(1990) Sweet Heart Read Online Free Page B

so now’s the chance. This place is a terrific buy, and if we end up not liking it we’ll sell it at a profit in a year or two’s time. But we’re going to love it.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘It’s what we need — a new beginning.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly.
    A shadow flitted on the ground in front of her. For a fleeting moment she thought it was the crow. Then she heard Tom’s shout, saw him leap towards her, saw his hands raise up, felt them shove her sharply backwards. There was a crash on the ground beside her as though a table had been dropped, and a stinging pain in her leg.
    She turned, white-faced, shaking. A large slate tile lay where she had been standing, shattered like a pane of glass. Blood dribbled out of the gash in her jeans leg and ran towards her ankle. Tom grabbed her wrist and pulled her further away from the house, out into the middle of the drive.
    ‘You OK?’ he said, tugging out his handkerchief and kneeling down.
    She looked at the roof, then at the slate, her heart hammering. She winced as Tom pressed the handkerchief over the wound.
    ‘Lethal,’ he said. ‘Christ, if that had hit you …’
    She nodded silently, staring up again. ‘Just the wind,’ she said. Another shadow zigzagged towards her and she stepped back out of its path. But it was a sparrow, coming down to take an insect from the lawn.

Chapter Four
    Charley opened the door of the cubicle and carried out the two small specimen jars. They felt warm and slightly tacky. Tom followed sheepishly, his cheeks flushed.
    The row of people sitting in the low leatherette chairs looked up from their magazines and murmured conversations. Couples, husbands and wives in their twenties, thirties, even in their forties, with nervous faces, anxious faces, desperate faces, clutching their empty jars, waiting their turn, hopefuls all.
    She walked selfconsciously down the carpeted corridor and knocked on the door marked ‘Laboratory’.
    ‘Come in.’
    A young woman sat behind a small desk, writing on a pad with a fountain pen. The name on her lapel said Dr Stentor. She had short blonde hair, was about twenty-six years old and rather hearty. Charley handed her the jars.
    ‘Well, these look jolly good, don’t they?’ she said in a booming voice. ‘Did you manage the split ejaculate?’
    Tom gave a single embarrassed nod. He hated this. He had turned up today, reluctantly dutiful, the way he might have attended a distant relative’s funeral.
    Dr Stentor tilted one of the jars so the grey fluid slid down the side. ‘You got the first spurt in here?’
    ‘I’m afraid some of it’ — Charley blushed — ‘got spilt.’
    Dr Stentor squinted in the jar. ‘Well, gosh, don’t worry. There’s enough here to fertilise half of England.’ She gave an accusatory glance at Tom. ‘That’s if they’re all right, of course. Jolly good, have a seat.’
    They sat down while she went into another room. The telephone rang, three warbles in succession, then stopped. The office was bare, functional, greys and reds. A framed certificate hung on the wall.
    ‘Is it today, your regression hypnosis thing?’ Tom said.
    ‘Yes.’ Charley saw his smirk. ‘Laura —’ she began.
    Tom raised his eyebrows. ‘Laura what?’
    ‘She knows someone who was having problems conceiving. She went to a regressive hypnotist and discovered she’d seen her children murdered in a previous life. She got pregnant very soon afterwards.’
    ‘Tosh!’
    ‘No harm in trying it.’
    Tom took out his diary and checked a page. ‘No. No harm.’
    They sat in silence for a moment.
    ‘What do you feel about the house, Tom?’
    ‘Positive. You?’
    ‘I like it, but it’s a big undertaking and I’m still worried about it being so remote.’
    ‘I think it’s great it’s remote. Peace and quiet! Who the hell wants neighbours?’
    She looked at him uncertainly.
    ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘if we lose our buyer it could be months before we get another