The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott

Author:Susan Allott [Allott, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-10T17:00:00+00:00

23

3 November 2008

Seb caught the post as it dropped onto the mat. Three letters, all addressed to him, with Return to Sender stamped across each envelope. He pushed them into the pocket of his jeans and carried on down to the kitchen. He filled the kettle, made coffee and tried not to mind too much about the letters, which he’d sent a few weeks ago to the last known addresses of people he’d thought might remember his Aunt Jane. He’d hoped Aunt Jane might know where his mum was living. He’d been wondering if he might tell Max, if he did manage to trace his aunt. Maybe she would coax him to tell her all of it, she would insist that she didn’t care where he came from, she loved him regardless.

But in the light of day he knew he was kidding himself. There was no rosy future where he and Maxine were together. As Jason liked to remind him, it was the internet that had brought Max into his orbit. He had no rightful place in her world.

He switched on the heater and moved his chair close to it as the bars turned orange, making his jeans hot but creating no warmth to speak of. The kitchen was always cold. He had two sweaters on and he was still frozen. He finished off his coffee – his second of the morning – and opened his laptop. There was an email at the top of his inbox, something Jason was forwarding on, with no subject heading. He read it quickly, made a mental note of the details and deleted it. Then he went into his deleted items and deleted it from there.

Upstairs, the plumber was walking around, his feet heavy on the bare boards. Seb sat for a minute with his eyes shut. He must have slept two hours last night. He felt the pull of sleep, his head nodding forward.

‘Morning.’

Seb sat up as the plumber walked into the room, resting a few lengths of wood on his shoulder. He wore his black woollen hat pulled down over his ears and a grey hoodie, jeans hanging low on his hips. Seb realised he had a blank on the guy’s name. He took a mouthful of coffee and thought: Robin? He looked like a Robin. Fine features. Gentle-looking, except that he was easily six foot four and he could probably knock you over if he wanted to.

‘Think you were talking in your sleep,’ the plumber said.

Seb stared back at him. ‘Was I asleep?’

‘Think so, yeah.’

‘What was I saying?’

‘Something about a letter, I think.’

‘Must be cracking up.’ He laughed, to soften the truth of this. He thought that this wasn’t going to work; things were bad enough without some total stranger watching him go round the bend.

‘How’s the job hunt going?’

‘Badly.’ Seb stared at his screen.

‘Sorry to hear that.’ He threw the back door open, filling the room with cold air, and left it open as he stacked the planks of wood against the wall, taking his time to get them angled right.

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