Read In The Garden Of Stones for Free Online

sound?”
    “ What if I need you between times?”
    “ Just pick up the phone.” He pauses, chewing on the inside
of his cheek. “This is going to work for you, Grace. I feel it in
my bones.”
    “ Me… or you?”
    His
shoulders drop a little and he smiles tightly. “I… I won’t deny
it’s… it’s a controversial therapy with no proven track record of
success –”
    “ And you’re about to put a whole load of eggs, your
professional integrity and personal pride among them, in one very
rickety basket with a loose handle?”
    A
nervous laugh. “Am I that transparent?”
    “ Yes,” she says, and sticks out her hand, small and neat and
steady as a rock, her ultimate gesture of confidence. “I will do my
very best for a good outcome for you, Dr Pettit. You have my
word.”
    He
smiles down on her proffered hand, takes it and encloses it in both
of his. “Thank you.”
    A
career, gratitude, faith and trust, expressed in two words carried
on a low soft whisper. What the hell has she just signed up
for?
     
     
    Next
morning she’s in a taxi and on her way back to the flat she shares
with Alec, the best friend a girl could ever have,
    She’s
only been gone three weeks, she’s had longer holidays, but she
knows there will be flowers, and chocolates and hugs to greet her
as if she’s been away for six months.
    Grace
also knows Alec is going to be an utterly unbearable fusspot,
clucking about her like a mother hen, shadowing her every move,
asking her every thirty seconds if she’s okay, and she will have to
bite her tongue and tolerate it until he gets it through his head
that she really is fine and she really will be safe to leave on her
own all day while he goes to work.
    Hopefully, for both their sanities, it shouldn’t take more
than a couple of days, a week at most.
     
     
    There
are indeed flowers, and chocolates, and a bottle of fine red wine,
and Alec greets her with a bear hug so tight she fears for her
ribs.
    She
doesn’t mind him touching her. Alec is the most unthreatening
person she’s ever known. He radiates only warmth and love, and it
comes from his heart and his soul, the only man who understands
her.
    Enclosed
in his arms, tight and safe, she can’t help but burst into tears,
and sobs against him until her chest aches and her throat
burns.
    He pecks
a series of small kisses to her forehead and holds her at arm’s
length to look into her prickling wet eyes set in a pale blotchy
face.
    He’s
been crying too, and his eyes are all watery and red. He presses
his palms flat against her hot cheeks.
    “ You silly bitch! What were you thinking? You scared the
living FUCK out of me!”
    A solid
berating, tempered a little by being delivered in his sweetly
effeminate tone and with a petty stamp of his foot.
    “ I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want … I wasn’t supposed to –”
She breaks away from him and goes to stand at the window, to look
out over the mass of grey slated rooftops. “I thought it would be …
peaceful. I thought I would just fall asleep and that would be it.
I’d just drift away.”
    “ Got that wrong though didn’t you, baby?”
    “ Yeah.”
    He
places his hands on her shoulders, a heavy comforting weight, and
rests his cheek against her hair. “Why couldn’t you talk to me,
Gracie? That’s what best girlfriends are for, right? Why did you
feel you had to bottle everything up until –?”
    “ Because it would mean unloading my problems onto you, and
that old saying about a problem shared is a problem halved is just
bollocks. It simply means more people have more
problems.”
    She
grabs his hands and pulls his arms across her chest like a solid
shield and they stand together staring out of the window at the
traffic in the street below.
    He
kisses the top of her head. “Love you, babe,” he says.
    “ Love you too.”
    And she
does. Alec Simpson is the only man Grace truly loves and trusts
with her life. He has, after all, been her saviour on more than