Every Vow You Break by Julia Crouch Read Free Book Online

happened.
    ‘Shit,’ he said.
    ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘It seems to be taking an inordinately long time. And there’s no food in the house.’
    ‘Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ve got everything under control here. There’ll be a lovely meal waiting for you when you get back.’
    Wow, she thought. That’s a turn-up for the books.
    It took her quite a while to navigate out of town. By the time she found herself out on unfamiliar, deserted country roads, Jack had fallen asleep and it was the tail end of the day.
    She was never much good at being alone with nature, even within the fortification of the big car. Her imagination had an annoying tendency to bloom. Turning a bend, she would half expect to discover a ghastly old crone cursing her from the side of the road. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, she would be afraid of encountering mad, glinting eyes and the outline of a figure in the back seat, breathing down her neck, meaning her harm.
    A little way out of town, a greyish-brown car roared right up behind her, tailgating her along a particularly twisty stretch. By the time the driver overtook her, flashing his lights, blaring his horn and going to the extent of winding down his window to flip her the bird – at which point she realised he was in fact a she – Lara was in full fight-or-flight mode, palms sweating, heart pumping.
    ‘Wanker,’ she said to the other driver, just to steel herself.
    As she forced her breathing back to normal, she tried not to think about what might be going on up in the densely wooded hills all around her. That car could have forced her off the road and no one would have known until she was found years later, a desiccated skeleton, the rusting Chevy obscured by creepers.
    As she finally rolled into Trout Island, past the graveyard, Lara decided not to mention the tyre bill to Marcus. If he asked, she would say it was a hundred dollars. He would think that sufficiently outrageous, but nowhere near as bad as the real amount, which would trigger a whole week of silent brooding. Thankfully, his squeamishness about money stretched to him not even being able to open the envelopes containing their bank and credit card statements. Financial management was entirely her realm, and she saw it as her duty to protect him from some of the harsher realities by occasionally scaling down the truth.
    She turned into their driveway. If she looked through half-closed eyes, the house still hinted at what must have been a former glory. But the overgrown front garden and the loveless tarmac at the rear were stark reminders that those days were long gone.
    She lifted Jack out of the car seat and carried him up the rickety back porch steps. The kitchen door had a note pinned to it informing her – in handwriting so florid it had to be James’s – that the gas was now fixed.
    The house was completely silent. ‘Hello?’ she called, taking Jack through to the living room and laying him down on the sofa.
    There was no reply.
    ‘“Got everything under control”,’ Lara muttered as she went back out to bring in the shopping. ‘“Lovely meal waiting for you”. My arse.’
    Marcus could be so irritating.
    And she felt so tired she could barely move.
    It took her five trips to get everything into the house. She put things that needed to stay cold in their bags in the fridge, which she decided she would clean in the morning. The cupboards were filthy too, so she left the other groceries unpacked on the counter. She was just opening a bottle of red and biting into an Everything Bagel when she heard footsteps on the front porch and the swing of the fly screen.
    ‘Hello? Weary travellers?’ Marcus bellowed. ‘We bring provender.’
    Then he, Olly and Bella appeared in the kitchen, each of them bearing a pizza box almost as wide as Bella was tall.
    ‘And we have wine too!’ Marcus boomed, spotting the bottle at Lara’s side. ‘And our car is reinflated. Life is