This Love by Atkins Dani

Author:Atkins, Dani [Atkins, Dani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471142260
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

Chapter 9

It had been a long time since I’d heard the sound of a male voice raised in laughter with my mum’s: a voice that wasn’t my father’s, that is. It made me pause in the hallway outside the kitchen, with a slight stomach-lurching feeling, the kind you get when you go to step on a stair that doesn’t exist. I shook my head, which already felt muzzy and thick from sleeping clean through my alarm. Leaving Ben to deal with my parents – who he’d really only just met – was inexcusably rude, but when I opened the kitchen door and saw him happily seated at the table, devouring thick slices of hot buttery toast and marmalade, most of my guilt disappeared.

‘Good morning, sleepy head,’ greeted my mum. There was a pink flush on her cheeks and cheeriness in her tone that I struggled to recognise as belonging to her at all. Ben’s smile was warm and there was a decided twinkle in his eyes as they silently messaged mine over the rim of his mug of tea. Somehow, while I slept, he seemed to have added yet another conquest to his curious senior-citizen fan club. How did he do that, I wondered, slipping into the chair he had pulled out for me. Was every single person who met him equally charmed? Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised that I was so drawn to him after all . . . clearly everyone was.

‘You and I have a busy day ahead,’ advised Ben, watching me shake Corn Flakes into a bowl. ‘We’ve got a turkey to pick up, an order to collect from a farm shop and a guided tour to squeeze in before it gets dark.’

I glanced out through the kitchen window. The skies were already dark, but that was due to the thick clouds that hung like a platform across the sky. They held a promise of snow, and bookmakers everywhere were probably already regretting the odds they’d given against a white Christmas.

‘I volunteered us,’ Ben added unnecessarily. ‘But I’m not sure your mum thinks we’re up to the task.’

‘Oh you,’ said my mother, sounding so much like someone I’ve never met before, my spoonful of cereal stopped halfway to my mouth. Was she actually blushing? Oh my God, she really was. Had Ben slipped something into her tea?

I shook my head, wondering what kind of alternative universe I’d accidentally woken up in. ‘Guided tour?’ I asked, picking the least innocuous question to pose, rather than the one I really wanted to ask: ‘What the hell have you done with my real mother?’

‘I want to see the town you grew up in.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I want to see where you went to school, the park you played in, where you learnt to ride a bike,’ he glanced across the kitchen to check my mother wasn’t listening, ‘where you went on your very first date and had your first kiss.’

I swallowed slowly and leant a little closer towards him across the breakfast dishes.

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.