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flat-screen TV. The furniture was plain and simple and fairly modern, but despite that the house retained a rustic charm, thanks in part to the oak beams that festooned the ceilings.
    Nicole could barely contain her excitement. I was reminded of the day we first explored our own house back in Texas. It was a new release in a suburban community. She’d just accepted my proposal of marriage and we’d set a date for the wedding. This was fourteen months after we’d met on a local dating website. Friends and family had convinced me to join, telling me that it was time I got my life back. Nicole was the second woman I went out with on the site and I was her fourth guy.
    I knew on our first date that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. She was different in many ways to Clare, but they shared qualities that I felt were important like empathy, loyalty, a good nature and a self-deprecating humour.
    So what made her choose me? A dentist’s son with a boring job as a corporate lawyer and a shameful lack of ambition. It was a question I’d put to her on several occasions and she’d always given me the same answer.
    ‘Because you’re you, Jack. I’d have thought that was obvious.’
    Back in the kitchen Nicole made straight for the refrigerator and pulled open the door.
    ‘I think we should celebrate my birthday with the champers,’ she said.
    ‘But it’s still officially morning.’
    She took out the champagne bottle and placed it on the worktop. ‘Idon’t care. Besides, I’m sure I read somewhere that champagne is a good antidote for jet lag.’
    It was a moment to savour. The woman I loved was as she’d been before the miscarriage – bubbly, funny, sexy and extremely desirable. As she started searching the cupboards for glasses I felt my heart skip a beat. I decided that after we’d toasted the occasion I would take her up to bed and make mad, passionate love to her – in the privacy of our own master bedroom, of course.
    But I never got the chance, because at that moment a loud, piercing scream came from upstairs. It sent a cold prickle of fear sweeping through my entire body.
    My daughter was not one to overreact so I knew instinctively that something very bad had happened.

6
    W hen we got to the top of the stairs, Tina was on the landing outside one of the bedrooms. She was still screaming and clearly distressed. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides and the tendons in her neck looked as though they might burst through the skin. Michael was peering at her from another doorway, his pale face stricken with shock and bewilderment.
    I rushed up to my daughter and grabbed her by the shoulders.
    ‘Calm down, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
    She raised an arm and pointed into the room.
    ‘A snake,’ she wailed. ‘There’s a friggin’ snake in the bed. I pulled back the duvet and there it was.’
    I couldn’t see it from the landing so I let go of Tina and ventured into the room. I’ve never been scared of snakes but I don’t like them and they make me nervous. Back in Houston they’re pretty common in the hot summer months and I’d had a few unfortunate encounters on nature trails and in parks.
    I approached the bed cautiously, my eyes flitting around the room, which had pink walls and pine furniture. It was a girl’s room. Cool and fresh and feminine.
    The snake was curled up on the white sheet next to the pillow. It was a grey-brown colour with a vague, zig-zag pattern on its scaly skin and a distinctive ‘v’ mark on the back of its head. No wonder Tina had gone into hysterics. It was a chilling, incongruous sight. The stuff of nightmares.
    ‘It’s an adder,’ Nicole said from behind me. ‘They’re poisonous.’
    ‘That’s great,’ I retorted.
    I was now standing over the bed and looking down on it. Still it hadn’t moved, so I guessed it must be sleeping. It was about two feetlong. I couldn’t see its eyes or its mouth. It was an ugly, scary