Blood in the Cotswolds Read Online Free Page A

o’clock, when the sun finally disappeared and the house was an enclosed haven surrounded by trees and silence.
    Preparation for bed carried a slight awkwardness with it, thanks in part to the unaccustomed house, but also to the fact that the number of nights they had spent together was still low enough for it to be a novelty. Phil had spent a total of six weekends in Thea’s Witney home, plus perhaps a dozen snatched nights, or part-nights. Their bodies had become familiar to each other, but the rituals were slower to establish. Each was more used to solitary sleeping, with pillows and windows set just so, the easy spontaneity of putting on the light to read at three a.m., or going to the loo at five was not possible with another person in the bed. Even more clumsy were the minutes before finally settling together. Phil felt himself to be tense and slightly irritated when they finally rolled into each other’s arms, not long after ten that night. Try as he might, he could not shake off a sense that the best moments had already passed. The coming morning, with its many necessities, was already forcing itself into his mind. Afterwards, he could not be entirely surprised by what happened next.
    The sex began langorously, with much stroking and kissing. Then, before it had properly gotgoing, as Phil twisted in the suffocating mattress, intending to move Thea from his side, to lie on top of him, there came a pain in his back as shocking and sickening as a badly stubbed toe.
    ‘Aarghh!’ he cried. ‘Oh, bugger. Aarhh, oohh!’ He went rigid against the pain, pushing her away.
    ‘What? Is it cramp?’ She herself floundered in the feathers, before sitting up to stare at him in the fading light.
    ‘My back! Something’s gone. It’s agony.’
    ‘Gone?’ she repeated stupidly.
    ‘Slipped. Dislocated. I don’t know.’ He spoke through clenched teeth. He put a hand to the place, trying to roll sideways at the same time. With another loud groan, he slumped flat again. ‘I’ve never known pain like it,’ he gasped. ‘It’s unbearable.’ Tears seeped from the corners of his eyes. ‘What am I going to do?’
    ‘Try to relax,’ she ordered.
    ‘I need a doctor. An ambulance.’ The thought of being forced to move made him go rigid again. ‘But I can’t be moved,’ he wailed. Fear shot through him, as acute as the physical pain. ‘What if I’m paralysed? What if I’ve broken something?’
    ‘Don’t be silly.’
    He subsided like a shocked child after a slap. Thea got off the bed and stood looking at him, her skin still flushed from the interrupted sex. ‘Doctors don’t come out these days,’ she said. ‘Especially not on a Sunday night. Haven’t you got a tame osteopath or something? Has this ever happened to you before?’
    ‘Never,’ he said. ‘Not a twinge.’
    ‘Well, I think we’d better not panic. Give it a few minutes to recover. It might just click back into place if you give it a chance.’
    ‘It’s this damned mattress,’ he said. ‘It’s lethal.’
    Thea shook her head helplessly. ‘Just when everything was going so well,’ she murmured. ‘I feel as if we’re jinxed.’
    Phil gingerly tried to pull himself up towards the headboard, digging his elbows and heels into the thick mattress. He discovered that if he kept himself completely straight, some movement was possible. But the procedure was far from painless and he groaned as he inched himself up the bed. ‘I feel such a fool,’ he complained.
    ‘Yes,’ Thea agreed. ‘I expect you do.’
    ‘You’re not being very nice.’
    ‘I’m a terrible nurse, I admit. Illness always seems such a waste of time. If people were less kind to the sick, I expect there’d be a lot less pressure on the NHS.’
    ‘You’re mad,’ he moaned. ‘I’m in the hands of a madwoman.’
    ‘Well – what are we going to do?’ She was brisk almost to the point of aggression. ‘I think we’ll try and make it through the night, and if it’s still