Ninepins by Rosy Thorton

room, followed by a stripped but still grubby-looking Jack.
    â€˜Can I have one?’ Jack climbed, still stark naked, on to the chair next to Alfie.
    â€˜Me, me,’ added Roly.
    â€˜Go on, then, Beth. Thanks,’ said Tessa. ‘But I think the bread’s still frozen.’
    The boys, now flocked around the table like hungry gulls, appeared to Laura enormous. They had all inherited their father’s large frame and broad jaw and brow; they all shared, already at this tender age, his tendency to jowliness. Tessa, by contrast, was five feet two and had always been slightly built; now, despite three pregnancies in quick succession, she seemed thinner than ever, as if somehow her sons were fattening parasitically at her expense.
    â€˜Can we have cheese?’ asked Jack.
    â€˜Nutella,’ said Alfie. ‘We always have cheese. I want Nutella.’
    â€˜Why not both?’ Simon swung a sliced loaf from freezer to microwave, still in its plastic bag. ‘Cheese and chocolate. Might be really good.’
    â€˜Yes!’ shouted all three boys at once. ‘Cheese and chocolate!’
    Beth laughed and went to the fridge, but not before casting an anxious eye at Laura. It would never be allowed at home. She didn’t even ask if she could have one herself – though Laura would have let her, if she had.
    â€˜Don’t give any to Dougie, though,’ said Tessa, on her way to the hall with the coats and boots. ‘They mustn’t have chocolate. Something to do with their livers.’
    â€˜Speaking of which,’ said Simon, when she’d gone, ‘how about another beer?’
    â€˜No, thanks. Really. I think when Beth has made the boys their sandwiches, we’d better be heading off.’
    He nodded, and grinned at Beth, who pulled a face of cartoon misery. ‘Oh, all right ,’ she said. ‘But can Willow come for supper? Please, Mum. I need to tell her about Dougie.’
Chapter 7
    Twelve was too old for strawberry milkshake mix. That’s what Laura had decided when she crept into her kitchen late on Friday night, after Beth had gone to bed, to make her daughter’s birthday cake. Beth had insisted on the same cake every year since she was seven or eight. A famous family recipe, hit upon at first more or less by accident but established thereafter as a fixture in the calendar for high days and holidays, it had strawberry Nesquik in the mixture and strawberry jam between the layers, topped off with butter icing made with more of the milkshake powder. But this year she knew it wouldn’t do; the extravagant pink confection would have struck entirely the wrong note. For Beth’s new friends, it had to be some- thing different.
    A rich chocolate torte is what she’d fixed upon, made with whole bars of real, dark chocolate, the kind with 72 per cent cocoa solids. It had whipped egg whites in it, too, and hardly any flour, and came out flat-topped and weighty-looking, the same deep colour as when it went in. She’d hidden it overnight in the back of the corner cupboard which, when she opened it just now, released the mingled, smoky scents of cardamon and roasted cacao. The cake was firm and dense and cool to the touch.
    There was plenty of time to decorate it before they came back. Beth had left at eleven o’clock this morning, to call for Willow and walk to the bus-stop. Beneath her old, black duffle jacket she had put on the new birthday jumper: her extra, surprise present in addition to the new bike. Laura was pleased, because she hadn’t been sure about it when Beth opened it, at breakfast on Thursday. They were in all the shops like that, with the Fair Isle pattern round the neck, but were the snowflakes too childish? And should she have gone for the one with a hood?
    â€˜It’s great, Mum,’ is all she’d said, and she hadn’t tried it on, not straight away.
    Laura had given her cash for Simon’s birthday