Publication Date: Available Now from Sphere.
Today I am VERY happy to take part in the blog tour for The Loving Husband. I’m so behind that I haven’t yet read it although I will be very soon and having loved the authors previous novel I have to say I’m VERY much looking forward to this. I also have a copy to giveaway – just tweet me @Lizzy11268 or comment on this post to go into the proverbial hat. Looks like such a great read!
The Loving Husband Christobel Kent.
He was in the room. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but she’d been dreaming.
In the dark something padded between the furniture, and loose change clinked softly. The mattress gave beside her.
In the dream there’d been a wide littered beach and a man looking down at her, standing very close, the sun high behind him so she couldn’t see his face. The man reached into her breast pocket, she felt his fingers nosing, and he drew something out that glittered. Then the beach had gone and the space beyond the bed was all muffled blackness, no light came in from the landing. She might have been underground.
Cold crept under the duvet. She felt the furred brush of his leg against hers and obediently she turned away but his hand slid under her T-shirt; it rested on her hip and held her there on her side with her back to him. His hand was heavy.
Something blinked red off to the side, she couldn’t tell if it was inside her head or if she’d opened her eyes: the partial numerals of the radio alarm on his side of the bed. She knew if she turned her head they’d tell her the time but she didn’t move, her eyes closed, wanting the wide beach again, she wanted to know what it was the man had pulled from her pocket, but he was gone.
Behind her something else shifted, his body – heavy like his hand or was she dreaming that – bulky and hot, was pressed close and she heard his quick breath. He wasn’t going to sleep. And then his hand moved downwards, his palm was rough on the smooth of her backside. His fingers were between her legs and as they moved inside her she held her breath. It had been so long, for a second she didn’t know if she could still do it, but all the more reason. She knew if she stopped, if he stopped, after all this time, it would be the end of them, it would be disaster. And then he said something into the hair at the back of her neck, something unrecognisable.
She didn’t turn her head on the pillow and ask what he’d said so the words stayed mumbled, strange. But she let her breath go, and then his hands were on her shoulders, and he was inside her.
The cry woke her. If she hadn’t learned with Emme that however deeply unconscious and dreaming she was, that sound would reach through the layers of sleep and drag her out, her second child would have taught her, once and for all. You wanted him: how many mothers had had to tell themselves that? She had wanted him. Fran jumped up, to get to him before he woke them. Woke Nathan in bed beside her, Emme, in the next room. Silence.
She felt a thump in her chest as she remembered, a pulse of nervous triumph. Nathan, who by all rights should sleep till winter dawn, the sleep of the just and the satisfied. She could still feel a heavy warmth in the core muscles, a weight that wanted her pinned to the bed still.
Silence.
Had the baby cried out in a dream, and gone back to sleep? She listened, wondering how it could still be so dark. And quiet. Her hand wandered over the duvet as she looked for the red-lit numerals of the alarm clock on his side. Except . . . she leaned low, following her searching hand. The duvet was flat and smooth, as tidily straight against the pillow as a hotel bed. Empty.
Nathan wasn’t there. And then she was rigid, alert.
The clock said 02:07….
About the book:
Fran Hall and her husband Nathan have moved with their two children to a farmhouse on the edge of the Fens – a chance to get away from London and have a fresh start.
But when Fran wakes one night to find Nathan gone, she makes a devastating discovery. As questions about her husband and her relationships start to mount, Fran’s life begins to spiral out of control.
What is she hiding from the police about her marriage, and does she really know the man she shared her bed with?
Purchase Links:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/the-loving-husband/id1018563653?mt=11
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-loving-husband/christobel-kent/9780751562415
Happy Reading!
#TheLovingHusband
Read her last great book.
Thanks for running giveaway
Sounds so good!