Read Online Night Music by Jojo Moyes - Free Book Online Page B

her own stretchmarks, the gravitational descent of her bosom, she had resented it: Now she felt a faint flicker of anticipation, a brief sense of her own good luck. ‘Come on, you’ve been standing there for ages.’ She pulled the strap of her nightdress off one shoulder so that it fell seductively towards her breast.
    It had been several weeks now. She always became a little anxious if it went that long. ‘Matt?’
    ‘What are they going to do with it?’ he was murmuring, almost to himself.
    His dark mood had resolutely failed to lift, and she felt a mix of despair and irritation at his apparent determination to let the house colour their lives. ‘You shouldn’t let it bother you like this. Anything could still happen.’
    ‘Anything has happened,’ said Matt, sourly. ‘The old bugger left it to strangers. They’re not even from round here, for God’s sake.’
    ‘Matt, I’m as cross about it as you are. After all, I’m the one who put in all the work. But I’m not going to let it depress me for the rest of my days.’
    ‘He tricked us. He had us running around after him for years. He’s probably laughing at us from up there, or wherever he is. Just like old Pottisworth bloody laughed at Dad.’
    ‘Oh, not this again.’ The seductive urge evaporated. If he carried on much longer she’d be too cross to make love.
    Matt didn’t seem to have heard. ‘He must have known for months what he was going to do – years. He and the new people probably cooked it up between them.’
    ‘He didn’t know. Nobody did. He was stupid enough not to write a will so they got it as his last surviving relatives. That’s all there is to it.’
    ‘He must have told them years ago. They’ve been sitting there, doing nothing, waiting for him to drop dead. Maybe he even told them about the idiots next door who were fetching and carrying for him. They’ll have been laughing.’
    There was such a fine line between desire and anger. As if the nerve endings were primed for anything. ‘Do you know something?’ she said angrily. ‘He’s probably up there laughing at you, wasting your time in front of the window like a sulky child. If you’re that unhappy about it, why don’t we go round tomorrow and find out what they’re planning to do?’
    ‘I don’t want to see them,’ he said, mulishly.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll have to at some point. They’re our nearest neighbours.’
    He said nothing.
    Keep him close, Laura told herself. You cannot afford to give him an excuse. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you might find they don’t even want it now they’ve seen all the work it needs. They sold the farmland – if you made them an offer . . . Well, my parents would lend us some more money.’ She threw back the duvet on his side. ‘Come on, love . . . We’ve got most of the land and the buildings at a good price. Let’s look on the bright side. That’s something, isn’t it?’
    Matt put his glass down. He made his way heavily into the bathroom, pausing only to yell over his shoulder, ‘What bloody use is the land without the house?’

Five
     
    Isabel was freezing. She couldn’t remember ever having been so cold. Somehow the chill of the house had penetrated her bones so that no matter what she did, however many extra layers she put on, warmth eluded her. Finally, shivering in the darkness, she had got up and pulled on her day clothes over her pyjamas. Then she had laid her long wool coat over the bed, along with whatever she could find of the children’s clothes, and topped it with a candlewick bedspread they had found in a cupboard. The three had ended up in the one bed. Exhausted after unloading their things, and working out which rooms were habitable, Isabel had forgotten to put on the heater in the master bedroom so that when they’d headed upstairs shortly after ten, they were met not with blissful rest but draughts from unseen cavities, damp sheets and the intermittent drip of rainwater hitting the