Beneath the Shadows Read Free

It was perfectly reasonable for people to arrive home in the middle of the night. She must stop letting her imagination play games with her.
    She settled back into bed again, but sleep wanted nothing to do with her now. She remembered the first night she’d ever spent here, when Adam had pulled her to him and wrapped her tight within his arms. He had been wearing a thick jumper – in fact they’d both been semi-dressed, having under-anticipated the biting cold of the northern winter. She could still feel the fleece soft against her skin, warming the cheek that had lain against it while the rest of her face stung with cold. ‘I’m scared too,’ he’d said, holding her close. ‘But I know we’ve done the right thing, Grace. I promise it will be all right.’
    Grace remembered how she had relaxed at his words, somuch so that she had slept soon after. But a week later he had gone out and never come home.
    Now, she did her best to ignore the empty space next to her, and wrapped her arms around a pillow, trying to pretend she could bring Adam back for a moment, make believe that he’d kept his promise after all. But sleep kept its distance.
    She tossed and turned for a while in an effort to get comfortable, then was disturbed again by what sounded like a bird screeching. Sitting up in frustration, she switched on the bedside lamp. She cast a glance around the room, at the old furniture, the sepia photo of Adam’s grandparents on their wedding day, which hung above her half-unpacked case. Then she remembered the small bookshelf on the landing. At least living out here without much else to do would mean plenty of time to read. She threw back the bedclothes and tiptoed across the carpet, hoping she wouldn’t wake Millie. The bookshelf was right outside her door, barely visible in the light cast by the bedside lamp, but she could just make out the spines on the top shelf. They were all classics. Wuthering Heights. The Turn of the Screw. Jane Eyre. Great Expectations . She’d read a few of them at school. Then her eye fell on a book she had always wanted to read, but never got to. Rebecca . She plucked the tattered copy from among the others and took it back to bed with her. She pulled the bedclothes over her, opened it and read the first few lines of a long-ago dream. And soon, her grip loosened on the book, her eyes closed, and she found herself lost amid thick over-growth, gazing towards the mullioned windows of a dark, abandoned house.

When Grace woke again it was to silence. Light had begun to seep through the curtains and saturate the darkness as the day broke. She was grateful, in fact strangely exhilarated, to have got through the first night alone in the cottage, and felt full of energy for the day ahead. She had a chance to have a bath before she even heard Millie stir, then went to get her little girl. Millie was sitting up, playing in her cot, and Grace observed her for a moment without being noticed. Millie was nearly fifteen months old, on the verge of walking, almost unrecognisable from the tiny bundle that Grace and Adam had first brought to the cottage. Adam had missed all the changes, big and small, that had happened over the past year.
    Grace closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again, Millie was holding out her arms, saving Grace from her daydream. Grace was relieved to see that whatever hadterrorised Millie in the night seemed to have been absorbed by the morning’s light. ‘We have a visitor coming today,’ she told her daughter, smiling at her reassuringly, hoping Millie would smile back. Instead, Millie reached out to touch her mother’s mouth, watching her intently all the while, as though checking she was real.
    After breakfast, Grace unpacked the rest of their cases while Millie played by her feet. She put away all her clothes except her jeans and thickest jumpers, looking longingly at a pair of high-heeled brown suede boots