Free Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) by Kate Medina Page B

smiled a faint, knowing smile.

12
     
    The light was on in Ahmose’s cottage, and she could see him inside, sitting in his stiff wing-backed chair – the one he favoured because he didn’t have to lower himself too far to get into it – by a roaring log fire, reading the paper.
    Ahmose had obviously spent the day gardening because some of the plants in her tiny front garden, across the low flint wall dividing the properties, were wrapped in what looked like white woollen coats, protecting them from the winter freeze.
    He pulled open the door, a wide smile spreading across his face.
    ‘Perfect timing. I put the kettle on when I heard your engine. It should be boiled.’
    She gave him a kiss on the cheek and stepped into the hallway, immediately felt herself relax as the warmth of the little cottage enveloped her, the woody charcoal smell of the open fire filled her nostrils.
    While Ahmose busied himself filling the china teapot, getting the cups and saucers from the cupboard, arranging them all on the floral tray that had been Alice’s favourite, Jessie found a plate and fanned out the biscuits his sister had sent him from Cairo in a neat semicircle. She spent a moment adjusting them, so that an exact portion of each biscuit showed from under the next.
    Their weekly tea was a ritual that they had developed over the five years they’d been neighbours. Jessie’s heart had sunk the first time Ahmose had appeared on her doorstep the day after she moved in – clutching a miniature indoor rose, full of advice on how to keep it flowering – imagining a nosy old man who’d never give her any peace. The reality, she quickly found, was the opposite. She sought him out more often than he sought her, had learnt to value his calm, sensible views, his clear-headed take on her problems, his stories and his humour. Their weekly tea was now a sacred part of her calendar: civilized, to be savoured, a deeply companionable, uncompetitive couple of hours. Ahmose felt more like family now than her blood relatives, certainly far more than the father she had only seen five times in the past ten years.
    Curling on the sofa, Jessie wrapped both hands around the piping cup. With the open fire the cottage was warm, but she felt chilled to the bone from standing too long in the car park playing verbal games with Starkey. She reached for a biscuit.
    ‘You must let me pay for the plant warmers, Ahmose.’
    ‘Most certainly not. A nice garden makes both our cottages look beautiful, adds value.’
    She smiled. ‘You sound like a Home Counties estate agent.’
    ‘And it gives an old man something to do, some exercise,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and before I forget, your mother dropped by a couple of hours ago.’
    ‘My mother?’ Jessie was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had popped around. Years ago, it was – three at least.
    She rolled her eyes. ‘She seems to think that I don’t actually have a job. That I’ll be here in the middle of the afternoon.’
    ‘It’s a mother’s job to believe that their child is forever too young to be gainfully employed and to worry about them constantly. I offered for her to wait in your house – I thought that you wouldn’t mind – but she said that she needed to get home for six.’
    Jessie nodded, took a sip of tea. ‘Did she want anything specific?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I think that she just wanted to see you. She said that it has been a long time.’
    Jessie bit her lip. It had been a long time, eight months – her mother’s birthday. The weather had been unseasonally hot and she’d been wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She remembered her mother asking if she couldn’t have
dressed up a bit for lunch
– even though they were only going to a pub on Wimbledon Common. Chafing against each other even now, fifteen years later. None of the life-changing events they had lived through talked about in detail. Nothing resolved.
    ‘You should go and see her, Jessie, whatever