(1990) Sweet Heart by Peter James Read Free Book Online Page A

oldbathtub that was its trough, then the light dimmed as the sun was blotted out by the interlocked branches of the woods rising up on either side. Among them cables swung between the telegraph poles that followed the track. Charley bit a nail. She’d seen too many movies about isolated houses where the wires had been cut.
    She pulled her finger from her mouth. Ben whined. Remote. It was beginning to feel too remote. ‘OK, boy! Nearly there —’ She hesitated. ‘Nearly home!’
    Home.
    It had been strange last night, with the carpets rolled up and the curtains down. Sad. Sad that a house could be your home one day and belong to a total stranger the next. Gone. Too late to turn back. The bridges were burnt. Tonight 14 Apstead Road would have new people under its roof, new voices, new laughter, new tears. They’d probably change the colour of the front door and pave over the front garden, and she and Tom would drive by in a couple of years and scarcely be able to pick out the house.
    A trail of cuttings of leafy branches and brambles littered the track around the next bend. The hedgerow was cut in a neat flat-top style. In the next dip a short man in a tweed cap lowered his power trimmer and pressed himself into the hedge to let her pass. She waved an acknowledgement and Ben barked at him.
    Tom was heaving a cool box out of the boot of the Audi as she pulled up and the pantechnicon inched its way through the gate pillars. As she climbed out of the car she heard the steady roaring of the weir and the mill race tumbling over the wheel. Ben ran around excitedly.
    She opened the lid of the cardboard box and peered in. The perforated cling-film was still in place over the neck of the bowl, and Horace was swimming around happily enough. She felt a surge of relief. She had beenfrightened the fish might die during the journey. She wanted no omens.
    The engine of the pantechnicon clattered then faded, and there was complete silence except for the sound of rushing water. The breeze died and the still air was hot in the sun; sheep bleated in the distance and there were two faint blasts from, possibly, a shotgun. A bird trilled. Her feet scrunched on the gravel. Ben began barking again.
    A metal door slammed. Voices. A bumble bee zoomed towards her and she flinched. Tom called out, ‘Any of you guys like a beer?’
    She walked to the bank of the stream. Only about three feet wide and maybe a couple of feet deep, it was easily jumpable. The water moved swiftly, clear and fresh, and the bed was lined with pebbles and rounded stones. The shadow of a bird strobed across.
    ‘Cor, it’s all right, innit?’ someone said. A beer can opened with a hiss. She looked at the other side of the bank, at the patch of scrub grass.
    Stables.
    The feeling remained each time she had come, nagged her from a dark recess of her mind that was just out of reach, taunting her.
    The executors of Nancy Delvine had taken every light bulb, even the one in the cellar.
    ‘Bastards!’ Tom said angrily, and drove off to the village in search of an electrical shop. The removals men took their lunch break and sat by the stream with their sandwiches.
    Charley carried Horace into the house and placed him safely on the draining board. ‘Like your new home?’ She screwed up her face at the custard yellow. ‘Think we’ll change the colour scheme. Any preferences?’
    She walked around the house, her plimsoles squeaking on the bare wood. Without furniture, the rooms seemed smaller, lower-ceilinged and dingier. Light rectangles marked the walls where pictures had hung or cupboards had stood. They reminded her of a film about Hiroshima her mother had taken her to see as a child; it had shown shadows on the walls that were the remains of people who had been vaporised when the bomb dropped.
    She climbed the steep staircase to the attic. Shafts of light from the one small window picked their way through the dust which hung as thick as sleet, tickling her nose and throat.