Erin Knight - Perfect Strangers - an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists

‘Evie and some of the girls saw you surfing down at The Village a few weeks ago, Jon. I think you have a fan club,’ teased Cleo.

‘Muum, shut up !’

‘What was it again? Gorgeous . . . well fit . . . ’

‘Oh my God, Mum, that was Cassie, not me! You are so embarrassing.’

Jon scratched his nose. ‘ Well fit , huh? Good to know, Evie.’

Cleo chuckled under her breath. Crap . Lorna Brooks was heading for the counter wielding something green and organic-looking in a Tupperware tub, Marnie crying that hungry baby cry from her hip. The school mothers all adored Jonathan Hildred, and Lorna would stand here all day gushing over him while Marnie screamed the place down.

Cleo swung into action. ‘Your change, Jon. Say hi to Godzilla! Ooh, and tell Sarah I’ll call her later. I’ve seen some am-az-ing canapés in Beautiful Bride mag. Lorna! What can I get for you?’

Lorna jiggled in that way fraught new mothers on three hours’ sleep jiggle their babies. Except Marnie was closer to nine months and already sturdy enough that she made Lorna, with her skinny arms and delicate pale chest, look like a waify big sister. Lorna readjusted her floaty neck scarf and Cleo braced herself. The woman always seemed to be on the brink of asking something profound but difficult to follow about global warming or, worse, the exact ingredients of Coast’s ‘organic’ biscuits. (The oats were organic, the butter was not. It had given Cleo sleepless nights.)

‘Cleo, help! Any chance you could throw Marnie’s lunch in your microwave? She’s so hungry at the mo, I can’t fill her up.’

Marnie gnawed on her mother’s shoulder. Lunch? At 10am? ‘Have you tried steak and chips?’ She was joking, obviously. Lorna’s clearly wasn’t a meat and deep-fried-anything kind of household.

‘I daren’t try her on anything too challenging, Cleo. Is that brie and cranberry baguette vegetarian? No bacony bits or surprises?’ Lorna reached a pale freckled hand over the counter and presented Marnie’s pot.

Evie had already been sucked back into the beam of her smartphone. ‘Evie?’ Cleo jabbed her with Marnie’s lunch. ‘Completely meat-free, Lorna. Would you like it toasted?’

Lorna glanced towards Jon, talking to the blonde girl still sitting on her own near the window. ‘No thanks, Cleo. It’s a real sun trap in that window, don’t think I could manage a hot sandwich.’

Blinds . There was another job Sam hadn’t gotten around to. Marnie cooed at the sight of Lorna’s baguette. The little girl shared her mother’s pale skin, and it was hot in that window; maybe they’d be more comfortable if they sat over by—

A loud bang exploded behind them.

‘Evie! I told you to watch that thing today!’

‘I did! I only put it on for twenty seconds! Hotspots and babies . . . I know the twenty-second rule, Mum.’

Cleo launched towards the microwave. ‘If you would just stop goggling that flipping phone and concentrate!’

‘The timer counted up instead of down, Mum. I swear, look . . . ’

A green crime scene waited inside the microwave. Customers were craning necks. ‘Lorna, I’m so sorry. Marnie’s lunch . . .’

Lorna grimaced. ‘It’s fine, Cleo. That was the last of Mummy’s homemade pesto pasta, wasn’t it, Marnie-Moo? But it’s fine. I have milk, she can have milk, until we get home.’

‘I’m so sorry, but the microwave . . . I won’t be able to warm a bottle.’

Lorna was already weaving through the tables back to her own spot in the window. ‘We have it covered, Cleo.’ She settled herself into her chair and began fumbling at her blouse.

‘Oh. Sure.’ Cleo’s eyes left Lorna’s pale bosom and clocked a couple of the kids on the terrace outside stop inhaling their food just long enough to grin at each other. She glared through the glass. ‘Keep that up, you little sods, and you can clear off.’ Getting Harry and Evie to feed from her had been all kinds of awful. Hell hath no fury like a nipple with mastitis.

Evie tensed. ‘Uh-oh, geriatric storm brewing, table 4.’

Cleo recognised something in the posture of the man at the table neighbouring Lorna’s. That incensed-embarrassed-unreasonable look that Cleo had once seen in a lunching corporate’s face just before she’d been dispatched from the department store’s restaurant to the ladies’ changing rooms. The manager thinks you’ll be more comfortable somewhere private, madam . Her neck burned at the memory. Harry and Evie’s need for sustenance had got in the way of a grown man’s need to finish his jacket potato without having to wrestle any of life’s big questions, such as whether or not boobs really were just for groping.

The woman at table 4, face grey and puckered, twisted in her chair to face Lorna. ‘My brother doesn’t know where to look!’

‘Sorry?’ blinked Lorna.

Cleo bristled. ‘Right.’

Evie caught Cleo’s elbow ‘Mum! What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to offer Lorna a free drink and a seat out of that blazing sun. Then I’m going to inform table four that Coast welcomes breast-feeding mothers, even if they are members of Juliette Inman-Holt’s PFA cult.’

She stalked around the counter, her bottom accidentally clipping two chairs on the way, but she didn’t care. ‘Lorna? Sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering, would you and Marnie like to use the new sofas? It’s cooler over there, with no customers who—’

Lorna reared like a snake, eyes wide and wild. ‘No customers to watch my baby feeding, is that it? Consuming the food Mother Nature intended for her?’ Lorna’s breast yanked free of Marnie’s lips, Marnie’s protestation immediate.

Cleo opened her mouth but her voice abandoned her, Lorna’s boob staring straight at her, the gypsy blouse risen defiantly over the top of its fullness.

Lorna stood. ‘It’s alright my five-year-old son has to look at filthy girly mags every time I take him to the newsagents, isn’t it? Absolutely fine when he flicks a music channel on that hordes of disco bimbos shake their thonged backsides at him? But . . .’ Lorna cupped a hand to her mouth . . . ‘Good God! Someone call the modesty police if a mother nurses her child. Well I’ve got news for you, Cleo Roberts.’ Lorna’s face had gone quite red. ‘My daughter has a right to feed freely! I have a right to use my breasts!’

3

Isobel startled at the sound of the woman behind the counter banging away at the coffee machine. A baby began to cry over near the other window. She felt a wave of purpose wash through her, then noted the Free Wifi sign framed and hanging on the far brick wall like a gift waiting to be stolen. All those thoughts swelled somewhere at the bottom of her like a rising threat. The doubt. The ridiculousness of her goals.

She clasped her writing pad like a religious scripture.

Base Camp 1. Simple enough. Home . Home was Base Camp 1.

She scribbled the next few lines of writing as if indenting them into the page made them more achievable somehow.

2 - Job

3 - Friends

4 - Partner/Family

5 - Reputation

6 -

The pen flicked free of her grasp, skittering to the floor.

‘Whoops, nearly.’ A pair of expensive deck shoes arrived where Isobel reached. Their owner scooped up her biro and offered it back to her with a smile. She noticed it now, his boyish handsomeness, but still it didn’t matter. She mustered a polite smile in return.

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem. A woman after my own heart.’

‘Sorry?’ He was older than Isobel but only a decade or so, and in that way that seemed to benefit the male sex and leave the females worrying about crows’ feet and dermal fillers.