The Marriage - K.L. Slater (story books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: K.L. Slater
Book online «The Marriage - K.L. Slater (story books to read .TXT) 📗». Author K.L. Slater
The Marriage
An absolutely jaw-dropping psychological thriller
K.L. Slater
Books by K.L. Slater
The Marriage
The Girl She Wanted
Little Whispers
Single
The Silent Ones
Finding Grace
Closer
The Secret
The Visitor
The Mistake
Liar
Blink
Safe With Me
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Blink
Hear More from K.L. Slater
Books by K.L. Slater
A Letter from K.L. Slater
The Girl She Wanted
Little Whispers
Single
The Silent Ones
Finding Grace
Closer
The Secret
The Visitor
The Mistake
Liar
Safe With Me
Acknowledgements
*
In memory of Julie Wagg. Much loved mother, wife, mama and friend.
Prologue Bridget
April 2019
I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my new ivory silk dress. Simple and classy, it skimmed my curves but crucially remained demure in all the right places.
I’d had a salon spray tan. My moisturised skin looked smooth and youthful, but when I pinched the top of my hand, the skin did not spring back immediately. I’d curled my hair and pinned it up, adding a tiny sprig of fresh gypsophila here and there to soften my look, and applied a pretty pink lipstick, the latest spring shade according to the sales assistant at the department store make-up counter.
Peering closer to the mirror, I studied my reflection. Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of my eyes and lips. My cheeks gave way to a soft sagging that spoiled the razor-sharp jawline I’d enjoyed in my thirties.
In two years’ time I would be fifty years old, but age was just a number. Today, I felt young, vibrant and free. I’d planned this fresh start for what felt like a very long time.
Today, I would start a new life with a man twenty years younger than me.
In one hour’s time, I would marry the man I loved.
The same man who ten years earlier had killed my only son.
One
2009
To the local residents, retired primary school teacher Mavis Threadgold was a familiar sight walking the streets of Mansfield, a large market town that lay in the Maun Valley, twelve miles north of the city of Nottingham.
Dressed in her honey-coloured mac, tartan scarf and sensible laced walking shoes, she pounded the pavements like clockwork, three times a day, always accompanied by her trusty two-year-old black-and-tan dachshund, Harry. Whatever the weather, the intrepid pair could usually be spotted on one of their favoured routes in and around the town. Not so different to many other dog walkers in the area, apart from the fact that one of Harry’s regular daily outings took place at 2 a.m.
It was this walk they were on right now. Mavis stood patiently as Harry sniffed around the base of a lamp post. She often reminisced about her teaching days as she walked. Indeed, this was her favourite time to do so, the streets being so quiet.
Their eye-wateringly early walk had started the year Mavis retired, when she had lost her class of thirty eager, fresh-faced pupils. She’d had a pacemaker fitted for her worsening atrial fibrillation, and with it had gained the most wretched case of insomnia. Every night, after sleeping soundly for three or four hours, her eyes would spring open for no apparent reason. But it wasn’t just the heart condition that kept her awake.
Retiring early had scuppered Mavis’s plans to live mortgage-free when her annual salary ceased. She’d bought her house late in life and her mortgage was due to be paid off on her sixtieth birthday. Sure, she had a pension, but having never married, and with only one salary to live on, she’d skimped on her contributions over the years and her income wasn’t nearly as robust as it might have been. In the end, she was forced to extend the mortgage for another five years to reduce her payments.
Walking was the solution to her insomnia. It was one activity she hadn’t had to cut down on to stay within her budget, and even better, following a brisk twenty-five-minute stroll – invariably between the hours of two and three in the morning – she’d take a cuppa back to bed before settling down again for another few hours’ shut-eye.
Mavis marvelled how every morning the streets were the same: calm, deserted and completely uneventful. Until now. About to cock his leg against yet another lamp post, Harry froze as an explosion of booming music came out of nowhere about fifty feet away from them, in the middle of the almost silent street.
The rear fire doors of Movers, the only nightclub left in town, were suddenly flung open and two flailing bodies ejected onto the pavement before a muscular doorman slammed the exit closed again.
Mavis bent down to scoop up a startled Harry into her arms and stepped back into the shadows, out of sight of what she assumed would be local thugs intent on causing trouble. But when her eyes adjusted, she realised she actually knew the two boys who were currently dusting off their clothes.
It was none other than Thomas Billinghurst and Jesse Wilson.
She’d taught Tom and Jesse twice, first in her Year 4 class and later, when they were both aged eleven in their final year before they went on to Mansfield Academy.
The boys had been as close as brothers, inseparable from nursery, and yet very different personalities. Mavis didn’t mind admitting they had been two of her favourites, largely because of what she affectionately called their double act. Tom would step in as a calming influence when one of Jesse’s hyper moments struck, and Jesse happily coaxed Tom to join in activities when his nature was to shrink back. They naturally complemented each other without thinking about it, and both were all the stronger for
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