The Sunrise Sisterhood by Cathy Bramley

Author:Cathy Bramley [Bramley, Cathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781398701441
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2023-05-10T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Skye

‘Excellent! A new dinner party booking for a week on Friday.’ Skye pressed ‘send’ on the email reply she’d written to a customer enquiry. ‘No special dietary requirements either.’

‘Straightfoward clients,’ said Liz with a wry smile. ‘Music to my ears.’

Skye closed the laptop, Sha and Liz had been to fetch the van from Thurlestone after she’d returned from yoga and there were no jobs for the time being.

Skye had known how much Liz had been dreading Ele, but unfortunately only the cleaner had been there and had handed the keys back without a glimmer of interest. From there, Liz had gone to the lock-up to put back all their equipment and Skye had raced back home to Clare and Ivy.

The plan was for one of them to be on hand to assist Clare for the next few days. If her arm was going to have any sort of chance of healing, she’d need to rest as much as possible. At the moment, whenever their backs were turned, she seemed intent on self-sabotage by attempting to do ridiculous things by herself.

For now, Clare was sitting perfectly still in an armchair, one eye on Ivy, the other on Liz in the kitchen, who was prepping for tomorrow night’s champagne and canapés event. Clare had managed to pull on a strapless sundress with shirred bodice and, if it wasn’t for her sad expression and the dark circles under her eyes, anyone would think she was ready for a day at the beach. Ivy was on the rug, riveted to something on the TV involving garish-looking puppets, and Liz was listening to a podcast about how to reduce alcohol intake which Clare had found for her.

Both she and Clare had told Liz that they were proud of her positive action to tackle her drinking. But, privately, Skye wondered if Liz was already brushing her drinking off as something she could simply choose not to do. Skye had read somewhere that a habit could take ninety days to break. It was unlikely that she’d be in Salcombe in three months’ time, but they’d got another month together. Hopefully, Liz would have made progress by then at least.

Skye knelt down on the floor beside Ivy and tickled the back of her neck. The little girl giggled and crawled into Skye’s lap, melting her heart as she’d done a hundred times at least over the last couple of weeks. Kids hadn’t been ruled in or out of Skye’s future, but Ivy was making a good case for ‘in’.

‘We could go out for a walk, Clare,’ she suggested. ‘I could push Ivy in the buggy?’

‘I’d love to.’ Clare’s eyes were closed, but she shook her head. ‘But walking hurts. Everything hurts, I just want to sit still and not move. And what if someone knocked into me?’

‘Sure, good point.’ Ivy stood on Skye’s thigh, which was actually quite painful for a small person’s foot, and smacked an open-mouthed kiss on her cheek. Skye forgave her for the pain instantly.

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