Homecoming Read Online Free Page B

bored, sat on a stool behind the counter, rearranging nail polishes. Primrose’s heart sank when she realised the Clear Blues were right next to Karen, so she’d have to ask. ‘Can I have a test, Karen?’ she’d said.
    Karen had made a point of hiding the test in a bag. ‘There you go, Prim,’ she’d said, over-mouthing the words in a low voice. So Primrose doesn’t know why she’s bothered trying to stop Max from telling Joe. Thanks to Karen Marshall, the whole dale would know by morning.
    *
    Max walks out of the kitchen and hangs his fleece on the finial at the bottom of the stairs. He takes the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding, to the small bathroom where the door is ajar, its glass panels etched with daisies.
    He leans over the sink and looks up at his face, eager to see if it might look different now he’s set to become a father. He is smiling still, stupidly, like the joy might burst out of him. He sees Joe’s beady black eyes crinkle with pleasure. ‘A baby! Ann, Ann! A baby! Did you hear that? Well lad, that’s grand.’ And he’d get out a bottle of fizz from the larder, one they were saving for Christmas, and he’d pop it. Because bairns, that was what the Hartles did well; that was their strength. He’d seen it in the photos and in all the stories Ann and Joe were forever telling, when they looked at each other in that particular way, full of nostalgia. ‘Remember, Ann, that party for Max? You did that smashing picnic in the barn. It was sweltering that day. And we cooled off in Little Beck. Bartholomew went right under, d’you remember?’ ‘Don’t,’ Ann had said, patting her collar-bones, ‘it still makes me go cold.’ But she was smiling at Joe. Now Max is bringing them full circle, he is the first and he will bring it all back for them. He turns off the tap. Joe was always saying that bairns turn things around for a man. Fire up the heart. He could do with some of that. Max scoops up water in his palms, sloshing it over his face and onto the floor. When he looks up again, steam from the hot tap is erasing his reflection, so that only his neck remains.
    *
    ‘I’ve got to go and see him next week,’ Ann says over the roof of Lauren’s car. They are outside the George in Morpeth-le-Dale. They slam their doors and their feet crunch on gravel in the dark night.
    ‘Who? Barry Jordan?’ says Lauren.
    ‘Yes. God I’m dreading it. He always makes me feel guilty that man, as if buying a fruit loaf from Greggs were some cardinal sin. Lord forgive me, I weakened over a peg bag in Coopers!’
    ‘Hang on,’ says Lauren, stopping Ann with a hand on her arm. ‘You’ve got a new peg bag?’
    ‘Drawstring. Fully lined.’
    ‘Be still my beating heart,’ says Lauren, and then she’s pressing forward again and pushing open the pub door. Ann wishes she could delay her, keep the conversation just the two of them a moment longer, so that Lauren could tut, like she does, and say, ‘That Barry Jordan. ’E wouldn’t know a peg bag if he were smothered with one.’
    But Lauren has gone in and pushed open the second inner door and Ann is already faced with the warmth and noise of the George and all the team over at the bar. Lauren leads the way, Ann behind her like some cade lamb. Lauren says hello to the team: Elaine Henderson, smart twin-set; Mo Dorkin, short and round, with a gold tooth; Pat Branning, tall, face as open as a hay barn. (You could never dislike a woman who smiled as much as that.) Other ladies, whose names Ann doesn’t know, are gathered behind Elaine. Ann hangs back in a cloud of Lauren’s perfume, with a hand up to any attempted embrace, saying ‘I’ve got a bit of a cold,’ to which a couple of the women say ‘Poor you’.
    ‘Right,’ says Lauren to the assembled group. ‘What are we playing? Round the clock or double-in, double-out? Has anyone spoken to the George team?’
    ‘Actually,’ one of the ladies says, but then she stops and there is a general