The Year of Taking Chances Read Online Free

the booking.
    Several hours later an email pinged in from the owner, one Mr Sykes:
    I’ll leave the key under the mat. Full instructions for everything else in a folder inside. Have a splendid New Year!
    Yrs, Bernie
    After living in London for seventeen years, the thought of leaving a door key anywhere other than safely in a handbag close to your body felt completely alien. How charming, she thought. How
heart-warmingly trusting!
    Ha. More fool her. She should have known such slapdash arrangements could only mean trouble.
    It was dark when she arrived and she had to drive around Larkmead several times before eventually spotting the sign reading ‘Pear Tree Lane’, half-covered in shrubbery. There was no
proper street lighting, so she crawled along the road, headlights blazing, peering blindly at the shadowy houses on either side. Then, once she’d finally found the cottage itself, she lifted
the mat to find a complete absence of keys. Off to a great start.
    Two fruitless phone messages later, she was grateful for the helpful neighbour who produced a spare key. But, once inside, it took only seconds before the cold water of disappointment poured all
over her. In reality the cottage was a lot less delightful than she’d anticipated: damp, cold and clammy, as if no living human had set foot inside for weeks on end. Her nose wrinkled at the
mildewy smell as she poked her head first into the small (‘cosy’) beige living room with its old stone hearth, then the even smaller (‘compact’) galley kitchen with a couple
of desiccated pot plants by the sink and a dripping tap. Upstairs were two chilly bedrooms with moth-eaten velvet curtains, and a very turquoise bathroom.
    It was a far cry from the boutique hotels she occasionally stayed in for work purposes, she thought regretfully. No sign of a monsoon shower or luxury bedding under
this
roof. Still,
she’d made her bed, now she had to lie on it, as her mum would say. With or without the expensive Egyptian-cotton sheets.
    Once she’d dumped her case upstairs and unpacked her provisions in the fridge, she located the folder Bernie had mentioned and worked out how to turn the heating on. The boiler obediently
rumbled into life, the radiators began valiantly belting out heat and she found her spirits lifting a little as she made herself a cup of tea and sank into the squidgy cord sofa. Maybe this would
be okay after all. She had warmth, she had solitude, her phone was off and her out-of-office email reply was on. She didn’t have to do a single thing now for three whole days except relax, go
for long walks in the countryside, read books and sleep. Oh yes. And maybe make a few big decisions about what, exactly, she was going to do about Max, and the terrible discovery she’d made
on Christmas Eve. But not now. That could wait.
    Saffron’s temporary peace and tranquillity didn’t last long. Not even the night. She was just settling down in front of the telly that evening with an enormous box
of chocolates when the lights went out. The TV screen turned blank. From the kitchen she heard the fridge making a depressed-sounding groan, as if to say
Here we go again, fellas
, as the
place was plunged into unearthly darkness.
    ‘Bollocks,’ she muttered, patting around for her phone and switching it on, so as to give her some kind of light, however feeble. It was spooky just how thickly, blackly dark it was,
out here in the sticks.
    Six new emails buzzed in as her phone came to life, then a succession of beeps, indicating new voicemails, too. Ignoring them all, she pulled up Mr Sykes’s phone number and rang him
again, without holding out much hope of a reply.
    ‘Bernie here, leave me a message and I’ll get back to you,’ she heard eventually and groaned. Was there any point leaving another message? When – if ever – would he
‘get back’ to her? It was New Year’s Eve after all, and he was running a pub. From his hands-off approach so far regarding