Page 13 of Slow Burn Summer

Kate shook her head and nodded at the wardrobe. “Close that door, would you?”

One final scan of the room and they headed back downstairs.

“Liv, come on,” Kate whispered, anxious when her sister veered off into the kitchen.

“Just one minute.”

Kate followed her sister and found her frowning into the open fridge.

“I thought there might be some champagne knocking around I could nick but there’s nothing. Maybe he’s on a health kick.”

The contents of the fridge were both scant and orderly, nothing to go off in his absence, an unopened carton of milk in readiness for his return and—“Fucking bloody revolting hummus,” Kate said, surprising both of them.

“Please tell me I can do something to it,” Liv said. “Lace it with arsenic or something?”

“Do you happen to have that in your pocket too, along with the prawns and the sewing kit?” Kate said. She wanted to get going, but a small, unwise part of her also wanted to release a little hummus-related rage. Opening the freezer, she rummaged through and came up with a bag of prawns.

“Must be Belinda’s, Richard hates them,” she said, unzipping the bag.

Liv looked delighted. “Are we actually going to sew them into the curtains?”

Kate peeled the lid on the hummus. “Nothing so drastic,” she said, tipping a good handful of prawns in and mixing them around to hide them. “Just this.”

As she put the rest of the prawns away and made sure to put the hummus back where she’d found it, Liv reached out and grabbed her arm. “Did you hear a car?”

They stood statue still and heard a car door slam on the drive.

“Shit!” Kate panicked, grabbing the brown box from the work surface. “Back door, quick.”

Thankfully, the key was in the lock, and they heard the front door open just as they slipped outside into the back garden.

“Now what?” Liv whispered, pressing herself flat against the wall.

Kate’s heart was banging behind her ribs. “Um, shed?”

They shuffled around the edge of the house, ducking beneath the kitchen window, and made a dash across the perfectly striped lawn.

“It’s the cleaners,” Kate breathed, once the shed door was safely closed. “We could just wait it out in here, they’ll be gone in a couple of hours.”

Liv’s face made it clear that wasn’t an option. “Isn’t there a back gate?”

“There is, but we’d have to leave it unlocked if we go through it. I don’t want to be responsible if he gets broken into or something.”

“I don’t know why you even care,” Liv said. “I’d stick a sign on the gate saying ‘Empty house, help yourself.’ ”

“Still Alice’s home, remember?” Kate put the box down on the floor. “Right, so we either stay in the shed until they leave, or risk cutting through the house while they clean upstairs. They’re methodical, top to bottom.”

Liv checked the time on her phone. “Much as I’d love to spend the day in a spidery shed with you, I’ve a silk delivery coming this afternoon, so I vote option B. Plus, it’s more exciting.”

Kate thought she might say that. Liv’s spirit of adventure had landed her in trouble more than once over the years.

“Also,” Liv said, “they might lock the kitchen door, then we’d be stuck out here and have to climb the gate or something. I’d be all right but I don’t fancy your chances.”

“One of us was on the gymnastics team at school, and it wasn’t you,” Kate shot back, a snarky whisper even though there wasn’t anyone in the garden to hear them.

“And one of us has done Pilates for the last twenty years,” Liv said.

“You can carry that box, then.” Kate nudged it toward her sister with her foot as she quietly unlatched the door and listened. “Come on, let’s make a run for it.”

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