Read Online The Woman He Loved Before by Dorothy Koomson - Free Book Online Page A

Station that time to see if Jack was stillparked outside and to let him drive me to London. It was the crazy, idiotic part of me that I should probably ignore – but it was also the voice that spoke the loudest whenever Jack was involved.
Besides
, the crazy voice reasoned to the sane voice,
I can always change my mind at a later date, can’t I
?
Can’t I?
    ‘OK, yes. Yes, I will marry you.’
    ‘And move in with me before the wedding?’ he pressed.
    I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. ‘Yes. And live with you before the wedding.’
    For one moment I felt the world stand still, and I allowed myself the indulgence of revelling in doing something reckless and foolhardy because I was madly in love and I didn’t have to worry about the consequences.

chapter two

jack
     
    Almost everyone says they hate hospitals. I don’t mind them so much – I hate them less than mortuaries, anyway. And cemeteries. When you point that out to people, they generally come around to your way of thinking. Or they shut up because they don’t know what to say.
    I am starting to hate this hospital. I have been pacing this corridor for an eternity and I’m no nearer to finding out whether Libby is going to be OK. She
has
to be, she’s going to be, but I’d rather someone else confirmed it. Instead, they’ve been trying to keep me down in Casualty, asking me stupid questions, getting me to do simple memory tests and trying to get me to sit still so they can treat my wounds. Wounds? A few cuts and a little airbag burn are not wounds. Bleeding internally and externally, being so scared you cannot make sounds with your speech, technically dying in the ambulance; those are the results of real wounds, and those are the things that had happened to Libby.
    Unbidden, the image of Libby twisted and trapped inside the crushed and torn pieces of metal that was once my pride and joy wells up in my mind and, as it has done since the crash, it rips a new hole inside my being. I’d tried to reach her, I’d wanted to stay and hold her hand, but the firemen said No. They were trained to be inside this sort of wreckage while they cut someone free, Iwasn’t. ‘
But you don’t love her like I do
,’ I wanted to say as two of them forced me back to the ambulance. ‘
If push came to shove, if it was a choice between you and her, you’d choose you. I’d choose her. Always
.’
    This waiting is killing me. What can be taking so long? There was internal bleeding mainly from her spleen, they said, and the deep slices into her skin were as bad as they looked, they said. They seemed so certain and so sure of what was wrong and how to fix it, that I’d expected to have had an update by now. That they would have some idea if she was going to be all right. If she will get better and go back to who she was. I lean my head against the coffee machine and try to breathe. Try to take comfort in the fact that no news is good news and the longer they’re in there, the longer they must be spending curing my wife.
    ‘
Mr
Britcham, fancy seeing you here.’ Her voice is the stuff of nightmares, her face is not much better. She is not ugly to look at, she is simply ugly to be around. They say beauty is only skin deep; ugliness, when it comes to this woman, begins at the core, slimes its way through every artery and vein, fills every organ then spills out to show the world who she really is.
    I raise myself to my full height and turn to face the woman who haunts me. She is small and androgynous, a short brown bob compliments her beige skin, turned up nose and mean, circular eyes. My glare is probably expected because she smiles at me in response as she reaches inside her pocket for a notebook and pen.
    ‘Ms Morgan,’ I say.
    ‘Detective Sergeant Morgan to you,’ she says. ‘Or you can call me Maisie if you want. We’ve got that kind of special relationship, haven’t we, Jack?’
    The plain-clothes policeman standing slightly behind her is as generic as she is,