Free The Girls by Lisa Jewell

sofa with four carefully arranged red felt cushions, small square table with three wooden chairs, laminate flooring, nothing on the walls. It was the sort of clinical interior that chilled her heart. But of course, she realised, if Clare’s husband had burned down her house then she’d have had to start from scratch. All her photos gone. All her clothes. All her children’s drawings. Adele couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be like.
    ‘Er, yes. Of course. That would be lovely.’
    ‘Good! Great! Come at seven. I’m sure I’ll see you before. But if not, anything you don’t eat? The girls?’
    Clare shook her head and said, ‘We’ll eat anything.’ Pip looked up from where she was still crouched down petting Scout and said, ‘That’s not true! I don’t like meat. Or ravioli. Or any green vegetables. Apart from green beans. And I hate lentils and things like that. And coconut. And things with bits of—’
    ‘OK, Pip, thank you,’ said Clare, smiling conspiratorially at Adele. ‘I think we get the message.’
    Adele laughed. ‘Great. I’ll try to bear that all in mind. And I’ll let you get on. Sorry to disturb you so early. Have a good day.’
    Adele tugged at Scout’s lead and let him walk her home.
    Clare didn’t know what to make of it. An invitation to supper with the glamorous couple across the way. She’d said yes because it was eight thirty in the morning and she hadn’t even had a coffee yet. Caught in the twin beams of Adele’s shining brown eyes and dazzling smile, she couldn’t work out how to say no.
    Pip didn’t seem too taken with the idea either. ‘Do we have to go?’ she said.
    ‘I thought they were your friends?’
    ‘Yes, sort of. But I just don’t really want to go there for dinner.’
    ‘No,’ said Clare. ‘Me neither.’
    She hadn’t told the girls about their father yet. Pip would be delighted. Grace would be terrified. It could set her right back to where she’d been just after it had happened. Nightmares every night. Refusing to go to school. Refusing to eat.
    She’d keep it to herself, for now. Because even if they did let him out and even if he did find his daughters, what would he do? He wouldn’t harm them, she was pretty sure of that. He would just want to talk. He would just want to spend some time with them.
    But even as this highly reasonable summation of the situation passed through her consciousness it was overwritten by the memory of him last November, standing, ridiculous in his wetsuit, oblivious to the crowd of people surrounding him, the dancing flames reflected in his crazed eyes, the dark, nonsensical words spilling from his mouth. She remembered her daughters’ faces, golden and red in the light of the fire, pulling Pip back from going to her father, silent tears pouring down Grace’s cheeks as she shuddered inside her arms, and then her whole body arching, tensing as she cried, ‘But my homework’s in there! And my new jacket! And’ – she’d clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with horror – ‘my piggy bank with all my money in it!’
    Three things amongst so many. Clare sometimes lay awake at night trying to compile a mental inventory of what had gone. She’d get 3 per cent into it before giving up. Baby teeth. Hairbrushes. Her favourite All Saints cardigan that went with everything. The cookbook with the recipe in it for chocolate birthday cake which was the only one she’d ever used. The book she’d been halfway through reading. Diaries. Hairbands. All her silk underwear. Linen. Towels. The vintage velvet cushions from her grandma’s house. Six orchids in full bloom. Her laptop. Her camera. Passports. Half a box of expensive chocolate truffles. Her brand-new sunglasses. Her wedding dress.
    They’d come to this flat with nothing and were building themselves back to normality, sock by sock, cushion by cushion, spoon by spoon.
    ‘I’ll tell them we can’t come,’ she said, her hand on Pip’s crown.