The Marriage K.L. Slater (classic romance novels TXT) 📖

I leaned forward to peer at the monitor. I couldn’t see properly without my reading glasses but I hoped she wasn’t making a mess of the inventory. That job had taken me weeks to get ready to submit to head office.

‘Oh there you are!’ Her voice rang out directly behind me, making me jump back from the desk. ‘Everything OK in here?’

‘Fine,’ I said with a grin. ‘Just making sure you’re not messing up my hard work.’

‘Kettle’s just boiled.’ She inched past me and pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. The monitor instantly went black. ‘I was just checking we had everything up to date. My contact at head office tipped me off the auditors are visiting various premises, and I didn’t want us to be caught out.’

‘Was it the stock sheet?’ I said as she quickly scooped up the paperwork. ‘I finished updating it last Monday.’

‘Yes, I remember you saying now.’ Audrey slid the papers into a folder and headed for the office door.

‘Is … is anything wrong?’ I said faintly, noting the harassed look on her face.

‘What? No, no, nothing’s wrong,’ she said quickly. ‘Now, where’s that coffee you promised me?’

I shrugged off an uncomfortable churning in my stomach. Had I done something I shouldn’t have? Maybe I’d made a costly mistake and Audrey didn’t want to worry me. She was definitely being evasive.

I took our coffees through to the shop.

‘So,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling? Goodness knows you’ve been waiting for this moment for long enough.’

‘I’m … OK. I think.’

She peered at me. ‘You look a bit peaky. Nerves, that’s all it’ll be. Perfectly normal.’

I took a sip of my coffee. ‘I’m the world’s best worrier, you know that. I keep fretting whether I’ve done the right thing.’

‘In what way?’

‘You know, getting everything organised so Tom can hit the ground running. So he doesn’t have to worry about a job and money.’ I let out a sigh. ‘You know what I’m like, planning the hell out of everything. Robert’s already had a go at me.’ I grinned, but it was only to stop the emotion getting hold of me.

‘Just go easy on yourself, love. You’ve moved mountains finding Tom a job and a flat. You can ease up now.’

‘Thanks, Audrey. I just have to feel in control. Getting things ready for him is the only way I can handle the stress of it all. Robert thinks I’m overkill, but then he always does.’

‘Well forgive me for saying, but what you’ve done for Tom is a hell of a lot more than Robert ever has. Is he still acting a bit weird? I know you said he’d been distant lately.’

‘He seems fine now,’ I said, thinking about Robert’s odd behaviour. Shutting himself away in his office until late and going for long walks alone. I suspected he was worried about money but I didn’t know why. We’d always been comfortable financially with modest savings. ‘I think it might be Tom’s release that’s on his mind. Robert detests anything affecting his routine, but for all his bluster and snide comments, he may have actually been fretting that everything would work out, you know?’ I didn’t realise until I’d said the words that this might be a valid observation. ‘He likes to play the hard man when it comes to feelings, but if you go deep enough, he has got a soft centre.’

‘Hmm, well I’ll take your word for that, Jill. I don’t know much about deep mining,’ Audrey quipped, and I couldn’t help laughing.

But I knew she got it. We’d met on the first day of college, where we were both studying English and sociology A levels, and had been firm friends ever since.

Audrey put her mug down on the cash desk. ‘Right, I don’t mean to rush you but I really must get on. Sorry.’

‘No problem,’ I said, ignoring the grumbling worry that something might be happening behind the scenes she wasn’t sharing with me. ‘We can catch up soon.’

‘Good luck and enjoy your two weeks off.’

I felt like she was rushing me to leave and I had another compulsion to ask her if everything was OK but instead I moved towards the door.

I’d got enough to deal with right now. I didn’t need another crisis on my hands.

Seven Tom

After lunch, Tom pushed his small toiletries bag into his rucksack and buckled it up.

For a long time he’d imagined this moment over and over, like Groundhog Day, and he’d assumed that when it finally arrived, he’d be bouncing off the walls, sick with nerves but desperate to get out and taste sweet freedom.

Now it was actually here, he didn’t feel any of that – except perhaps the nerves bit. The whole experience seemed completely surreal. He felt as though some pompous official might arrive at any moment and inform him there had been a terrible administrative error and that he had a few more years to serve before they were able to release him.

They’d brought him down from his cell late morning and into this small holding space, the exact spot he’d arrived with a vast ten-year stretch ahead of him. He turned in a slow circle to take in his surroundings one last time, staring at the stark white walls and the minuscule window set high to give tantalising glimpses of the sky.

He wouldn’t miss a single thing about this hole.

From the moment he’d arrived, every day had been virtually identical with nothing to set them apart. For the first few weeks, time ran on one unbroken linear track with nothing to distinguish one hour from the next. He’d never felt desperation like it.

As someone who’d always regarded suicide as a selfish choice and the coward’s way out, he’d quickly come to understand how people might feel hopeless enough to take their own life. In here, at least.

With each sunset and subsequent sunrise, every fibre of him believed he couldn’t physically withstand another day, that