Good Husband Material by Trisha Ashley Read Free Book Online

romantic novelist.’
    ‘Really? So, what now? Drop back into her life like a particularly dangerous spider and invite her to jump into your web?’
    ‘No, of course not. I’m going to keep well clear. And I don’t think much of your metaphor, though I might just use it. I’ve got this idea for a song …’
    ‘I wonder if she ever feels the drain of you sucking your inspiration from her over so many years? Did the detective comment on whether she looked like the dried-out husk of a woman?’
    ‘Ha, ha!’ I laughed hollowly. ‘Now I’m some sort of vampire.’
    ‘Don’t you find Nerissa something to write about?’ he asked curiously.
    ‘She’s a distraction, admittedly, and she’s got more sticking power than I expected. But Pop’s threatening to cut her allowance off if he sees one more tabloid photo of his daughter with her hands all over me.’
    ‘She’ll be moving in with you before you know what hit you.’
    ‘No she won’t. You know,’ I struck a Garbo-esque pose, ‘I often vant to be alooone.’
    ‘Yes, and you also often say you want to settle down and raise a family. Speaking of which, you haven’t forgotten it’s my engagement party tonight?’
    ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten. But I just want to rough out this song while it’s running through my head.’
    Carlo regarded me sombrely. ‘OK, as long as you’re not going to stay here brooding. It’s pointless. You can never go back.’
    ‘Of course not. “That was another country, and besides, the wench is dead?”’ I quoted lightly. ‘Something like that.’
    Dead to me, anyway.

Chapter 4: Wild in the Country
    While I didn’t
quite
achieve my dream of having my own country cottage before my thirtieth birthday, we moved in only a couple of weeks later, though early on the very first morning, when I was jerked rudely from the sound sleep of exhaustion by a deep coughing roar like a sick cougar, it struck me that Nutthill, and 2 Dower Houses in particular, was not going to be quite the quiet haven of my imaginings.
    Heart pounding, I started up and stared wildly round the strange room, where James and I lay marooned among the flotsam of our possessions.
    Dismal February light from the uncurtained window greyly furred every outline, but there was no cougar among them, sick or otherwise, and I’d just snuggled thankfully back into the warm embrace of the duvet when the noise was repeated, this time growing ever louder until it rumbled and snarled itself off into the distance.
    Must have been a tractor – or something.
    This was not the first thing to strike me about country living, though: the sliding door between the bathroom and the kitchen had already done that, very painfully, in the night. This extra barrier was due to some legal hygiene quibble about the two being next to each other, and while I’m all for germs being kept out, I don’t see what notice they’ll take of a sliding door.
    Once the roaring had died away I could hear birds twittering, a muted cackling, and a faint, faraway foghorn of mooing. The walls between us and our only neighbour are so thick that yesterday, while we were moving in, I heard nothing from her, though her front curtains were twitching like mad – but now there was the slam of a door and shuffling footsteps going in the direction of the back garden.
    The muted cackling was suddenly released into a cacophony of squawking, clucking and crowing, accompanied by the rattling of a bucket. Then the slow, dragging footsteps retraced their path, the door slammed, and there was silence … apart from the newly released hens, of course, and the cows, and the birds …
    Yes – the birds.
    I’d expected – even looked forward to – waking to the sound of birdsong, but whatever was now performing outside my window was unmelodious in the extreme.
    A rook, perhaps?
    I’ll soon know, because I intend learning how to identify all the wild birds, flowers, trees and little woodland creatures … except