The Stranger Times by C.K.McDonnell

Author:C.K.McDonnell [C.K.McDonnell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781473577305
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2021-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

Vera Woodward awoke with a start.

The room was dark, and although it wasn’t silent, it was filled with a sound she had come to expect after thirty-two years of mostly happy marriage. She turned and looked at Declan, who was snoring away contentedly, wrapped in the cloak of deep sleep. She had friends who had been driven to distraction by their partners’ snoring. They’d tried all manner of earplugs on themselves, and chin straps, mouth guards and vibrating pillows on their partners in the vain hope of getting a decent night’s sleep.

Vera had just got used to it. In fact, she sort of liked it. It meant she knew where he was. Vera was one of life’s great worriers. If she had her way, their two girls would sleep in the same room too, then she’d know where they were as well. She and Declan had been told they could never have children – and then their two miracles had arrived. People who thought happiness and worry didn’t go hand in hand had never been parents.

One of the rare serious rows she and Declan had had in those thirty-two years was when he’d forced her to take the baby monitor out of the girls’ room when they were six. They were fourteen now, and last year Declan had caught her looking on the internet at those teddy bears you could hide cameras in. He laughed that laugh he had and told her for the hundred thousandth time that she worried too much. She’d forced a smile and kept her thoughts to herself. Their family had a lot more to worry about than he could ever understand.

She heard the slightest of noises. So slight it might have been entirely in her imagination. She glanced at the clock on the dresser – 3.34 a.m. She had to be up in less than four hours to do the school run and drop Jupiter to the vet to get his booster shots before she went to work. She should turn over and close her eyes, but she knew it would eat away at her. Her accursed mind would leap to wild speculations, it’d itch and poke away at her subconscious, and tired as she was, sleep would not come.

With a shake of the head at her own neuroses, she lifted herself carefully to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and wiggled her feet into her fluffy pink pussycat slippers. Secretly, she loathed them, but they had been a Christmas present from the girls. She had even left them down in the kitchen a couple of times in the hope that Jupiter might regress to his shoe-chewing phase, but it appeared she had been too successful in training him out of it.

As she stood, Declan stirred beside her and spoke in his sleep.

‘Mwaff meh, fabricated half-inch pipe.’

Vera smiled. She was married to a man who dreamed of plumbing supplies.

She made her way past the girls’ room and then, cracking under the

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