The Knapthorne Conspiracy Malcolm Ballard (most popular novels of all time .txt) 📖

would have done and she knew she was paying the price for it now. Red wine, too. She felt seedy in the extreme. It was not the way she had imagined her great adventure would start. It was a good job Jonathan couldn't see her, she thought, but knowing him he would have laughed anyway. It occurred to her that perhaps that’s what she ought to be doing but somehow it wasn’t possible to find anything funny in Laura’s antics. And why, all of a sudden, had her sister’s behaviour reduced her to tears? Bella couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t normally the sort of person who cried easily but on more than one occasion recently she had felt close to tears. Even now, as the events of last night preyed on her mind, she was feeling weepy. Had the pressure of the past weeks taken more out of her than she would care to admit? For once in her life she was beginning to question things that, previously, she would never even have thought about. In the past, life had just flowed and she had taken each day as it came, rather like a marriage, for better or worse, and got on with it. Was it a case of simply getting older and not being as resilient? Older? How old was thirty-four? And why had she begun to feel happier with her own company? The miles slipped past as she tried to put everything into perspective but the process of self-examination posed many questions she couldn’t answer and only served to make her feel tired. And the headache wouldn’t go away. Through it all, the prospect of going down to the cottage comforted her. For the first time in her life she felt vulnerable, in some strange, inexplicable way. She felt a weight bearing down on her, associated with recent events in her life, that she couldn’t identify but knew that she needed to get right away from London as quickly as possible. The thought of getting to Willow Cottage spurred her on and she pushed her foot down firmly on the accelerator, feeling the response as the car surged ahead.

Chapter Eight

The silence was a luxury, a precious commodity in today’s raucous, noisy world. Bella lay and wallowed in it, and the darkness that engulfed her. It was not yet 5am but soon the vanguard of the dawn chorus would mark the beginning of another fine summer’s day and she knew she should rise. What day was it? Wednesday. She had been at the cottage for just two days. Her thoughts went back to when she had first arrived, late Monday afternoon, relieved to be away from London, and Laura in particular, but still feeling the effects of the previous night. The tension was there in her neck and shoulders and she had sat, for a moment, just moving her head in a circular motion to try and ease it, before getting out the car. Throwing her things just inside the lobby, she had decided that the best therapy was to relax, perhaps have an early meal, a bath and then bed. Had that really been two days ago? Yesterday, she had woken after a good night’s sleep to find a glorious morning waiting for her and it was just the tonic she needed.

There was plenty to do and she had wanted to keep herself busy. An early start had meant she could get into Dorchester, look round the shops, and be back before lunch. The phone technician had arranged to be there in the early part of the afternoon and he duly arrived, much to Bella’s relief. By the time he had gone, she was feeling more like her old self although there remained some discomfort around her shoulders, and her wrists ached a little, but she put it down to the driving. Bella had always managed to avoid the fitness craze that had swept the country in the last decade, seeming to have a metabolism that kept her in perfect shape notwithstanding her minor excesses. But since acquiring the cottage she had promised herself that she would get into a routine of going for a walk when she was there. Every day, if she could, otherwise as often as possible. When she had walked up the garden, on her last visit, she recalled seeing a well-defined track running across the fields, into the distance, and thought she’d explore that at her first opportunity. It looked to go in the direction of the village and it would be interesting to find out if you could actually get to the main street that way. She had it in mind to go for a short walk this afternoon, after setting up the room upstairs.

It was nearly five-o-clock by the time she left the cottage, wearing a quilted anorak over her sweatshirt as the evenings could be chilly, and followed the path to the end of the garden. Running through the trees that marked the boundary, was a series of slim wooden posts, each about four feet high and two–and-a-half inches square. They were roughly six feet apart and supported three individual strands of wire, spaced at twelve-inch intervals, and formed the fence for the property. Tall grasses and bracken had sprung up along the fence line, on either side, but it wasn’t difficult for her to squeeze herself through between two strands of wire and step into the field beyond. The land here sloped gently up to the immediate horizon, in front of her, and there was a crop of either maize or corn, flourishing in the afternoon sun, for as far as the eye could see. It seemed as though there had been a path, at one time, running along her boundary line but it was now quite overgrown. Bella followed it to her left and it took her down the side of her property, leading to the road. It was now possible to see that