The Midnight Hour Read Free Page B

and stabbing to the beat.
     

ARGUMENT
     
     
    He could not remember who started it, or even what it was all about.
    Sarah had always been volatile, with a quick and vicious temper that was as slow to fade as it was fast to arrive. Maybe he had been partly to blame, but she had turned it into a major issue and started the actual argument hadn’t she? Did it matter any longer?
    Yes! It mattered.
    He drove the car fast along the unlit country roads, accelerating the anger out of his system. The headlights swam in the lashing rain, splashing over the trees that lined the road. They failed to penetrate more than a few short feet into the interior of the woods that surrounded the small Welsh village they had lived in for the past three years.
    His wheels skidded on the gravel scattered at the roadside, and he had to fight to keep the car away from the wooden fence and the sign that announced ‘Country Park’ in the flash of his bounding headlights.
    He let out the breath that he had not even realised he’d been holding and relaxed his foot on the accelerator pedal. Take that as a warning, he told himself. Ease off. There’s no point in getting yourself killed.
    Almost ten years ago, when he first met her at University, he would never have argued so strongly. He had watched his father take what he called ‘the path of least resistance’ with his mother so many times he just presumed that was the way to behave when you loved someone. Never argue. Just agree. It seemed to work for his parents, who stayed together until his father died. He just wanted the same.
    Sarah Anderson was the kind of girl that he, Michael Samson, never stood a chance with. He remembered watching her, the first time he saw her, striding across the campus with such confidence, such poise. Her black hair bounced on her shoulders as she smiled and talked with another girl. He could not remember what the other girl looked like. He had been too captivated by Sarah.
    He remembered she wore a loose fitting t-shirt with a bright yellow smiley face on it. The face seemed to laugh and leer at him as her breasts jiggled freely beneath the light material. She wore a short skirt, barely longer than the t-shirt, and her legs were long and shapely. He couldn’t say what she wore on her feet. His eyes never got that far.
    He was a geek. He knew it. His glasses were too big, his teeth weren’t straight enough, his body was scrawny. Worst of all, he was no good at sports. He read books. He worked hard. He got A’s for his assignments. But he was no ‘jock’. Girls like Sarah Anderson always ended up with ‘jocks’.
    But he didn’t know Sarah Anderson properly back then. He didn’t know she was that rarity, a beautiful girl who was not impressed by the fact, not overwhelmed by the attention, and not interested in sports or the people who played them. She was a bookworm too. She just didn’t look like any bookworm he had ever seen.
    Since that day when he fell in love with her at first sight, he had seldom argued, seldom disagreed, never threatened her with anything. Until tonight.
    He had hit her.
    He had never done that, not in seven years of marriage.
    She had provoked him before tonight, certainly, and there had been times when the thought had crossed his mind. But he had never given in to it. Striking Sarah was the last thing in the world he would have wanted to do, before tonight. Tonight the anger had rushed up at him so fast and so hard that his hand had lashed out before his mind could control it.
    He remembered the pain in his palm as he slapped her, a stinging pain that was mirrored in her shocked eyes. He, too, had been shocked, more so when he saw the trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth where he had split her lip.
    She said nothing, just stared at him, her eyes glistening with tears that welled and overflowed down her cheeks.
    She had grabbed the car keys from the hall table and was almost out of the door before he caught her. He