Page 22 of The Black Trilogy

It wasn’t that I’d spent my life trying out recipes that always went wrong. It was more that I’d never needed to cook. When I was a kid, we rarely had proper food in the house, and as I got older, someone else made me food or I ate things that didn’t need cooking. My microwaving skills were legendary, and I knew how to build a campfire, but I didn’t know where to start with ingredients.

Maybe I should buy a recipe book? It would give me something constructive to do with my evenings rather than watching second-rate TV re-runs. And worse, the files on the cloud drive kept taunting me. Part of me wanted to buy a laptop and start looking at them, but at the same time, they scared me. I didn’t want to anger my husband’s killer, and I didn’t want to make my nightmares any worse than they already were.

The nightmares were a monster that fed off the black parts of my soul. Each one started with an event from my past then twisted it into a horror that consumed me. I was a helpless participant, unable to stop the visions in my head until I woke.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. I remembered every vivid detail of the nightmares, but it was the night terrors and the sleepwalking that terrified me.

Nothing was as bad as finding out I’d done something in the middle of the night I had no memory of. Nothing. Especially when that something involved hurting somebody I cared about. I’d seen some of the most horrible things imaginable, but what scared me most was my own mind.

Over the years, I’d learned the medical details and tried every treatment possible. The only thing that had helped was talking through the worst of it with my husband, a therapeutic debrief if you like, but I no longer had that option.

No, my only choice was to stick with Carol’s strategy of using time to heal and hope for a miracle.

CHAPTER 10

ON SUNDAY, I ate a bowl of Coco Pops for breakfast then found my jeans no longer did up. It had only been a matter of time. When Hayley headed into town an hour later, I hitched a lift and bought some workout gear. My mind might have gone soft, but I could at least stop my body from following suit by exercising and eating properly again.

Remember that old saying, Ashlyn? You are what you eat. Since I’d discovered the bakery in the village, I was in danger of turning into a donut. Sweet as they were, I didn’t want to end up looking like one.

The afternoon brought a grey sky and steady drizzle. According to the weather forecast, it was there to stay, so I made myself woman up and go outside, anyway. Nearly a month had passed since I’d been to the gym, and boy did I feel it. Mucking out was no substitute for a twelve-mile run. I battled up slippery hills and along frozen tracks, returning two hours later splattered with mud and nursing a stitch. Back in my trailer, I did what I could in the way of push-ups, squats, lunges, and crunches until I collapsed on the grubby floor, unable to move.

I was a mess.

Still, the exhaustion contributed to me getting a reasonable night’s sleep, so I couldn’t complain. I woke up on Monday morning ready to face the week ahead, a week that passed un-memorably in a blur of nothingness, mindless days of shovelling poop and carting hay around. After work each evening, I ran a lap of the village by the light of the streetlamps, followed by circuits of bodyweight exercises. My strength was slowly coming back, but did I ever ache.

The only break from my new and thrilling norm was a trip to a pub in the next village with Susie and Hayley on Thursday evening. The opportunity to avoid cooking seemed too good to pass up, although with hindsight, I should have stayed home with a packet of instant noodles.

Because I’d only eaten half my jacket potato when a man slid into the seat beside me uninvited. Two of his buddies dragged chairs up to the end of the table, and the uglier of the pair waved at the barmaid and held up three fingers.

“All right, ladies?”

The first interloper pressed his leg against mine as he twirled his Range Rover keys around his finger and gave me a leering grin. His boots had clearly never seen mud in their lives, and he was wearing a cravat. A flipping cravat. I rolled my eyes at Susie and Hayley—I just couldn’t help it.

I’d only seen one person wear a cravat in real life before, a few years ago when my husband and I were invited to a charity clay pigeon shoot on Lord Something-or-other’s country estate. Our esteemed host turned up full cliché, in gaiters, a cravat, and a tweed jacket with matching flat cap. He’d also brought at least two hip flasks, and I’d had to gently confiscate his gun before he did any damage. My husband had a quiet word, and the man’s son hauled him into the back of a Land Rover and drove him home.

I had a feeling it wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of the newcomers.

“His name’s Henry Forster,” Susie whispered as the sleaze next to me stared at the barmaid’s breasts. “His dad’s a property developer. He’s got stacks of money, and he shags anything that moves.”

Oh, he did, did he? Well, he wouldn’t be shagging me.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked, ignoring Susie and Hayley as he addressed my chest.

“No.”

He seemed taken aback for a second, but he didn’t get the hint. “How about dinner?”

“No.”

“Ah, a woman who plays hard to get. I like a challenge.” He shuffled closer, and I jabbed an elbow in his side, but he only grinned. “Feisty. Why don’t we skip the small talk and head back to my place? I’ve got a Ferrari in the garage we can take for a spin.”

More like a crash, with the amount of beer he’d drunk. I could smell it on his breath as it washed over me. “No.”

“Come on; it’s a 360 Modena.”

Oh, well in that case…

“No.”

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