Kennedy 03 - Where Petals Fall Read Online Free

asked. ‘No, wait. Let me get another glass and then you can tell me all about it.’
    As she strode across the garden to the kitchen, she suspected she could guess the reason behind Louise’s shadowed eyes and troubled frown.
    Twenty-one years ago, an ill-fated love affair had done two things to Louise. Firstly, it had put her off men and secondly, it had left her pregnant. She’d been just nineteen years old. The man concerned had vanished, never to be heard from again, and Louise’s life had revolved around her daughter. She’d worked at a variety of jobs, sometimes juggling three at once, to give little Nikki everything she wanted.
    Nikki, spoilt from birth, had grown into a wilful and then an extremely difficult teenager. At sixteen, she was pregnant. She and the father of her unborn child left for London where she planned to have an abortion. From that moment on, Louise heard nothing. She hadn’t known if her daughter was alive or dead.
    Until four months ago.
    Jill could remember the evening clearly. It had been a dark March night and she and Louise had been to the pub for a quick drink before settling down in Louise’s lounge to watch a DVD. What that DVD was, Jill couldn’t remember. What she could remember was the shock of a seeing a young woman, a stranger to her, walking into the lounge and dropping a grimy backpack on the carpet.
    ‘Nikki!’ Louise shrieked.
    So this was Nikki. Short, probably not even five feet tall, with long, blonde hair that was badly in need of a good wash or at least a brush, she was wearing filthy black jeans, a tatty black jumper and a long, black coat. Everything about her looked undernourished and unwashed.
    ‘Oh, Nikki, love. You’ve come home!’ Louise had to keep holding Nikki, to keep touching her as if she might vanish again.
    ‘I’m not home,’ Nikki corrected her, pulling free from her grasp. ‘I just need a place to doss for a few days, OK? I need a bath, too.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, love, of course. You do that. Do you want me to –’
    ‘I don’t want you to do anything!’
    Nikki took off her coat and slung it across a chair. The shabby jumper followed. Underneath that, she was wearing a red T-shirt that didn’t quite manage to conceal the needle marks on her arm.
    ‘Won’t you say hello to Jill? Jill’s –’
    Nikki rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘Hello, Jill,’ she chanted obediently before she flounced out of the room . . .
    Now, four months later, Nikki was still using Louise’s home as a ‘place to doss’. At first, Louise had been thrilled to have her home. It hadn’t bothered her that Nikki was only using her as a soft option, or that her home was being treated with no respect whatsoever.
    ‘Right,’ Jill said, plonking a glass and another bottle on the table, ‘this will make things look better. I take it Nikki’sgiving you grief?’ she added, as she filled a glass and handed it to her friend.
    The last few months had put years on poor Louise. Given a carefree life, she would be a very attractive woman, but, with a constant frown marring her features, and with no energy to reach for a lipstick, she looked drab.
    ‘I don’t know what to do for the best, Jill.’
    Jill could think of a few things, all of which included standing up to Nikki for once, but she held her tongue. ‘How’s Charlie?’ she asked instead.
    Charlie had entered Louise’s life shortly after Nikki came home and, unless Jill was very much mistaken, the unthinkable had happened and Louise had fallen in love.
    ‘I haven’t seen him for a week. We’ve spoken on the phone, of course, but it’s not the same. He says I shouldn’t give in to her.’
    ‘He’s right,’ Jill told her.
    ‘Perhaps he is, but she keeps threatening all sorts of things. She says she’d rather be dead than have him sniffing around as she puts it.’
    ‘She’s a drama queen,’ Jill said gently. ‘I blame all these soaps on TV. You have to make her see that you have a life and friends