A Perfect Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

town houses. The square itself had, thanks to the determination of its townspeople, retained much of its original medieval aura even if the stocks were now purely decorative and the original well had been turned into an ornamental fountain.

    As young girls she and Louise used to call to see their father on their way home from school, specifically on
    'pocket-money' days, hoping that he might be persuaded to add a little extra to the permitted allowance. They had giggled over the boys as they sat side by side beneath the trees on the bench donated by past worthy citizens.
    Together they had visited Aunt Ruth and helped her with her innovative displays of church flowers. Together they had attended regulation church services. Together they had cycled through the square to the small antique shop their mother had once half owned with Guy Cooke. Together...
    As twins they had always been close, even though temperamentally they were in many ways so very different. Together they had gone to university and it had been there that they had both met Gareth Simmonds who had been one of the course lecturers.
    Gareth with whom she had fallen quietly and ideal-istically in love...
    Gareth who epitomised everything she had ever wanted in a man... Gareth who was so kind, so calm, so gende and perceptive... Gareth who loved her sister, her twin... Gareth who could never be hers...
    The view below her wavered and swam as her eyes filled with tears. Quickly she blinked them away. She had promised herself when Louise and Gareth married that she would find a way to stop loving him, that she would make herself accept him simply as her brother-in-law, as her beloved twin's husband, but every time she saw him the ache of loneliness and pain she felt at seeing the two of them so happy together was still there.
    She knew that Louise was hurt by her rejection of her constant invitations to go and stay with them, and she knew, too, that the gulf that was developing between the two of them disturbed her parents, especially her mother, but what could she do? What could she say? There was no way she could admit what the real problem was. And now there was the additional pain of seeing Louise with her new baby—hers and Gareth's child.
    A small bitter smile twisted the softness of her mouth.
    Was she destined always to be wanted by men who were already committed to someone else; to always be 'second best'? She knew that Gareth would never approach her with a view to an illicit affair the way her ex-boss had done. He loved Louise far too much for that. He was so totally unaware of Katie's own anguished feelings that it seemed to her, in her present state of low self-esteem and self-respect, that it was almost as though she didn't deserve to be loved or treated well, that something about her actively encouraged men to think they could treat her badly.
    No man would ever have suggested to her twin that she should have a seedy, hole-in-the-corner sexual relationship with him. No man would dream of suggesting it to any of her female cousins either, she was sure of it. Even Maddy, her brother Max's wife, who had always been regarded as the most downtrodden and to-be-pitied member of the family because of Max's appalling un-caring behaviour towards her, had turned out far stronger and determined than any of them could ever have imagined. Look at the way she had taken control of their marriage and of Max following his return home after hi,!
    attack.
    At last year's wedding of Bobbie's twin sister, Samantha, all the family had remarked on how much of an adoring husband and father Max had become. He was even taking on his full share of parenting following the birth of their third child, another little boy, so that Maddy could continue with her work for the charity Aunt Ruth had originally set up. Once, the very idea of Max changing nappies and bathing babies would have been a total impossibility, but now...
    So what was it about her that denied her the emotional