The Cuckoo Wood by M Sean Coleman

Author:M Sean Coleman [Coleman, M Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781916426214
Publisher: Red Dog
Published: 2018-07-23T23:00:00+00:00

AS IT TURNED OUT, PC Cotter’s cottage was harder to find than she’d predicted, hidden as it was in a tiny cutting between two other roads. It was only as she passed for the second time that she noticed the small street sign, almost completely covered in ivy. She checked her watch again as she arrived outside number three. She was only ten minutes late.

His was a sweet, little two-storey cottage in a row of five similar houses, with one window downstairs beside a pale blue front door, and two smaller windows upstairs with frames painted the same colour. From the downstairs window, a warm light spilled onto the cobbled road in front of the door. Whatever he was cooking smelled delicious.

She stepped up and rang the bell, hearing the chime sound inside the house. A sliver of light opened up behind a curtain in the neighbouring cottage, and she looked across to see a woman, face twisted with suspicion, staring at her from the window. The neighbour made no attempt to hide her curiosity, so Ripley smiled at her and turned back just as the door opened. Daniel Cotter smiled at her, a dripping wooden spoon in his hand.

“Good timing,” he said, smiling with a nod at the utensil. “Stew’s just about ready. Luke’s already here. Come on in.”

Ripley glanced again at the woman in the window who scowled back at her, beady little eyes watching as this stranger stepped into Daniel Cotter’s home. That would set tongues wagging, no doubt. She grinned to herself as she followed Cotter through his short hallway and into the open kitchen and lounge area.

The cottage was as small inside as it was outside—a proper seventeenth century worker’s cottage with one huge stone lintel above what was once an open fire in the kitchen, now filled with a small range cooker. The fireplace was mirrored on the other side of the room in the lounge where a fire danced and crackled inside an old, soot-covered wood burner. The smell of meat stew and mashed potatoes completed the idyll.

“What a lovely place you have,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s all right, isn’t it? Although I don’t know any different, seeing as how I’ve lived here my whole life. I was born in that room there,” he said, nodding at the lounge. “In front of that fire.”

“Wow,” she said. “You really are local. Well, it’s very cosy.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d better light the fire. Knowing that I had a city type coming over.”

He smiled over his shoulder to let her know he was joking, before he turned back to the stove, stirring the stew and dropping a huge knob of butter into the mash.

“I brought wine.”

“I’m more of an ale sort, myself. But thanks. All the more for you, eh?”

Ripley put the wine down on the small table which separated the kitchen from the lounge. Cotter passed her a corkscrew and a glass.

“Look, I’m sorry if I came across a bit angry in the pub before,” he said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.