OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found Read Online Free PDF Page B

face, the flush on his cheeks, flinched at the trace of yesterday’s beer on his breath. ‘I suppose I must have had something to sing about,’ she’d replied, turning away, leaving one of those sour atmospheres that regularly taint the space between them.
    Slowing the car, she drives in and parks to one side, near the little semi-circular hut that used to be Susannah’s dwelling. She stands, turning to look back down at the empty road beneath, letting the cool moist air lap her skin. Running her fingers along a dripping laurel bush by the front door, she sucks rainwater that tastes of peat — a smoky, dank flavour — and runs her fingers along her forehead and down to her neck. The little pulse in her throat is steady. She listens; silence.
    The door gives way to a determined push, creaking and complaining. Liv rests her case against the wall and crosses to the wide hearth. There is a half-burned log in it, maybe the very one her grandmother had thrown on the evening she died. The cottage smells as it always has, of sunflower seeds and childhood holidays; a dry, savoury scent of turf, bran and floury potatoes.
    She walks around. Little has changed. Oil lamps provide light, water will have to be fetched from the well and food cooked over the fire. The tin tub for washing is hanging on its hook by the back window. The only concession Nanna had made to modernisation was allowing Liv’s father to lay the driveway. She only agreed to the latter after she slipped on her way down to the well and sprained her ankle.
    There is one large room downstairs with a pine dresser opposite the fire and a round oak table covered with an oilcloth. In a corner by the fire is the sofa her grandmother slept on, rarely venturing upstairs. An eiderdown embroidered with yellow primroses covers it. The open tread staircase leads up from one corner of the room to two bedrooms above. She goes up, raising dust that sets her sneezing.
    The bigger front bedroom holds an old metal-framed double bed and a washstand, the type with a china bowl set into the centre. In the fireplace is a jug of dried grasses and lavender. She turns in a circle, letting the room grow familiar, noting the patch of damp in the left-hand corner of the ceiling where it meets the outside wall. On the mantelpiece is a small, scratched pink and beige case, like an attaché case, with the name Lady Anne on the lid in raised gold lettering, dulled with age. She takes it down, places it on the bed and opens the rusting clasps. Inside she discovers a radio nestling, with pink facing and chunky beige dials. There are batteries beneath the back panel. She twists a knob on top and it crackles to life. It is tuned to a French station and she holds it as she tests the bed, which is covered in a vast billowing eiderdown, similar to the one on the downstairs couch. The broadcaster murmurs away anonymously, liltingly. The bed is firm, the eiderdown snug, if damp to the touch. Guitar music starts and she carries the radio to the back bedroom, which is empty except for some burlap sacks that would once have held chicken food, and a row of hardback books on the window ledge. She examines the titles; several Dickens, The Mill on the Floss, War and Peace and Dubliners.
    She fingers the lace curtain aside and looks from the side window at the acre of land that stretches behind the cottage. The earth has been turned ready for the winter frosts in a few beds near the back door. Her grandmother would have been planning early potatoes, Liv guesses, searching her memory for the names of those she had favoured; Kerr pinks. Their floury skins parted as they were cooked, revealing a purplish blush. They were served with a hunk of pale creamery butter on an oval blue and white plate, featuring a bonneted lady in crinoline at its centre. The plate is on the kitchen dresser, the centrepiece, middle shelf.
    The rain is slanting again, steadier now. She will save a trip to the well for the morning, a treat to