Free Risking It All by Ann Granger Page A

‘I’m not surprised to hear she’s moved. But sometimes people stay for years in one house, don’t they? I thought there was just a chance they’d still be here.’
     
    By a stroke of luck, I’d struck a chord. She had been watching me, biting at the spot where her lower lip ought to be. Now she brightened, as if she’d had an idea. ‘You could try Mrs Mackenzie at number thirty-nine. She’s lived here for donkey’s years. She may have known these people you’re looking for.’
     
    From the kitchen regions came an almighty crash, a scream and what sounded like profuse lamentations in French.
     
    ‘Got to go!’ said the woman. ‘Bloody hell, can’t that girl do anything right?’
     
    The door was slammed. I walked away feeling quite glad that I wasn’t a harassed young mum, even with a semi-detached mock-Tudor lifestyle, my own little runabout car and an au pair. I just don’t think that domesticity and I would get along. Don’t get me wrong. I like kids. What I don’t like, I suppose, is responsibility.
     
    Perhaps, I thought ruefully, I take after my own mother. Perhaps, given a family to look after, I would, as she had, walk out.
     
    I didn’t like to think I had been the sort of little horror who was making Marie-Cécile’s life a nightmare. But perhaps I just didn’t remember far enough back. True, at kindergarten I was the one who had managed to upset the poster paints and unintentionally pulled down all the classroom decorations just before the Christmas party started. I was the one who, when builders were working at my primary school, had discovered that they’d gone to take a break leaving a pile of sand temptingly unguarded. I’d then led an infant work detail armed with anything which could be used for carrying, and diligently removed it, scoop by scoop, to an area behind the boilerhouse. There we set to work to turn it into a castle and had got up to the turrets before being discovered.
     
    Add to that frequent spats with the neighbours, all of whom I’d managed to upset one way and another. As when I’d attempted to do a kind turn to a friendly and hungry-looking cat by opening a tin of sardines and putting it down on the floor for him. He shoved his face into it and it got stuck there, wedged on his jaws. The poor thing ran round demented, unable to see, dripping sardine oil and cannoning off the furniture. It was ages before Dad managed to catch him. Then we had to clean him up before his owner saw him. By now he distrusted our entire family and spat and scratched as we tried to remove oil from his fur and bits of sardine from his ears. All this before my disruptive progress through the private school, my eventual expulsion and the humiliation of facing Dad and Grandma which I’ve already told you about.
     
    ‘Face it, Fran,’ I told myself. ‘You were ghastly.’
     
    Mrs Mackenzie had net curtains at her bow windows. Her tiny front garden hadn’t been sacrificed for a car but was paved with chequered tiles and shielded from the pavement by a clipped privet hedge. Her front door was varnished dark brown and had twin glass panels in it, long, thin and pointed like church windows. Between them was stuck a little notice. It read:
WE DO NOT BUY OR SELL AT THIS DOOR WE SHALL EXPECT IDENTIFICATION WE CAN VERIFY YOU MAY BE ASKED TO WAIT WHILE WE CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY YOU MAY BE ASKED TO RETURN BY APPOINTMENT

     
     
    That was a good start. I rang the bell in what I hoped sounded a confident way. From the corner of my eye I could see the net curtain, and as I expected, it was briefly twitched aside. I glimpsed a face but couldn’t distinguish any particular features. The curtain fell back into place. I waited.
     
    There was the sound of someone approaching behind the door, not a firm footstep, more a shuffle interspersed with a thud. Then there was a click and a rattle. Someone was sliding a security chain across the door before opening it, but at least she (I assumed it was