The Vows of Silence Read Online Free PDF

swings so high she had thought that if she let go of the chains on either side she would simply fly up and up to heaven.
    She came out of the brightly sunlit street into the dark hall of the flats and could barely see. The light on the first-floor landing had gone again. Individual flat owners were responsible for keeping the lights working on their own floor, changing the bulbs when necessary. Mel was annoyed. The people on this floor always seemed to be leaving their landing in darkness and it was dangerous. She would have to ask Craig to tackle them about it again.
    It was only as she reached her own floor that she realised she had left the newspapers on the back seat of the car. She paused. Go on in, put the shopping away and get them later? Go back now? No, go on in, dump the shopping and then run back down again.
    She unlocked their own door. The hall was bright from the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the window of the kitchen opposite. She set the bags down. She would cut out two of the newspaper articles and post them straight off to Nan and to little Lily’s family. Cut one out for her wedding book. She’d have time to do that later while she was waiting for things to cook.
    She went out of the flat and down the stairs at a run, almost tripping on the top step of the landing without a light. She had found a parking space a few yards up the street. Fished out keys. Newspapers. Yes, on the back seat. Waved to the elderly lady who sat in her chair at the window of the bungalow opposite for most of the day. Locked the car. She was out of breath. Unfit. The swimsuit had better come out again. There had been so much to do in the run-up to the weddingshe had let her daily swim go—and she felt the difference.
    Back to the house. She reached up to the keypad. But the front door was ajar. The people in the bottom flat often forgot to make sure it was properly shut and it made her mad. What was the point of having a front-door security lock to which everyone had the pass number if half the time it was not properly shut?
    She trudged up the stairs. Along the unlit landing again. On up to their own floor.
    She wished she hadn’t had those calla lilies, they just over powered the photographs, great stiff waxen things. It wasn’t like her to be bullied, but she had been at the end of her tether, trying to find the right shoes all day, and somehow the florist had found a chink. Maybe she got a special deal on calla lilies. There certainly seemed to be an awful lot of them about. She had hated them on sight, but it was too late then and of course they didn’t spoil the day. They did spoil the photographs though.
    “Oh get over it,” she said aloud.
    Had she left the door of their flat on the latch?
    It was odd.
    When she pushed it open.
    In that split second, Melanie Drew registered that it was odd. Minutes ago, when she had dropped the bags there, the sunlight had been flooding from the kitchen directly into the hall. Now it was blocked by something. There was a darkness. A shadow. There was no sunlight. Odd.
    As she went nearer to the kitchen she registered thatit was a figure blotting out the light. Then everything was brilliant in an instant, brilliant, shattering light, with a noise that exploded in the centre of it.
    Then nothing.
    Nothing at all.

Six
    “Cat! I thought it was you.”
    Cat turned from locking her car. Helen Creedy was a few spaces away in the Cathedral Close.
    “It’s good to have you back—the altos have sounded pretty thin without you.”
    “I don’t think! But it’s good to be back.” Cat looked around the old buildings of the close lit by the lamps that lined the paths. At the top end, the house in which her brother had his flat; down here, the east front of the cathedral towered over them. “I haven’t sung anything for nearly a year.”
    “How was it?”
    “Exciting. Challenging. Strange.” They walked together towards the door that led to the New Song School where early