Hothouse Flower by Lucinda Riley Read Free Book Online

believe that spring might come again.
    She closed the window, shivering suddenly in her thin T-shirt, pulled on her cardigan and went downstairs to make some tea.
    By lunchtime, Julia was aware that something had shifted. Try as she might to remember what she had been doing here in this cottage every day for the past few months, she could not. Time was dragging; she felt restless, bored even. She searched her mind fruitlessly for the path back to the comforting torpor, but it steadfastly refused to take her there.
    Feeling claustrophobic, Julia realised she needed to get out of the house. She threw on a jacket, scarf and wellies, opened her front door and marched across the grass and down towards the sea.
    The harbour was deserted. The small boats brought in safely to land during the winter sounded restless too, their rigging making a tinkling sound, as if to remind their owners of their usefulness to come. Julia left the harbour behind and continued walking along the long spit of land, at the far end of which seals basked on the sand, to the delight of the tourists who took boat rides out to see them.
    The chill wind nipped at her face and she pulled the collar of her jacket up higher to protect herself. She kept going, relishing the fact that she was so completely alone, now with water on both sides of the diminishing strip of land – as if she was walking away from the world.
    She stopped, then turned and made her way down one side of the spit towards the water lapping below her, just inches from her feet. It was deep here, deep and cold enough to drown in, especially with the strong outgoing current that would sweep her swiftly away from the shore. She looked from side to side, reassuring herself she was truly alone.
    If she threw herself in, there would be no one to stop her …
    … and the pain would be over.
    At worst, she would go to sleep forever. At best, she would see them again.
    Julia dangled one tentative boot out past the land’s edge.
    She could do it now …
    Now …
    What was to stop her?
    She looked down at the grey water, willing herself to take the final plunge into release, but …
    She couldn’t.
    She gazed up hopelessly at the wintery, white sun, then threw her head back and let out an enormous scream.
    ‘WWWWWHHHHHYYYYYY!!!? ’
    She sank to her knees on the melting frost. And she howled and beat her fists into the ground in fury and pain and anger.
    ‘ Why them?! Why them?! ’ she repeated over and over until, through exhaustion, she had to stop, so she sobbed instead.
    She lay flat, spread-eagled, her tears mingling with the wetness of the grass, crying with the full force of seven months of not doing so.
    Finally, she ran out of tears and lay there; still, silent and empty. After a while she sat up, rose to her knees as if she was praying, and spoke to them.
    ‘I have to … live ! I have to live without you, somehow …’ she whimpered. Her hands went out to the side, palms stretched upward to the sky. ‘Help me, please help me, help me …’ She sank back down, put her head in her hands, resting it on her knees.
    All Julia could hear was the rhythmic lapping of the water surrounding her. She concentrated on it and found it calmed her. She felt the weak warmth of the sun on her back and was suffused with a sudden and unexpected sense of peace.
    She had no idea how long it was before she stood up. Wet through from the thawed grass, her legs like jelly and both hands numb from the cold, she staggered back along the spit towards home.
    She arrived at the cottage, shaking from the exertion of the long walk and the release of emotion. She was just turning the handle to open the front door when she heard someone calling her name.
    ‘Julia!’
    She looked down the hill and saw Kit Crawford striding up the narrow path towards her from the High Street.
    ‘Hi there,’ he said as he reached her. ‘I came to see you, but you weren’t in. I put a note through your letter box.’
    ‘Oh,’ she