After Before by Jemma Wayne

Author:Jemma Wayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909878853
Publisher: Legend Times Group

Chapter

Eighteen

It was as though she was there all over again, standing, facing him.

It was his eyes: the half-grey, half-green duplicity of them. Not one thing or another, but two things at once. Lightness and dark. Trust and deceit. After and Before.

They penetrated her armour. They dug beneath Lynn and London. And she was there again, in front of him.

Of course, Luke’s skin was white, he had blond hair, and a far more angular nose. A black face, a brown face, even Omar’s movie star, smiling face should have been a closer comparison. But the eyes, the eyes alone sent Emily running downstairs and into the closed room at the back of the house, the door for which she’d days ago finally found the key though not yet opened, locking it fast behind her.

She had no idea how long it took for her to calm herself. She breathed deeply, forcing the air into her closing lungs, and stared straight ahead of her at the panel of the door she rested her head upon. Over and over she told herself that she was safe, she was in England, she repeated it out loud. She conjured visions of snow, and skyscrapers, and trains, and puddles. She rubbed her wool-bound arms and reminded herself of winter winds, of grumpy bus drivers, of white faces. But her body wouldn’t listen. It shook violently. Her stomach contracted and she vomited onto the floor. Emily’s skin was cold but covered in sweat. Outside the room, she heard doors open and close, footsteps on the stairs, then slower ones, the creaking of the couch in the living room, the buzz of the TV; yet they could just as easily have been gunshots and the sickening slice of machete, the hum of laughter, the thud of her face on the ground.

At some point she must have passed out. It happened sometimes. More often lately. A shrill ringing would begin inside her head, growing louder until the pain of it was unbearable, and then finally turn everything to blackness. When she opened her eyes, they were caked in sticky reminders of her desolation, her left arm was numb from lying too long upon it, and the room stank of her own vomit. She looked to see if there was a window.

The room was covered in painted canvasses. Great, five-foot tall ones leaning against a table; smaller, square ones dripping from the walls and piled on top of each other in a careless fashion as if they were excess crates of beer; and a single, carefully positioned canvas set upon an easel, unfinished. Emily approached it and to reveal it better drew apart the heavy curtains that covered the great French doors to the garden, opening a window to let out the smell. There was something about this particular painting that drew her to it. The others were beautiful and intricate, whole stories conveyed in the wrinkles of angular faces, the sideways glance of an eye, or in the meandering paths in the distant corners of vast landscapes.

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