Pleasant Vices Read Online Free Page B

had even cut down his prize camellias so as to deprive no-good joint-casers of a potential lurking place. Large metal alarm bells hung warningly over the ornate front doors, and powerful lights flicked on and off all night as foxes and cats strolled across inaccurately beamed flower beds.
    â€˜Will there be food, do you think? I’m starving. Last time I came to Carol and Paul’s I had a McDonald’s with the boys first, and then found I could have saved my money. I’m relying on Carol for dinner, there’s sod-all in my fridge, ‘cept the Martini of course. I hope I’ve guessed right this time,’ Sue said as she and Jenny arrived at the Mathiesons’ wrought iron gate.
    â€˜You have. I happen to know Carol’s had an afternoon of finger-food preparation!’ Jenny started to giggle. Sue always cheered her up. She had an impulse to confide in her about Alan, and about Daisy, but there wasn’t time. Paul Mathieson opened his front door as the two women crunched over his gravel.
    â€˜We’ve got a Crime Prevention Officer!’ he said excitedly, as if announcing that tonight’s dinner would be a roast ox. ‘He said a gravelled path was just the right thing, nice and noisy. Puts them off, intruders.’ Paul, pleased with himself and eager as a boy scout, was wearing a multi-coloured sleeveless pullover, handknitted, with little houses on it. Jenny recognized it from the Kaffe Fassett knitting book that she had once bought. She had felt too intimidated by the degree of difficulty of the patterns to buy any wool. Carol, she saw, had not felt the same. Carol could also arrange flowers, she noticed, admiring the display of dahlias, lilies, carnations and unidentifiable greenery on the mirror-polished table in the hall, reminding her of the Bournemouth bouquet. Carol did everything neatly, even to the extent of producing, eleven years before, twin boys in one well-organized pregnancy. That, she had said at the time, got all that inconvenient childbirth business over and done with in one go. They had now been tidied away to boarding school, courtesy of a trust fund from a dead grandmother.
    â€˜Look in there, lovely grub!’ Sue whispered loudly, prodding Jenny in the back as they went towards the murmur of voices in the lemon-and-white-stippled sitting-room. Plates of teeny smoked salmon sandwich wheels, cheesy scones and other savoury bits and pieces sat, elaborately garnished and forbiddingly clingfilmed, on Carol’s best lace tablecloth, hovered over longingly by a collection of Close residents, clutching schooners of sherry. Then Jenny caught sight of the policeman, her second that day, sitting importantly on one of Carol’s mahogany carvers, and whispered back to Sue, ‘I think you’ll have to wait till the floor show’s over; you’ll have to make do with a drink for now.’
    â€˜No problem!’ said Sue, picking up the two fullest glasses of sherry from the silver tray.
    Polly wasn’t sure if it was a knock on the door that she’d heard, so she assumed someone else would answer it and carried on watching the television. Eventually, lured by the sound of male voices in the kitchen, she crept up to listen at the door. It wasn’t her father, she realized, and it wasn’t just Ben talking to the cat. She slid in through the door and sat at the table, unnoticed by the gaggle of teenage boys gathered together round the kitchen scales. The boys were very big, two were wearing expensive puffa jackets and another, who looked slightly familiar in a pulled-down baseball cap, had a biker’s leather jacket with patches sewn on it. Ben was looking pale and nervous, not like when he was with his usual mates.
    â€˜What are you doing? Is it homework? What are you weighing?’ Polly asked all her questions at once, before they could throw her out.
    â€˜What’s she doing here? You said there wouldn’t be anyone . .