The Good Parents Read Online Free Page B

after she had paid the driver and turned towards the house with her armful of rustling cellophane and flowing purple
     ribbons, that she realised her offering was not only showy and over the top, it was fatally, morally
wrong
. Sweat spurted into her armpits, she swung around but the taxi had already disappeared. No shelter anywhere. Oh God, how
     could she get rid of it? Was anybody watching her?
    The curtains in the house were drawn. There was no one on the street. Quick, she told herself, leave it on the doormat and
     run. Head lowered, she moved swiftly up the front path to the porch. There was no garden, just a concrete slab and some woody
     shrubs by the steps. Somehow she’d expected Dory to have made a beautiful garden.
    Andrew opened the door as she tiptoed across the porch. He could be nobody else but Andrew, though he’d grown tall and dark
     and clear. The fat smudge-faced days were long gone. How had he known she was here?
    A wave of heat moved up her neck so violently that her eyes watered. ‘I just wanted to …’
    He smiled and put his arm out and firmly ushered her inside. The door closed behind her.
    The hall was cold and bare as a hospital. Far down the end it opened into a room where people were talking. She caught the
     foreign inflection of women’s voices and the clink of dishes. Francine, Bernadette and Tina no doubt, doing what women friends
     do. An oxygen cylinder stood in a bar of light outside an open bedroom doorway, and in the shadowy front room next to her
     she glimpsed a table piled high with bouquets. She could smell freesias, a cold sweetness from her own past. She had no right
     to be here.
    ‘These were her favourite colours, did you know that?’ Andrew said, touching Maya’s flowers. She nodded, unable to speak.
     He had his father’s hands, but more finely cast. She could see Maynard’s features in the set of his face, but his skin was
     olive and his eyes were dark, wide-spaced, intense. Dory’s son. You could tell that she’d been beautiful.
    That’s him
, Maya thought, without quite knowing what she meant. It was as if she’d dreamt of him.
    ‘Andy? I think you’re needed.’ A long-legged girl in jeans strode up the hall towards them. She was wearing a large football
     jumper, probably borrowed from Andrew, the way girlfriends liked to do. She put her hand on Andrew’s shoulder. ‘Granny’s asking
     for you.’ Perfect, cool, in charge, good skin, dark hair in a curly ponytail. She would have been a champion runner, a maths
     whizz, a prefect, one of the shining girls at school.
    ‘This is Kirstin,’ Andrew said. His girlfriend. The girlfriend he deserved.
    There was a pause. Since Maya didn’t speak, Kirstin reached for her bouquet.
    ‘I’ll take this if you like.’ She whisked it into the front room with all the other flowers.
    ‘
Maynard? Andy?
’ The old girl was down the corridor of course, making sure that no one forgot her. Where was Maynard? She knew he wasn’t
     here.
    Andrew kept on looking at her. ‘Were you one of Mum’s students?’
    Maya shook her head and backed towards the door.
    ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ he asked. ‘Anything at all?’
    His dark eyes each held a drop of radiance inside them, like the gleam of water at the bottom of a well. She couldn’t look
     too long into them. He knew something she couldn’t bear to know.
    ‘No, no. My taxi’s waiting.’ She opened the front door and started across the porch. Then she turned and said quickly: ‘I’m
     Maya, from the office. I’m really sorry …’
    ‘I know you are.’ He stepped forward and took her hand for a moment. ‘Dad’s at the funeral director’s. With Mum.’ He looked
     up over Maya’s head. ‘What a beautiful day!’ he said. ‘I had no idea.’ He was almost high, she saw, almost a little crazy.
    ‘The funeral’s on Thursday, nine-thirty at St Xavier’s,’ he called out after her as she fled down the path. She nodded over
     her shoulder