A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) by John Dolan Read Free Book Online

who would take care of me. A gentle, honest man. A man like you.”
    “Claire –”
    “ It so happens that I love you, David Braddock. I love the way you treat me, the way you treat everyone. I love your optimism and your humility. I love the fact that for you the cup is always half-full, and that tomorrow the sun will come out; that in spite of all the evidence around you to the contrary you still think people are basically good; that you will always give someone a second chance. And we all need that at some time. We all need a second chance.” She turned back to me. “Are they good enough reasons for you?”
     
    In December the real winter began. The temperature plummeted, and all at once nothing was wet any more. Everything was frozen. Then the snow came: great soft white fluttering doves of cleansing cold. Ever since I was a child I have loved snow. It has seemed to me a conception of purity made tangible; a benevolent covering of grace across the landscape, embracing fields, trees and houses, and creating a kind of oneness.
    The snow lay deep and a night wind, since departed, had piled up the crystallised whiteness into wonderful deep drifts, the first time that Claire and I made love.
    We had taken a brave, or perhaps foolhardy, stroll around the farm and arrived back at the outbuildings as darkness was falling. The crisp snow crunched beneath our feet, the only sound not muffled to nothingness by the cocooning air. Our breath hung before our eyes as the lights of the farmhouse glowed ahead, offering a promise of warmth.
    “Are you ready for company yet?” Claire asked.
    “Am I what?”
    She stopped walking and lowered her eyes for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts. Then she lifted her head, removed the glove from her right hand and touched my face.
    I led her into the barn, or perhaps she led me. Either way, we knew in that moment that it was time, that we had reached a threshold from which neither of us felt inclined to turn and retrace our steps. And there, among the straw and the coldness which neither of us felt, semi-clothed, urgent and careless of discovery, our breaths a conjoined, freezing vapour, we made love to the music of silence. And afterwards, cooling, the steam rising from our bodies after that joyful release, we lay hand in hand, my lips on her brow as if in benediction.
    At length, I propped myself on my elbow and stroked a stray lock of hair from her face. Her eyes held mine.
    “Like the animals, eh?” I said.
    “No, darling,” she replied seriously, “like the angels.”
    Then she laughed.
     
    Looking back, that was the first time in my life I was truly afraid. Not of commitment, or of responsibility, or even of disappointment. I had known worries, the insecurities of childhood, and the strange, sometimes neurotic concerns of the teenage years. I had known the sadness and loneliness of one that loses his mother to the unfathomable brutality of death. But this was my first experience of adult helplessness. For in that instant of love I knew both the strength and the weakness that apprehension draws from the human heart.
    To find love is to grow strong, but it is also to know fear. To fear the loss of what you have found.

 
    5
    ANNA
     
    There were days Anna Harper wished she were still Anna Holland. Today was one of those days.
    Emptying the laundry basket, she had gone through the pockets of her husband Max’s jeans and found a scrap of paper containing the words, Call me baby xxx muah!
    Either Max was once more becoming careless about his liaisons or he no longer cared whether Anna found out. She didn’t know which was worse.
    Eight years of marriage and nothing had changed.
    Anna had known Max was a womaniser before she married him, but like many women before her, she had been caught up in the passion and the romance of the moment. She had managed to convince herself that he would calm down; that the act of eating wedding cake would somehow alter his brain chemistry and