Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists. Erin Knight
disappeared into the grocer’s. Her brother set his hands back into his pockets. He peered into the crate on the pavement and tapped it with his foot. Isobel thought about starting a weather conversation. Or a surf conversation; she could do with learning some lingo.
‘She’s not selling you these, is she? They’re knackered.’
‘Oh, they’re just a bit bruised. They’ll be fine.’
Elodie strode back outside into the evening sun.
‘Are all of these going cheap now then, Elodie?’ Milo asked.
‘Why? Do you want some? Don’t eat them around Dad, you’ll start him off on acid erosion again.’
Isobel ran her tongue over her molars, the sensitivity she always felt at the back there flaring in response.
‘Not for me. Hobo Bob’s digging around in the bins behind the French place again. I might take him some if they’re going.’
Isobel took the bulging paper bag from the girl.
‘They’re not going for free, Milo.’
‘Not even for a good cause?’
‘Cough up. I know you’re flush, I’ve seen you stuffing cash into your speakers.’ Milo looked rumbled. Isobel looked at her shoes but the girl started talking to her again. ‘Bob’s our resident homeless person. Kind of a fixture.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Isobel. ‘Why’s he homeless?’ It was an affluent enough town.
Elodie shrugged. ‘Didn’t he used to be a big banker or something, Milo? How do people go from high-flyer to eating from bins? It’s crazy.’
‘People fall from grace,’ offered Isobel. Others were pushed.
Milo’s hair flopped over his eyes. ‘Hobo Bob fell a long way. His wife spread rumours about him hurting little girls. Never proved he was a perv, though.’
An unpleasantness stirred in Isobel’s memory. A towering heap of captions. Little tart, Romio’s being too soft with her. Go on, hurt her mate. I’d hurt her. I’d hurt her till she squealed.
Isobel’s eyes flitted from shop front to shop front. French place? She found it: Pomme du Port.
‘Bob’s not a perv,’ laughed Elodie. ‘Stacey tried to buy him a latte again last week, he wouldn’t go near her!’
‘Was he ever convicted?’ Isobel’s neck was pulsing, her eyes fixed on the French restaurant. A banker would be good with computers, wouldn’t he? But then so was her gran. And most bankers could spell Romeo.
‘No evidence,’ said Milo. ‘Mud sticks, though. Like our Dad says, lose your name, lose everything.’
‘Sticks and stones, Eves, sticks and stones. No fella really wants a bag of bones as a girlfriend, you know. It’s a myth. All these young girls, starving themselves to look like magazine covers, they’ve all been touched up, they’re not real, Eves!’
Cleo stopped herself from pointing out to Sam that girls as sharp as their daughter didn’t sit around all day in the modern-day equivalent of embroidery circles, pondering all the ways in which they could become irresistible to testosterone-crazed teenage boys. A second thought chased the first. Oh God. Of course they did.
She carried on rubbing small circles on Evie’s back, her fingers snagging on her daughter’s hair. Why did they all like this matted, frizzy look? Most of the girls in the bay looked like they’d slept rough on the beach. It jarred with the obscene amount of time they all spent perfecting those awful pencilled eyebrows. ‘Are you alright now, darling?’ Evie seemed to have shrunk, looking more like her ten-year-old self with all her make-up smeared away, huddled into the sofa against her dad. Evie nodded and sipped her hot chocolate. There’d been no talking her into squirty cream or marshmallows. They’d be off the shopping list for a while now thanks to that little shit. Harry’s mug of hot chocolate had been fully laden, marshmallows tumbling all over the place. He’d made himself scarce in that way men did when confronted with a crying female. Gone to spend his evening texting a cheerier female in Ingred.
Cleo cast an eye over her daughter, pretty plum nail polish on her toes, the navy pedal pushers she’d bought to go with the broderie anglaise top Evie had called ‘a bit church’. It wormed its way in again.
Fat.
Evie was not fat. She had a lovely figure. She just didn’t resemble a stick insect. She looked healthy. Bronzed and bright-eyed and fresh, the way all the coastal kids were. Okay, perhaps she had a touch of Sam’s mother’s full cheeks, but it only made her more beautiful when she grinned, not that she grinned often nowadays, but that was only because pouting was the new smiling, wasn’t it? That funny way the girls (and boys) all drew their mouths up into tight little duckbills and glared beseechingly into the camera. Or was something really getting Evie down? Was Evie being bullied? Had Cleo missed a trick here?
A mother’s rage stirred in the pit of her stomach. Evie drove her nuts; most days Cleo really could drive her into the middle of nowhere and leave her, but that was her right! A mother of twins earned all sorts of rights like that, it was the ultimate reward for surviving the raising of a tag team without Valium or social service intervention.
Cleo stopped rubbing circles. ‘So who was it?’ His Facebook name was Aeron Mycock. Funny little shit. Sam had nearly laughed.
‘Dunno. Just some idiot.’
‘From school?’
‘Probably.’
‘Probably? Surely you know who you’re Facebook friends with, Evie?’
Evie paused. ‘Not everyone.’
‘What? Then why did you accept them on to your friends list?’ Cleo could taste You silly girl! teetering on the tip of her tongue.
Evie blinked up at her. ‘Because they asked me! And we have mutual friends!’
‘That’s your criteria? So if your friends befriended an axe-murderer—Don’t roll your eyes, Evie.’
‘It doesn’t matter who it is! I don’t even care what he called me. It’s just . . . everyone seeing it and stuff. I didn’t know until Cassie texted me and it had been on there for nearly five minutes.’ Evie’s voice wobbled again.
‘Five minutes?’ sputtered Sam. ‘An hour’s upset for five minutes?’
Cleo threw him a look. Five minutes was a lifetime when it came to public humiliation, especially when you were fifteen, didn’t he get it? Evie had been in the stocks for a full five minutes before she’d deleted the peasant who’d been wanging rotten veg at her head.
Sam took the hint. ‘Look. Whoever has upset you, Evie, they’re not worth all this, love, that’s all I’m saying. You’re better than them, don’t let them get you down.’
That’s right, Sam. Don’t worry about finding out who this kid is and marching over to his house, having it out with his father. You just sit there. There was a time when Sam would’ve banged on their door the way he’d once banged on Cleo’s father’s door; Cleo’s mother had thought her bruised cheek would go unnoticed in a place like Wrecker’s gym, but Sam had noticed alright.
Sam caught her watching him now. She looked away. She hadn’t thought about those days in a long time. Sam’s hands hadn’t been so rough back then. Building sites had ruined his hands, not the boxing ring.
‘Your dad’s right, Evie. Ignore them. Rise above it. People who hide behind computers saying spiteful things aren’t worth caring about. Cut them out of your world.’
Evie nodded. She had a smudge of hot chocolate on the bridge of her