It Was Her by M.K. Hill

Author:M.K. Hill [Carter, A.F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781837931477
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

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The sun poured through the large south-facing window onto all the colourful ceramic teapots, across the vibrant screen prints on the white walls, and along the counter where glistening pastries and cakes dusted in icing sugar were laid out on trays.

Poppy’s friends met in this cafe every half-term morning to chat and gossip while the kids ran between the tables. She came most days, usually loved to meet up for a chinwag, but today she was exhausted with worry. Bea asked more than once if she was ill, and looked genuinely concerned for her, but also didn’t want her four-year-old Mathilde, who was inclined to pick up every bug going, to catch anything. Poppy tried her best to listen to the conversations up and down the table, but all she could think about was the imminent end of her marriage and the repercussions for her and Gabriel. Her son was at a nearby table looking at something on YouTube over the shoulder of another boy.

Cath told Bea her husband had gone out and bought a sailing boat on a whim, a fiftieth birthday present to himself, but didn’t have the faintest idea about where to berth it. Penny had just had to sack her fifth au pair when she came home to find the girl smoking weed behind the gazebo. Malin was planning a surprise trip to California for her son.

‘It’s scary,’ said Issy, talking about the murders on the news. ‘Those people killed in their own homes.’

Penny shuddered. ‘I read they were tortured.’

‘Any one of us could be next.’

Poppy had sickening news of her own, which would make her friends gasp in horror. In particular, Issy and Bea – who knew Tim well – would take it very badly. There would be tears. They would all be heartbroken and kind and offer all their support. But it wouldn’t take long for the whispers to start and for Poppy to become an object of pity. Telling her friends would be like firing the starting gun on the rest of her miserable life. Nobody knew yet what was happening and that’s the way she wanted it to remain until she had decided what to do.

‘She hasn’t seen her ex in years.’ Bea was talking about a friend who had been forced to return to live with her elderly parents in Croydon when her marriage disintegrated. ‘And she hasn’t got a penny out of him.’

Malin made a face over the top of her decaf. ‘Let’s be honest, those two were never a good fit.’

That’s how they would talk about Poppy soon enough. She could try to get Tim to see the error of his ways, but she knew she would never change his mind. He considered his options carefully and wasn’t the kind of man to be needlessly unkind unless he was certain he had made the right decision. She knew she would lose him, and Tanya and John and everything she had. Her home, her lifestyle. Life would be a struggle.

The

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