How To Marry Your Husband by Anne Brooke Read Free Book Online

he’s a slaphead. Of course I’m far too polite to say that so I just say I think he looks great. Weird, isn’t it?”
    Olivia had a moment out of time when she attempted to process what nonsense he was trying to tell her – she was primed to believe his every word of course – when he gave her a wink and they both burst out laughing. That of course led to kissing – did that happen with all couples or was it really just them? – and Midsomer Murders was entirely forgotten so Olivia never did discover who had murdered the old man in the wheelchair with a bow and arrow at the village fete or why.
    The memory makes her smile just as a knock at her mother’s door announces the arrival of Bernie.
    “Why doesn’t she use the bell?” Olivia asks as she goes to answer it.
    Her mother smiles. “Because she’s local. You can always tell an off-worlder here from the sound of the bell. Local people knock.”
    Or indeed simply come in, Olivia thinks. She well remembers the time she’d been staying at her mother’s and had wandered down to the kitchen at the crack of dawn (9.30am to be precise) in her night-gown to seek out some desperately-needed coffee. She’d reached the bottom of the stairs when the front door swung open and the postman popped in.
    “Morning!” he yelled in a bright postman-y voice and then caught sight of Olivia poised on the bottom stair in her nightwear. His eyes widened – presumably with horror – and he gulped as Olivia tried to clutch her gown closer around her chest – it tended to be embarrassingly see-through in the wrong light. Without another word, he deposited his clutch of letters on the hall table and backed out of the front door, clicking it shut behind him.
    “Morning, Sam!” her mother’s voice rang out from the kitchen, just preceding her as she tip-tapped down the hall into sight. “Oh, where did he go?”
    “Hello, Mum,” said Olivia, still with her arms wrapped round her chest. “What on earth was all that about?”
    Her mother took one look at her and burst out laughing. “Oh, darling! Look at you. No wonder poor Sam ran away. I forget you’re not a morning person, are you? And that nightie! Really, it covers nothing. Your grandmother would turn in her urn if she could see you now.”
    “Nonsense!” said Olivia. “You’re exaggerating – surely I don’t look that bad.”
    However, a casual glance in the hall mirror told her how right her mother was. Her hair had been unwashed for two days and was sticking up like a cockatoo in shock. Her skin was shiny and there was a huge spot about to launch its presence on her chin. To cap it all, the nightie had definitely been caught in the wrong sort of light. She swore she’d never wear it again. In the meantime, Olivia screamed and ran up the stairs as if the hounds of hell were behind her in order to make herself look vaguely presentable again. And dressed. Definitely dressed.
    Half an hour later, a cup of coffee inside her, she asked her mother once more about the whole strange arrival of the postman.
    “But it’s perfectly normal, darling,” her mother said with some surprise. “This is the countryside. Sam always leaves the post on the hall table. He takes it for delivery too. I’ve not posted any letters for years. I just leave them there and he picks them up. For really local ones, you don’t even have to use a stamp. He just delivers them on his rounds. It’s the way things work here.”
    “Gosh,” said Olivia, thinking that maybe she and her mother had somehow been transported back to the 1950s without realising, but at the same time seeing it might not be such a bad place to be. It would never happen in the town. The countryside was indeed another country.
    Back in the present, Bernie seems perfectly normal. A slight, dark haired woman with a ready smile and an air of confusion, which makes Olivia feel as if she isn’t likely to be overpowered with hair choices. This can only be a good thing. The