Free The Miracle Inspector by Helen Smith

perfect wife.
    He shouted down the stairs at her: ‘Cunt.’
    So that was that, then – no singing from Angela that night.
    He went to bed without bathing, getting under the covers and switching off the light even though it was far too early to sleep. There was something else that was annoying him, something just outside his normal perception, that he only ever thought about just as he was about to fall off to sleep… That was it! He turned on the light and reached under the bed. A fat leather-bound journal full of dangerous, seditious ideas that would get them both put away forever if someone like Jones ever got in here and saw them. He pulled all the pages out of the binding. He took them and the letters and stormed downstairs.
    Angela was surprised to see him in his pyjamas with the papers Jesmond had left for him. She knew what they were as soon as she looked at him, although she misunderstood his motivation for destroying them. ‘Lucas,’ she said. ‘Please.’
    Lucas went to the bookcase and took his only copy of Jesmond’s famous book, This Faerie England – inscribed to him by the great man himself–from its hiding place behind the copies of the Children’s Encyclopaedia vols five to seven that Angela set so much store by.
    He got a torch from a drawer in the kitchen, and some fire lighters from where they lay on top of the coal in the copper bucket next to the fireplace in the front room. He went into the back garden and lit a bonfire in the brazier. He put some twigs and leaves on the flames and then tossed Jesmond’s notes, letters and book into it. Random words caught his eye as the pages fell: faerie, spoiled, darling, Matthew.
    When most of the pages had burned, he went inside, wiped his slippers on the mat, double-locked the door to the garden. One danger, at least, had been averted.

Chapter Eleven ~ Why

    Now that Lucas had destroyed the letters, Angela wasn’t going to go crazy wondering what had happened. Jesmond was still here in London, after all; it seemed pretty obvious that he hadn’t made it to Adelaide with his girlfriend and her child. The what wasn’t important. Angela was interested in why . She was surrounded by millions of people in London and she never got a chance to enquire into why they did the things they did. They hid their true face from her. She could draw her own conclusions but she never really knew. She’d thought she might have a chance to know someone really well by reading Jesmond’s letters. She had been looking forward to going on the journey with him.
    It was only a story, for her. For Jesmond, it was his life. She wondered whether he had ever found out why his girlfriend never turned up at Southampton to get on the boat with him. Perhaps she was detained. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to leave her husband. Perhaps she had underestimated the dangers facing them and the rest of the country and hadn’t taken his letter seriously. Perhaps she had turned up and Jesmond had got cold feet and he wasn’t there. Perhaps they were intercepted on their way to the docks and made to turn back, either by her husband or by police road blocks. Perhaps the boat never sailed and they had to go back to their own lives and pretend the chance had never been offered to them.
    She found it perplexing that Lucas wasn’t more interested in Jesmond’s welfare. With older people in such short supply in London, parents and godparents, even the parents of friends were usually treated with reverence. Lucas seemed to have no sympathy for the man at all. Didn’t he wonder why things had turned out the way they had for him?
    And then she thought, perhaps Lucas wasn’t curious because he knew why. There was some secret, some family secret about his mother and his father and his godfather that he hadn’t told her. Very well, she would get to the bottom of it.

Chapter Twelve ~ Drinking

    When Jesmond finished his set, there was always a moment of intense loneliness. He bent and picked up his