Wake Wood Read Online Free PDF

slowed the car and looked at Louise in amazement, wondering if he’d heard her correctly.
    ‘A murder of crows,’ she repeated. ‘You know the old sayings. A storytelling of rooks, an unkindness of ravens , a tiding of magpies … A murder of crows.’
    ‘If I ever knew them, I’d forgotten.’ He was beset by a feeling of foreboding, but when he tried to quantify it, he couldn’t. It had to be down to the ugly black birds, grey dismal weather and Louise’s depression – nothing more. After all, what horrors could their future hold compared with those of their past?
    Anxious to get Louise to their cottage, he drove on.
    Their new home was in a beautiful spot, isolated but within easy driving distance of the town. The outside had been painted green; the garden was natural, laid to grass and surrounded by trees, the only sign of cultivation the recently mown lawns. Louise had seen it just once but she’d expressed no opinion on the place one way or the other.
    Patrick had told her he’d bought it before he’d actually signed the papers to make it theirs. A small white lie. When she hadn’t objected to the purported purchase he’d gone ahead and closed the deal. Like the shop, he hoped she’d develop enthusiasm once they moved in.
    He handed Louise the keys to the house, left the car and went to inspect the garage and outbuildings he’d earmarked to convert into his surgery. When he looked back Louise had unlocked the front door. She was standing on the step, peering inside.
    Their new beginning?
    He turned back to the garage. Was it too much to wish for peace – of sorts – after the tragic loss of their only child?
    Happiness was out of the question. A desire for peace was all he and Louise had left, and he clung to it with all the hope he could muster.

Four
    LOUISE STOOD IN front of the pharmacy window, staring at the rain streaking down the glass. It was relentless, the street as grey, dismal and deserted as when she and Patrick had driven into Wake Wood for the first time. They had been living in the town for nine bleak, sterile months and every day had dragged for her, interminable and never-ending.
    She glanced around the shop: neat, clean, well stocked, the perfect small-town pharmacy. The locals had complimented them, commenting that she and Patrick had accomplished miracles in a short time. But the locals were wrong. She hadn’t achieved anything; nor had she wanted to. It had been, and was still, a struggle to get out of bed in the mornings; to dress, to eat, to make any movement no matter how small, even to shower. If there’d been any miracles they were the result of Patrick’s efforts, not hers. And he hadn’t performed the only miracle she wanted.
    She knew what he would say if she voiced her thoughts: ‘No matter what the topic of conversation, Louise, you always return to Alice. As if I could forget our daughter any more than you can.’
    Never a direct reproach, but she saw hints, whether or not Patrick intended them, that she wasn’t making the effort needed to adapt to their new life – that she preferred to live in the past, which she had to admit was true. As if she somehow blamed him for Alice’s death, because if he’d been a baker or an engineer instead of a veterinary there wouldn’t have been a sick, vicious dog in their yard.
    She thrust her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat, turned and surveyed what Patrick had made her domain. The shopfitters had done a good professional job of clearing out the old-fashioned dark wood counters, flooring and shelving and installing bright, new pale beech and chrome fittings.
    Patrick was determined to immerse himself in the life of Wake Wood. By asking around, he’d found cleaners for the pharmacy and their cottage and thrown himself into the veterinary practice he’d joined as a junior partner. But she couldn’t help feeling that her husband was role-playing. Acting in a production that would soon end, although she