The Rain-Soaked Bride Read Online Free PDF

austere lines.
    The moon was three-quarters full, its light turning the garden into a black and white picture, or a gothic engraving. He looked at the shadows beneath the ash tree that bordered the lawn, absurdly convinced that he could see someone standing there, staring at the house. Ridiculous. What would someone be doing stood out there on a night like this? Even burglars would stay at home in their beds when the rain was as heavy as this.
    The rain.
    Even though the noise of it filled his ears he realised there was no sign of it beyond the glass. Which was ludicrous.
    He pressed his face to the window. It must be a trick of the light, he decided. Of course it was raining, it was lashing down, the noise was echoing around the house.
    Outside the garden was still and impossibly dry.
    Ludicrous.
    He moved out of the kitchen into the darkness of the hallway and drew to a halt at the sight of a woman stood utterly still by the front door. The sound of rain was loud now and, as the woman walked towards him, he felt his toes grow wet.
    ‘Ellen?’ he asked, shocked at the sight of her. But it wasn’t his wife. She was still sleeping soundly in the bedroom above. She would remain so, right through until morning when she would come downstairs to find the body of her husband lying on the kitchen floor, soaked to the skin.
    b) Skirmett Road, Cadmoor Wood, Buckinghamshire
    As her husband forced the only thing he truly cared for along the country road, Rachel Holley leaned back in the passenger seat and wondered what the hell had attracted her to him in the first place. She considered herself fair and easy-going by nature, the sort of person who generally sought to find the best in people, but, try as she might she could find nothing in Leonard Holley that wasn’t loathsome. There must have been a point, she assured herself, all those years ago, when he had been a different man. She couldn’t have been so blind, could she?
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t bloody sulk,’ he said, dropping the car into second in order to traverse a tight bend.
    She stared out on the open fields around them, pale shadows in the moonlight, and imagined running across them, free from this boor of a man.
    ‘I’m not sulking,’ she said. ‘I’m exhausted. I thought we were going to stay in a hotel.’
    ‘Why waste the money?’ he said. ‘It’s only an hour or so’s drive and I’m still on New York time.’
    ‘I wish I were.’ For that matter, she wished she were still in New York. On her own.
    ‘Can’t win with you,’ he said. ‘Usually I’m frittering away taxpayer’s money; now, when I try and save a few quid, I’m being unreasonable.’
    ‘I didn’t say that, I just said I was tired.’
    ‘You always bloody are these days.’
    And why might that be?
She wondered.
Did you ever think about that?
    Living with Leonard was a constant game of bickering. Of turning a blind eye to affairs, financial misdealing and any one of a number of things for which she kept expecting to see her face shoved on the front of a tabloid. Some men went into politics out of a sense of power, some actually hoped to do some good, others, like Leonard, were just always keeping an eye out for the easy con. She was a prisoner in a Fleet Street hack job waiting to happen and she was sick to death of it. Whenever the subject came up, at those times when her patience ran dry and she determined to leave, he would always beg her to reconsider, to think of his career, a career – he would never fail to remind her – that kept her in the lifestyle she enjoyed. In the end she would stay, not through selfish greed but rather because she was too weak to make the move. He would beat her down with his arguments and she never had been any good at confrontation. She would back down and, for a week or two, he would be especially nice to her. Then, once enough time had gone by, he would return to normal and she would be left hating herself even more than him, disgusted at her own