A Body in the Lakes by Graham Smith (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

would always have dinner cooked. The drawback to this was that her parents were creatures of habit. They had a routine and they stuck to it with a religious fervour. Meals were prepared on a rota system that saw mince on a Monday and fish on a Friday. Their menu was traditional hearty food which gave no concession to the weather.

On a day as warm as today, a nice salad would have suited Willow, but she could smell the sausage casserole her mother always made on a Wednesday. So far as her parents were concerned spaghetti Bolognese was a walk on the wild side. Even on the rare occasions when they dined out they would have the same thing. Soup, steak and a cheeseboard for her father and steak pie followed by a slice of cheesecake for her mother.

She knew how the conversation at dinner would go tonight. Her mother would twitter about how her day had gone, and her father would keep his silence. He was still raw about the details of Willow’s break-up. He’d done the possessive father thing and had threatened to beat up her husband. A part of her had wanted him to do it, but she didn’t want her father to get into trouble. Her plan was to hurt her ex financially.

Her mother was already suggesting men she might want to date, but she had no interest in that side of things. For the time being, she was content to live a single life while her broken heart healed. Her mother would argue that she was a beautiful woman, and that she shouldn’t be shut away. The subject of prospective grandchildren had hung like a Damoclean sword since she’d first announced her engagement. Willow had wanted kids, but despite a battery of tests that had found nothing amiss with either her or her husband, they’d never managed to conceive.

After dining with her parents, Willow changed from her work clothes into sweats and picked up Spike’s lead. He’d stay on it tonight that was for sure. There was no way she wanted a repeat of the other night’s palaver.

Her pace was fast as she tried to invigorate her limbs with exercise and burn off the huge plateful of food her mother had put in front of her. Rather than walk along the river again, she took a route that took her down to the harbour.

Maryport had a long history as a fishing village, but the Senhouse family had turned it into a coal port during the eighteenth century. The town’s original cottages were laid out on a grid system and its main industries were coal mining and ship building. It now had a maritime museum and another museum which focussed on the Roman artefacts that had been uncovered in the area.

When she’d married and moved south, Willow had been delighted to escape Maryport and its small-town mentality. Like all places of its size, the locals had fierce rivalries with the other towns in the area and it was normal for the young men to end up battling with their counterparts from Aspatria, Cockermouth or Workington.

Back then she’d hated the familiarity, the way everyone knew your business. A night out would entail going to the same few pubs and talking to the same faces. Life here had been about routine rather than change, yet she now wanted that routine. She’d kept in touch with friends from the town and was looking forward to joining three of her old schoolmates for a drink on Friday.

She knew that a part of her was trying to regress, to go back to the days when everything was familiar and safe. Willow could handle that: she knew it would be a transitional phase.

As she pounded the streets, she thought about the dresses she’d bought at lunchtime. They were impulse purchases, made to bolster up a shattered confidence. Both were a little shorter than she would normally buy, but what her husband had done had made her feel unloved and unattractive. She’d told herself, and heard her mother say it, that she was a good-looking woman and that she could turn heads when she wanted to, but she hadn’t felt her usual confidence. Instead she’d felt worthless, rejected.

Friday night was about a lot more than a night out with the girls. It was about her feeling attractive and desired.

She strode back along the street that led to her parents’ home with a joyful Spike at her heel. He liked the fast walks almost as much as he enjoyed being let off the lead and left to his own devices.

Willow unlocked the door and called out a greeting to her parents.

The whole time she’d been out, she’d been oblivious to the man who’d been following her; waiting for the one chance he needed to snatch her.

With Willow back in her family home, he gave up and walked back to his pickup. As keen as he was to grab Willow, he knew he had to wait for the right opportunity.

Unlike the other women he’d spent time with, he knew Willow. Rather than abduct another woman at random, Willow had been selected on purpose.

She was bright, beautiful and wonderfully sexy. It was a bigger risk taking a woman to order, but he was sure that Willow would satisfy his urges far better than any of the previous women.

He was looking forward to enjoying the release her company would bring, but he knew he’d have to be patient and wait for the right chance to take her.

Twenty-Eight

The spreadsheet in front of Beth was growing ever larger. She’d got all the relevant details into place and she was now studying the rows and columns looking for the commonalities.

The pen in her right hand was drumming a furious beat against a cup as her eyes flickered back and forth without finding what she was looking for.

She was alone in the office. Thompson had gone home to his daughters, and O’Dowd had taken Unthank away on an errand. It