Cupid's Way Read Online Free PDF

over its hooves. The horse stamped and whinnied, thrashing its head from side to side. Evie had no idea how to size horses, but she reckoned this one must be the maximum number of hands possible. Attached to the horse by a wooden harness was a cart with four red-painted wheels. At first glance there didn’t seem to be anyone in the cart, or indeed anyone tending to the horse at all, but when Evie shuffled further forward she caught sight of the top of a man’s head. It was bald, with a tuft of ginger hair above each ear. As she watched, the mystery driver cracked a whip and nudged the horse on. Straight towards Frank’s supermini.
    ‘Reverse, reverse,’ Mavis cried, but Frank was already half out of the car.
    ‘Gran, we’d better get out too.’ Evie grabbed her suitcase and reached for the door. ‘Come on, over here.’
    They pressed themselves against a brick wall out of harm’s way, and watched Frank advance on the horse and cart, shaking his clenched fist.
    ‘This is the bloody end for you, Peacock. I’ve told you a million times you can’t bring that mangy old nag up here. What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?’
    ‘What on earth is going on?’ Evie’s heart was racing and she felt the urge to pinch herself. A horse and cart in the middle of a cobbled street; two old men, their jaws set in anger, squaring up to each other. Evie shook her head and looked around for some kind of orientation. To her right was one of the gates that led into Cupid’s Way, and she could see the first of the twelve Victorian houses above an expanse of evergreen hedging. It was just like the others – perfectly preserved, with Gothic revival architecture and tall sash windows, a tiny yard out back and a lawned garden in front. All the gardens were communal now, with a cobbled path running down the middle of the facing rows of two-up, two-down houses. Evie held up her hand to shield her eyes from the winter sun. The window frames could do with a good coat of paint, and some of the roof tiles had slipped into the drooping gutter, but apart from that this house at the end of the street hadn’t changed since she was a child.
    Evie had grown up five minutes from here – her mum and her grandparents were close, back then – but while Cupid’s Way itself was unchanged, she couldn’t say the same for the surrounding area. Most of the terraced streets had been bulldozed, making way for modern housing that favoured cul de sacs and crescents, not the linear configuration of old. The curved grey back of a vast warehousing complex bounded the street to the north, while the glittering mirrored facades of a new retail park threw back the sun from the south. And looming behind number one Cupid’s Way, so close it seemed to be leaning over it, was the McAllister building. It was stern and uncompromising – architecture for architecture’s sake, in Evie’s opinion. She regarded it for a moment, taking in the boxy concrete design, and wondering what the hell the city planners had been thinking when they gave the green light to such a monstrosity.
    She was quite looking forward to meeting the planners that afternoon, in fact.
    The man in the cart was standing now, barely as tall as Frank despite being a good two feet off the ground. He shook his fist right back at Evie’s grandfather, and the breeze made his two patches of red hair flip up around his ears like feathers. He puffed out his chest and stamped one foot; the horse whinnied and shook its head, flicking away the long white fringe and glaring back at the cart and driver.
    ‘Frank,’ Mavis called. ‘Think of your blood pressure.’ But Frank wasn’t listening. He reached into the cart and grabbed the smaller man by his grubby jacket.
    ‘Gran, he looks like he might be about to do some serious damage.’ Evie took a step forward, but jumped back again when the horse turned her way. ‘Whoa there, big fella. Nothing to see here.’
    Mavis and Evie began to back