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Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

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Kate Hamer The Girl in the Red Coat
  • Название:
    The Girl in the Red Coat
  • Автор:
  • Издательство:
    Faber & Faber
  • Жанр:
  • Год:
    2015
  • Язык:
    Английский
  • Рейтинг книги:
    4 / 5
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The Girl in the Red Coat: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Kate Hamer's stand-out debut thriller is the hugely moving story of an abduction that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Carmel has always been different. Carmel's mother, Beth, newly single, worries about her daughter's strangeness, especially as she is trying to rebuild a life for the two of them on her own. When she takes eight year-old Carmel to a local children's festival, her worst fear is realised: Carmel disappears. Unable to accept the possibility that her daughter might be gone for good, Beth embarks on a mission to find her. Meanwhile, Carmel begins an extraordinary and terrifying journey of her own, with a man who believes she is a saviour.

Kate Hamer: другие книги автора


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Goodbye Carmel, and after he had gone I’d felt a certain gladness for a moment — that everything might be different now.

The wind’s died down outside. The tent is still at last. When I lift the door it’s stiff and hard and there’s a shattering like tiny glass is breaking and I realise the canvas is iced up hard.

Outside the world is white and for a minute I don’t recognise it. The tents look like a row of ships stuck in a frozen sea. I think — I’ve gone in one door and come out of another into this beautiful place, though of course I know that can’t be true. My feet spin around in crazy circles and I have to reach out to a pole and my hand nearly sticks to it.

I shiver and pull my jacket close round me and I realise I’m still wearing the white dress over my jeans — its frilly bottom is sticking out under the red. It hardly matters — there’s not a soul about to see. I’m like the queen of Iceland here alone in this strange land. I slip and slide back out onto the path. There’s the cross at the end against the sky and I start to feel afraid. I walk slowly up to it huffing out smoky breath. It’s turned into a cross-shaped glacier with icicles hanging from its two branches.

I wonder what I’m going to do now with Gramps gone probably for ever. I want to cry but I can feel the water freezing in my eyes before it gets out and I think soon I must leave or I’ll die like the robin in winter. I wonder if I’ll be found — frozen to the spot — and sometimes I feel scared and sometimes like I’m going to fly because I can’t decide whether I’m alone, or free.

51

Or perhaps it’s not like that. Perhaps, after all, you can be free and not have to be all alone. I think of Mum and Dad. Melody. Nico. Gramps. I don’t want to have to die to be free — I could stay alone here and turn into an icy statue, or I could start walking. So that’s what I do.

I start walking back.

On the highway the cars are driving slowly, crushing the ice and sending it up in a great spray. I walk on the grass at the edge because there’s no sidewalk. The light has started to fade.

I wrap my jacket closer around me and wonder where I’m going. It’s going to be dark soon — I think of the ditch I spent the night in with Gramps. But I can’t see any ditches by the side of this road. And the idea of sleeping in a ditch again is bad, but not as bad as the thought that Munroe might be cruising round looking for me in his SUV to catch me. This could be my chance, I think. Take it, take it.

I turn a corner and there’s a house. It’s set back from the road and it looks like it was there before the highway and everything else got built around it and that’s why it’s on its own. There’s light at a downstairs window.

I stand in the front yard. The window is open a crack and the height of it is about the same as my head. I hear dishes clattering inside and water running. I tap on the window.

‘Who’s that?’ It’s a woman’s voice.

‘Please. Please help me,’ I call through the crack.

A figure appears at the window and looks down. It’s a woman with grey hair and a large face. She looks startled, angry even.

‘Can you help me?’ I say again. But I’m not sure if she’s hearing me, my voice is like a squeak in my mouth.

‘Get away.’ Her voice is fearful.

‘Please,’ I say it louder, ‘if I could just use your phone. I need to try to call my dad. If you know how to find numbers …’

‘Get away. Get out of my yard. Go, or I’ll call the police.’ The window slams shut.

I walk away and rejoin the highway. It’s getting proper dark now and the traffic flows past me, chucking up melted ice.

Then, lit up like Christmas, a diner — ‘Last Stop’ — the name in neon pink and the words shining upside down on wet ground. I’m so weary now I have to stop.

Inside is red Formica everywhere and I’m the only customer. A man stands behind the counter looking out. There’s a big clock on the wall above him. He stands there like he’s been waiting for me.

I go to the counter and fumble with frozen fingers in my breast pocket for the few dollars there. ‘Pie, please,’ I say.

‘What was that?’ My voice has gone so small again he has to lean over to hear.

‘Pie, please.’

‘Cherry or apple?’

‘Cherry.’

‘Cream or ice cream?’

‘Cream, please.’

He cuts me a slice of pie and spoons cream on and I take it and climb up on a high stool and start to eat, each mouthful warm and sweet. I look down and see the white lace at the bottom of my dress hanging down over my jeans black with dirt, and wet. I touch my face and feel a bruise coming where I got hit with Maxine’s wheelchair. I think about writing my name on a napkin and feel about in my pocket but my pen has gone. All the times I’ve written it: in salt from little packets on diner tables; on the walls of restrooms; at the bottom of menus; in the dust on the sides of trucks. There must be nets of it criss-crossing this huge land by now.

I turn away to eat my pie so the man won’t see my face all broken and scared and it’s so quiet the clock above us fills the room with its tick.

When I finish I turn back again and the man behind the counter hasn’t moved. He stands, his face yellow in the light, watching me.

52

FIVE YEARS, 209 DAYS

Are all mysteries finally solved or do some last forever? What happens when we die. What became of my little girl. Do they end? Or can unknowing go on for always?

The night shift has just finished; I’m at home, the winter dawn breaking outside. I’m wearing the white cotton uniform and white clogs from work.

I’m sitting on the sofa when I hear something upstairs. This is an old house, it has its own repertoire of noises but this one I haven’t heard before — it sounds like someone running across bare boards. I try not to be alarmed; the house leads a life of its own.

There’s a loud rap at the door.

I open it to see a man and woman on the step. They are both turned away, looking at the breaking orange on the horizon. When they face me I don’t recognise either of them. But they’re police, I know that.

The woman is introducing them. ‘Detective Inspector Ian Carling … Annie Wallace …’

They have come unannounced: they have news. I don’t know yet if it’s bad or good. But unannounced, something’s happened. I’m sick, suddenly, and light-headed. There’s a buzzing in my ears.

‘May we come in? We need to talk …’

They have news. They have news.

Then — I didn’t know it could happen in real life — my legs turn to water beneath me and I fall forward.

The man catches me deftly, managing not to drop the file that is tucked beneath his arm. I look up at his freshly shaven jaw, and see the plugs of dark hair he can never quite get rid of. He helps me inside, back onto the sofa. He fetches me a glass of water and I drink, my teeth chattering on the glass.

‘May we sit?’ asks Annie. I notice she’s wearing a poppy on her black coat — it must be November already.

I nod, my teeth still chattering on the glass. They sit in formal fashion. The man is broad and tall, dark with pale skin. The woman — Annie — is slim in her black coat, her blond hair in a neat ponytail.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I mumble. ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’ I stumble upstairs. I’m delaying things. In the bathroom I jackknife over the basin and deposit a burning spurt of sick on the white porcelain. I turn on the tap to wash it away and dab cold water round my mouth. I have the sudden urge to escape out of the bathroom window, and never have to know.

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