The Housetrap

Deliah McDeery sat cross-legged on the thick carpet of Claude Laurent’s lounge doing a Killer Sudoku. She had a feeling she’d put a wrong number in somewhere but carried on regardless. Feelings were not facts and anyway, if she had made a mistake, it wasn’t her fault. It was because her mind was elsewhere. Upstairs to be precise. She twirled her pen over the combinations of numbers on the page, the possibilities for each dotted shape, the boxes and lines and rows, all adding up to the same total. Regular, logical . . . comforting. Still, it wasn’t enough to properly distract her from the laughter coming from above. In two days’ time, Deliah’s supposed best friend, Claude, and his family would be moving to Cornwall. Deliah and her mum were there to say goodbye. To celebrate their decade-long friendship, make promises to visit, hug and cry a bit, and help move boxes.