Graeme Cameron - Dead Girls

Annie stared at the second hand as it did what a second hand does, at the precise speed a second hand does it. And she was sure, she was sure she hadn’t replaced the battery in that clock. However much she’d drunk, however many minutes or hours ago she’d drunk it, she was sure that clock shouldn’t be running. And she was sure, without daring to drag her eyes to her watch, that as much as it shouldn’t have been showing the correct time, it very much was.

But there had to be an explanation, right? After all, she couldn’t remember everything she did after a drink or six. Most of the time she flat-out didn’t want to, but in this case she was willing to make an exception. So she stared at the clock and chewed her nail and racked her fuzzy brain and conceded that she had been under a lot of stress lately. That was why she’d been drinking so much, wasn’t it? The stress? It wasn’t a need, an addiction or even a habit. It was just stress. And stress can do all kinds of things to a person’s brain, her perception, her memory. And, even to Annie, that made a damn sight more sense than someone – than anyone – than that man – coming into her home and changing the battery in her clock. Didn’t it?

‘Twat,’ she said, out loud to herself, because however she may or may not try to convince herself otherwise, she knew that there was nobody else in the house, and nor had there been. Whatever odd thing she was feeling, it definitely wasn’t that. And the sound of her own voice echoing around the room calmed Annie, and momentarily she dropped her arms and tore her eyes from the second hand of the clock and thought about making a cup of tea. And so she went to the narrow little kitchen that led off the lounge, and she filled the kettle and switched it on. And then she saw the mug upside down on the draining board, the one with the chip in the rim that had cut her knuckle the last time she’d washed it. The one her mother used to use when she’d come to stay for the weekend. The one she couldn’t throw away. The one she’d put back in the cupboard and never, ever used again. Upside down, on the draining board, a dozen tiny spots of water tracing a drying path to the sink.

Annie took a breath and waited for her heart to start beating. And when it finally did, she slumped to the floor in the corner of the kitchen, and shuffled back into the crook of the wall, and drew her knees up to her chest, and listened to the kettle boil, and cried and cried and cried.

EPISODE 2

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.