The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy

Author:Margaret Leroy [Leroy, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Azizex666, Fiction
ISBN: 9781401341701
Google: 9QRXk-3gRhIC
Amazon: B006CDCWLY
Barnesnoble: B006CDCWLY
Goodreads: 10518423
Publisher: Voice
Published: 2011-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The twins were overjoyed. They sat leaning over the edges of their car seats so that they could touch Isabel, sitting in the space between them, and when they reached home, they wanted her to come straight to the playroom and build a castle, dress up, read to them and play hospitals, all at once. Isabel, extremely composed, seemed calmly happy to acquiesce.

‘Don’t grill her,’ Franny had said to Alexa. ‘Don’t fire questions at her. She’s in a funny state, but it’s not an upset one, as far as I can see. She’d worked out a route online to get home by bus, and she’d saved up until she could buy a ticket. She’d planned it. It was all organized.’

Alexa had rung the school, before she went to collect the twins. The school secretary had sounded suspiciously as if she had no idea that Isabel was missing, and then Alexa had spoken to Mrs Cairns, who said Isabel had pleaded a severe headache and had been sent to lie down shortly after breakfast. Her absence had been noticed half an hour earlier, and a thorough search was still ongoing.

‘We need to talk,’ Alexa said, gripping the phone.

‘Mrs Riley—’

‘No more of that,’ Alexa said furiously. ‘No more patronizing of parents and sweeping real problems under the carpet. We need to talk. Or rather, I need to talk and you need to listen.’

Then she had dropped her phone into her bag, seized her car keys and raced for the car, leaving Beetle in a confusion of anxious obedience, rooted miserably in his basket.

Isabel hadn’t flung herself at her mother. She was wearing school uniform with her own hooded blue fleece over the top, and she had brought nothing but her school backpack with its jingling collection of key rings and charms. Her hair was pulled back with both a plastic Alice band and an elasticated loop, and although she was pale, she wasn’t red-eyed or visibly exhausted. When Alexa had come in, almost stumbling over the excited twins, Isabel had stood up and allowed herself to be hugged, and then she had freed herself and bent down so that the twins could thrust their morning’s artwork at her and jabber at her in competition, their voices rising almost to screams.

‘She’s eaten a round of cheese sandwiches,’ Franny said, ‘and a banana and a KitKat. I offered her bacon and eggs, but she said she’d wait till she got home.’

‘Why didn’t she come home?’ Alexa said, whispering. ‘Why didn’t she come straight home?’

Franny looked across her kitchen at Isabel and the twins, now on the floor together admiring angel pictures decorated with tissue-paper wings. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Didn’t she say? She must have said something.’

‘Only,’ Franny said, ‘that she didn’t want a fuss. She thought it would be easier if I told you than if she just appeared.’

‘Suppose you’d been out?’

‘She’d thought of that. She was going to go to Mo, and if Mo was out, to Mary or Claire, and if they were out, she was going back to Mo because she’d have come home some time, to feed the dogs.

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