Read In a Dry Season for Free Online Page B

into the weather by the time Vivian had recovered from the shock. Even then, she found that her hands were still gripping the chrome so tightly even her liver spots had turned white.
    She let go, let her body sag in the chair, and took a deep breath. Then she reached for her gin and tonic, hands shaking now, and managed to take a gulp without spilling it. That helped.
    When she felt a little calmer, she went into the study and dug through her filing cabinet for the manuscript she had written in the early 1970 s, three years after her last visit to Thornfield Reservoir. She found the sheaf of papers and carried it back through to the living-room.
    It had never been intended for publication. In many ways, it had been a practice piece, one she had written when she became interested in writing after her husband’s death. She had written it when she thought the old adage “write about what you know” meant “write about your own life, your own experiences.” It had taken her a few years to work out that that was not the case. She still wrote about what she knew—guilt, grief, pain, madness—only now she put it into the lives of her characters.
    As she started to read, she realized she wasn’t sure exactly what it was. A memoir? A novella? Certainly there was some truth in it; at least she had tried to stick to the facts, had even consulted her old diaries for accuracy. But because she had written it at a time in her life when she had been unclear about the blurred line betweenautobiography and fiction, she couldn’t be sure which was which. Would she see it any more clearly now? There was only one way to find out.

    Banks had never been to Harkside before. DS Cabbot led the way in her metallic purple Astra, and he followed her along the winding one-way streets lined with limestone and gritstone Dales cottages with small, colourful gardens behind low walls. Many of the houses that opened directly onto the street had window-boxes or baskets of red and gold flowers hanging outside.
    They parked beside the village green, where a few scattered trees provided shade for the benches. Old people sat in the late summer dusk as the shadows grew long, their wrinkled hands resting on knobbly walking-sticks, talking to other old people or just watching the world go by. At the centre of the green stood a small, obelisk-style war memorial listing the names of Harkside’s dead over the two world wars.
    The essentials were arrayed around the green: a Kwik-Save mini-mart, which from its oddly ornate façade looked as if it had once been a cinema, a Barclays Bank, newsagent’s, butcher’s, grocer’s, betting shop, Oddbins Wines, a fifteenth-century church and three pubs, one of them the Black Swan. Though Harkside had a population of only between two and three thousand, it was the largest place for some miles, and people from the more remote farms and hamlets still viewed it as the closest thing to the big city, full of sin and temptation. It was a simply a large village, but most local people referred to it as “town.”
    â€œWhere’s the section station?” Banks asked.
    DS Cabbot pointed down a side-street.
    â€œThe place that looks like a brick garage? The one with the flat roof?”
    â€œThat’s the one. Ugliest building in town.”
    â€œDo you live here?”
    â€œFor my sins, yes, sir.”
    It was just a saying, Banks knew, but he couldn’t help wondering what those sins were. Just imagining them gave him a little thrill of delight.
    They walked over to the Black Swan, a whitewash and timber façade with gables and a sagging slate roof. It was dim inside, but still too warm, despite the open door and windows. Though a few tourists and ramblers lingered over after-dinner drinks at the rickety wooden tables, it was long past their bedtime. Banks walked to the bar with DS Cabbot, who asked the bartender if they could still get food.
    â€œDepends what