Don't Come Looking by AJ Campbell (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

me with the pensive look of a curious child. ‘Why don’t you call her Mummy?’

‘Because she’s not my mummy.’

‘You love her more than Grandma.’

So cutely intuitive.

‘Now make a well in the middle of the flour like this.’ I take the wooden spoon from Isabella and hollow out the bottom of the bowl. She grabs it back to continue the task.

‘Now we need to crack the eggs into the middle,’ I say, mulling over the events of last night. What a disaster! But that’s what lies and deceit do to a family.

‘I’ll do it. Let me. I want to,’ Isabella says, bouncing up and down with her usual hunger for life. Like I can see Joe in Jim, my daughter is a mini-me in the personality department – always wanting to get involved, always seeking a solution.

‘One each.’ I pass them both an egg and out poke their tongues as they carefully crack the eggs into the bowl and fish out bits of shell. Once they have stirred until they can stir no more, they run off, leaving me to clean the worktops.

I pack a picnic ready for our trip to the beach, and, as I’m clearing up, the doorbell rings. I rush to answer it. There Gill stands, as always, with the same wiry hair and the same loyal smile. She hands over a generous bunch of flowers, and I fall into the familiar relief of comfort her hugs always give me. I swallow the lump in the back of my throat as I tell her it’s been too long.

‘I know, I know, but now I’m retired, life seems to have got even busier,’ she says. ‘How does that happen?’

‘You keep going on holiday!’

She steps back. ‘You feel thin. What’s been going on?’

I carry her suitcase to the bottom of the stairs, smiling. She always tells me I either look or feel thin.

The kids come skipping down the hallway, calling out her name on repeat. She hands them both a package, and their breathless impatience overrides their manners. They drop to the wooden floor like they do when the music suddenly stops in a game of musical bumps. Eyes wide, they rip open their gifts as if they’ve never before received a present. Out falls a box set of books for each. I remind them of their manners.

I leave them discussing their stories. Shrills follow me to the kitchen where I flick the kettle switch and swing the patio doors open to the dazzling morning sun. Not a cloud in sight, the Bleu de France sky pledges another glorious day. ‘Let’s sit outside,’ I say when Gill appears.

I find my sunglasses, and we take our tea over to the grey rattan table and chairs, and I fetch some cushions from the deck box. ‘What a wonderful morning,’ she says, helping me discard the cover of the garden umbrella. I push the umbrella up the pole until the ribs fully extend, and the fabric becomes taut, but it gets stuck as I try to lock it into position. This keeps happening. Another damn thing that needs fixing. We ditch the umbrella in favour of the shade from the out-of-control laurels, which provide the garden with cherished privacy from the neighbour’s unsightly loft conversion. ‘It’s too early. You’ll have to wait a couple of hours,’ I hear Catherine, my neighbour, say to her children, arguing with her about what time they can fill their paddling pool.

We catch up on life as if it were only yesterday we discussed her plans for retirement and the increasing bouts of Jim’s unexplained pain. She’s the only person I can talk to about anything and everything.

‘Excuse the mess of the garden.’ I nod towards the duvet of weeds suffocating the uncut lawn. It’s a garden with limitless potential for the green-fingered. Just a shame I’m not such a person. An abundance of trees – acers, willows and cherry blossom – and clusters of laurels line one side. A bricked pergola runs the length of the other, overspread with various foliage providing a covered walkway down towards a large oak tree and the kids’ trampoline. A three-tier water fountain blights the area in front of the patio, a cast stone oddity left by the previous owners which Jim and I still squabble over now and again. He says it makes a nice feature. I say it’s good for the tip. I think about the delphiniums, butterfly bushes, coneflowers and rose bushes galore that crowd Gill’s cottage garden wondering what it would take to get ours in some kind of presentable order.

She shields her eyes with her hand and squints across the garden. ‘I’ll have a potter while I’m here.’ There’s something different about her. She looks younger, fresher, not so many lines and wrinkles surround her eyes. Retirement suits her.

‘How’s work?’ She takes a sip of tea. ‘Caught any naughty people lately?’

I brief her on what I’ve been up to, before moving on to tell her about the trouble with Sasha and Marc. ‘Remember them? You met them when they were here last summer.’

‘The chap who manned the barbeque?’

‘That’s right. He’s walked out on her for no apparent reason. Made a statement at the station to say he never wants to be found.’

‘Wow. He didn’t seem the type. They looked so happy together.’

I nod. ‘Totally. The problem is, because he has stated he doesn’t want to be found, there’s nothing the police can do.’

‘So? What’re you doing about it?’ she asks with a twisted smile. She knows me so well.

‘I’ve done something really bad.’

She raises her eyebrows.

‘I looked him up on the PNC – the Police National Computer – which is a criminal offence. I’ve used police information for personal gain.’ I sigh. ‘I found out stuff I shouldn’t, and I’m feeling incredibly guilty. Not only that, I disclosed the information to a third party, which is a criminal offence too.’

‘We all do things we shouldn’t at times, Eva. Put it behind you. Guilt is a wasted