Free Guilty Feet by Kelly Harte

If she’d been around last night for instance, when he’d heard about Jo being with somebody else—but that was the problem. It would never be for the right reason.
    ‘Like I said before, Ash—you’re gorgeous, but you’re just not my type.’
    ‘Well, you’re not mine either,’ she said, uncupping her pretty heart-shaped face. ‘But what does that matter?’ She shrugged. ‘We’re both free agents at the moment, so what harm would it do to give it a try?’
    ‘Because then it would be hard to be friends when we found that it didn’t work out.’
    He was thinking again of Jo now, of course, but at least he didn’t have to risk bumping into her every day. He had no idea where she was living now. He’d thought about phoning Cass many times, or trying Jo’s office. And now it was all too late. Now she had someone new in her life.
    ‘You might have a point,’ he was surprised to hear Aisling say through his thoughts. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up yet,’ she added with a grin. She stretched and got up from her seat. ‘Better go and unpack, I suppose.’
    ‘What about your coffee?’ Dan said as he picked up his own mug and followed her into the hallway.
    ‘You know how I hate that nasty instant stuff you serve up, Dan. My body’s a temple, remember?’
    He looked at her body as it glided gracefully down the stairs and he had to admit that it was a very fine temple indeed. Smiling still, he went back to his computer and decided to check his e-mails before getting down to work. There were only three waiting for him, but the one that stood out was from dalysarah.
    It was becoming a daily thing, come to think of it, and he wondered if it was time to discourage her by not replying. Still, might as well read what she had to say, though, he thought.
    ***
    As well as a quick introduction to Thompson family history, lunch included a lecture on food fat content and a chicken salad without any dressing that cost what would have kept me in burgers for up to a week. Oh, yes, and some deft subject-dodging whenever I asked about my father.
    We drove to the records office in my mother’s Corsa, and because we had difficulty parking we managed to arrive ten minutes late for the appointment, which seemed to annoy the woman in charge of the office greatly. Clearly a charm school drop-out, she had a glacial, superior air, and warned us in no uncertain terms that the smooth running of the office was dependent on the courtesy of all its users.
    I was sure that this would infuriate my mother, but instead she apologised profusely, ignored the unforgiving tut-tuts, and generally did a very good impersonation of a polite and mild-mannered follower of rules and regulations. There was clearly something about records offices that had a transforming effect on her, and I wished I could bottle whatever it was and feed it to her twice daily.
    There were three other people inside the wood-panelled room, all of them so deeply involved in what they were doing that they didn’t even glance up at us, the interesting new arrivals. It was the sort of place where you didn’t need to be told that whispering was obligatory, and I’m not sure why, but it was at that particular moment that the whole strangeness of the situation struck me.
    My mother didn’t normally include me in her interests, and if I hadn’t been trying so hard to make up for our last falling-out I would already have made further enquiries about her motives. But it seemed a bit late for that now, so I put my suspicions aside for the time being and followed her whispered instructions on handling the equipment. She showed me how to use the cunning little microfiches that looked like photograph negatives and contained enormous amounts of information when magnified on a screen. Once I felt confident with what I was doing, she instructed me to examine the marriage records of a certain parish of Tillingham.
    I’d learnt by now that my mother had got back as far as