Free The Cat Next Door by Marian Babson Page A

mother!’
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    â€˜Best thing you can do,’ Nan approved. Margot had the impression that she would have approved of anything that would get any of them out of the house. ‘Do some shopping, visit your old haunts, get everything done now. There’ll be no chance to move around freely once the trial starts on Monday and the media circus descends.’
    She skipped breakfast. ‘I’ll have lunch in town,’ thereby earning more approval.
    The house was deserted as she slipped out quietly, although she knew that most of the family were around somewhere. Aunt Milly, she knew, hardly left the house at all. Briefly, she considered walking into town, but she had already learned not to expend her intermittent energy on non-essentials and so waited at the bus stop.
    Tikki strolled past on the other side of the street and she called out to him softly. He spared a glance in her direction and then walked on, still huffy from last night’s rejection.
    â€˜It wasn’t my fault,’ she said, but he was gone and the bus was there, the door hissing open for her.
    The scene was so familiar, so … welcoming … that she caught her breath as she stepped off the bus, instantly transported back to the laughter and warmth of the past, of her childhood, her teenage years, her youth.
    The long High Street stretched out on both sides from the bus stop, bright and colourful with the stalls strung along it, noisy with the shoppers crowding the pavements, browsing and buying, laughing and gossiping.
    She was standing by the large barrow fragrant with herbs and spices when she realised that she was no longer alone.
    â€˜The junk stalls!’ Claudia cried gleefully and impatiently in her ears. ‘Let’s go straight for the junk stalls. You never know what treasure you might find there. Some day
there might be something wonderful!’ That was Claudia’s creed.
    â€˜Nan wants us to get cinnamon, celery salt, allspice and peppercorns.’ Chloe had always been the sober and responsible one, that was why she had been given the shopping list. ‘We should get them first, while we’re here. Then we can do as we please.’
    â€˜Oh, piffle! Look at that queue – we’ll be standing here all day. We might miss something exciting! Tell you what – ’ Claudia’s eyes sparkled with mischief – and challenge. ‘Why don’t we each palm a different item from Nan’s list and slip away? They’d never be able to catch all of us – if they even noticed what we’d done.’
    â€˜That’s shoplifting!’ Chloe’s scandalised gasp and look of horror sent Claudia into fits of laughter.
    â€˜These aren’t shops,’ she crowed. ‘They’re only stalls, probably half the stuff on them has fallen off the back of a lorry, anyway.’
    â€˜That’s a terrible thing to say!’ Predictably, Chloe was indignant on behalf of the stall-holders. ‘You shouldn’t – ’
    She might have known the ghosts would be with her. Claudia and Chloe had been so much a part of her life, how could she have thought she might escape them? They were – they had been – so alive and lively.
    Margot took a deep breath and tried to recapture her first feelings at the sight of the market, but the brief bouyant sparkle had gone out of the day. The faint echo of Claudia’s laughter took on a mocking note as it faded away. Chloe’s consternation at her twin’s antics was no longer amusing.
    Hindsight. All these years farther on, knowing what had finally happened between them, turned the memories dark and bitter.
    Chloe, so solemn and strait-laced; Claudia, delighting in teasing and provoking her sobersides twin. Had she finally teased her just too unmercifully? Taunted her an unforgivable step too far?
    Other people were able to retreat into a merciful
amnesia, Margot reflected wistfully, why couldn’t