at the weekend.

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