The Girl in the Gallery (The London Murder Mysteries Book 2) by Alice Castle

Author:Alice Castle [Castle, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Cat Books
Published: 2017-12-18T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Katie was sitting outside the Summerhouse café at one of the uncomfortable wooden benches, having negotiated the ungainly clamber necessary to get into position. The trouble was that the benches were firmly fixed to the large, round wooden tables. It was probably sensible that nothing was portable – people were so light-fingered these days, even in Dulwich – but the furniture seemed to have been designed for giants, not the café’s usual clientele of mummies, nannies, au pairs and small children, who had to perform all kinds of gymnastics across the splinter-strewn expanses of wood to get into anything resembling comfortable positions. Add sunshades, which diligently covered only the central portion of the tables, leaving the customers roasting in direct sunlight, and it was a mystery why the place was so popular.

But it was already full, teeming with romping toddlers, marauding Chihuahuas and pugs looking for dropped crusts, and Katie had only secured her bench by dint of turning up twenty minutes early. She was now looking at her phone every few seconds to check the time, and the twenty minutes had seemed like forty, fully ten minutes ago. She’d bought two huge doorstep sandwiches, wrapped in cellophane, which she was eyeing hungrily. She knew well enough to give the coffee a wide berth here, and had instead bought two builders’ teas in the café’s thick white china mugs. She was trying her best not to swig down her own rapidly cooling brew too fast.

***

Beth trotted towards the café, shiny pony tail swinging, fringe falling across her face so thickly that it was difficult to imagine how she could see in front of her. Feeling the beam of her friend’s attention on her, she speeded up almost to a canter and puffed her way to the table.

‘Sorry, Katie.’ Beth clutched her side where a stitch was starting up in protest at the steeplechase she had just unexpectedly run, and began to scrabble into position on the huge bench. Opposite them, a couple of mummies with two very subdued pre-school children watched her every move, which of course made her feel doubly clumsy. When she was finally sitting in some semblance of a comfortable position, cursing her stumpy legs and the bench’s designer with equal venom, Beth turned to face Katie, preparing to tell all about her meeting with Janice. But for once, her friend’s usual placid calm had deserted her.

Katie was pink in the face and leant towards her urgently. ‘I’ve got to tell you what Maria Luyten said to me this morning,’ she hissed.

‘Who?’ said Beth, eyeing Katie, whose normally mirror-smooth hair was sticking up at the back and who was wearing, if Beth wasn’t mistaken, old leggings. She normally never stepped out of the house in anything less than box-fresh Sweaty Betty ensembles, knowing that she was her own best yoga advert, moving lithely through Dulwich as though every step was a seamless sun salutation.

‘You know Maria, the new mum in the class, mother of Matteo, who

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.