Maxwell's Retirement Read Online Free

from outside. It’s got those gates and everything.’
    Leah dashed her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘Electric gates. They’re not to keep people out; they’re to keep people in. And anyway, who would look after my mum if I don’t do it? No,’ she squared her shoulders and raised her chin. ‘I’ll deal with it.’
    ‘Mad Max, Lee,’ Julie said quietly. ‘He’ll fix it.’
    There were quiet chuckles. ‘He doesn’t understand phones,’ someone said. ‘He calls them the Invention of Mr AG Bell and reminds us at every opportunity that even he refused to have one in his study after he had invented it.’
    ‘He’s got one, though,’ a little fair girl at the front said. ‘I’ve seen him with it.’
    Leah smiled weakly. ‘Yes, I’ve seen that as well. He looks down at it, kind of puzzled as if he doesn’t know how it got there. Then he kind of stabs at it until something happens. Usually, he finds he has switched it off. No,’ she picked up her bag and hefted it onto her shoulder. ‘I’ll have to do something myself. A new phone, maybe. New number.’
    ‘You could get one of those cool new ones, Lee,’ the fair girl said. ‘A Blackberry or one of those sort of email ones.’
    ‘Yeah, Alice. Leah’s mum can so afford a Blackberry.’ Julie was cutting.
    ‘There’s no need to be like that, Zee,’ Alice snipped back. ‘Her dad could buy her one.’ She turned to Leah. ‘Tell him you’ve lost the other. Tell him it was pinched. Tell him you need it for your school work. That always works with my dad.’ She looked wistful. Her dad worked in Dubai and sent her loads of stuff, but they hadn’t actually spoken in years. She found it hard to summon up his face these days.
    Leah looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t like toask him, really, but you might have something there, Al.’ She looked more cheerful. ‘That’ll do it. He’ll go for that, I think.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Time I wasn’t here. I need to be home for Anneliese.’
    ‘Your mum’s not working just now, is she?’ Julie asked the question before she even thought to put her brain in gear.
    ‘No, but … well, you know.’ Leah and all the girls knew that her mum would be busy getting ready to go out. These days it took longer than it had a few months ago to repair the damage of the night before. Anneliese was a beautiful little girl, six years old, her parents’ attempt at gluing together a marriage that was beyond repair. She had blonde curls, big blue eyes and a temper like Gordon Ramsay, though fortunately as yet, not his vocabulary. It was easier to be there for her than pick up the pieces later.
    The group broke up, in all directions: to the town centre, The Dam, to their homes and in the case of just one, desperate girl, to 38 Columbine.

Chapter Three
    Maxwell skidded to his usual stop at the kerb outside his town house in Columbine. The stop was rather more precipitous than usual, as Jacquie’s car was parked there as well. Maxwell’s heart did the little flip it always did when he knew he was about to see his wife. The word was still unfamiliar, but the woman wasn’t. She had been in and around his life for years, in various roles from irritatee to lover to mother of his son, and now, wife, but even so a little shock went through him every time he came home and found that she was there. He was smiling to himself as he walked up the path, deciding as he went whether he would knock, ring or use his key.
    A shrill voice cut him to the quick. ‘Well, Mr Maxwell. That smile is a bit of a surprise to me, I don’t mind telling you, what with one thing and another.’ Mrs Troubridge popped up on the other side of the hedge, giving shape to thedisembodied voice. She looked like a prune with hair.
    A cold hand clutched Maxwell’s heart. To be fair, it always did when Mrs Troubridge was in the offing, but something told him that this time there was a really valid reason for it. He licked his dry lips. ‘One thing