[The Murder Mile 01] Into the Red by Christine Pattle

Author:Christine Pattle [Christine Pattle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Christine Pattle
Published: 2023-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Rose walked home quickly from the shop at lunchtime on Saturday, smiling all the way. Alfie insisted on covering for her this afternoon and the whole of tomorrow, to enable her to spend the time with Jack. She would heat up some soup for lunch, and she’d bought some nice crusty bread to go with it. Would that be enough for a fit young man who played a lot of sport? Already, she worried that things might not be good enough for Jack. She desperately wanted him to enjoy this visit.

“I’m home,” she called as soon as she opened the door.

“In here.” Jack sat watching TV. “Man United’s playing,” he said. “It’s a replay of the match I missed yesterday. It finishes in ten minutes.”

The whole family supported Manchester United football team, even Rose, who didn’t like football. Supporting Man U was practically compulsory in the area they’d lived in, not too far from the football ground. Rose wouldn’t get any sense out of Jack until the match finished. Ten minutes would be just enough time to fix lunch.

Ten minutes later, Jack joined her in the kitchen as she poured leek and potato soup into bowls. She put the bread on the table with some butter.

“I thought we might go and put some flowers on your gran’s grave this afternoon.” Rose blew on her soup, which was far too hot to eat. “It will give us both the chance to explore the area.” It would also make a cheap activity for them to do together, and she didn’t think her fitness-freak son would baulk at walking for half an hour. She felt bad that she wasn’t able to take him somewhere more exciting, but Jack had regretted missing her mother’s funeral, and it would do him good to visit her grave.

“Sure.” He tucked into his soup, immune to its hot temperature, dipping chunky pieces of bread into it and wolfing them down.

Rose bought a bunch of carnations yesterday and put them in a jam-jar on the kitchen windowsill. Seeing them now, they didn’t seem adequate. Mum deserved better, but that wouldn’t happen until her money situation improved.

The route to the crematorium cut through a scrappy area of the council estate, peppered with tired-looking blocks of prefab concrete flats, and footways littered with rubbish and potholes. She should have found a nice shortcut through a park instead, but if the local scenery disappointed Jack, he hid it well.

It was a relief when they arrived.

“Where’s Gran?” Jack asked.

Rose had momentarily forgotten about Jack not attending the funeral. He’d needed to attend a vital lecture from some visiting sports personality, who Rose had never heard of, but Jack seemed terribly impressed by. Rose insisted he didn’t come to the funeral. She desperately wanted Jack to do well in his degree, get a good career, be the best, make the most of all the advantages she’d missed out on at his age. It was the right decision. No regrets. But without Philip either, she was the only family member to turn up at the funeral.

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