Dead Man's Gift and Other Stories by Simon Kernick

Author:Simon Kernick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

The page shook violently in my hand and it was Marla who took it from me. I heard her curse as she read it too, but I was already turning away and walking rapidly down the beach, ignoring the shouts of the others.

I broke into a run, sobbing as all the emotions that had been swirling around me these past hours – these past weeks, indeed these past years – suddenly erupted within me. As I reached the empty jetty, I jumped onto it and sprinted right to the end, thinking for a moment of throwing myself into the sea, going under and never surfacing again.

But I stopped myself, the need for self-preservation still too strong to let go entirely, and stared down at the eddying grey water. In front of me the mainland was close enough to make out clearly – a mile, maybe two miles away, but no more. The sea was choppy and there were no boats out there today. No one who could help me. I wasn’t a strong swimmer. I’d never make the distance. I probably wouldn’t make a hundred yards.

I was trapped.

I heard footsteps behind me and swung round as a sudden wave of panic hit me.

It was Crispin. He approached gingerly. ‘Are you okay, Karen? We’ve got to hold things together.’

He looked so lean and handsome, standing there in the wind, that my panic was replaced with a deep sadness. ‘Why did it all have to go wrong, Crispin?’ I sobbed, refusing to call him Cris like all the others did. ‘Why did we ever have to meet that bitch, Rachel?’

‘Whoa, hold on. This isn’t about her.’

‘It is. She’s infected everything. If she’d never been part of our group, you and I would still have been together, don’t you understand? We’d have travelled the world, got married. Had kids … Had a fucking life!’ The words were pouring out of me now. I no longer had any control over them. Over anything. ‘But instead it all went to shit. Someone killed her and it was never the same again, and I’ve been punished ever since. I lost you, and I married a man I didn’t love, and then, when I finally did have something beautiful in my life, I lost her too.’ I pictured Lily, with her round soft cheeks and infectious little laugh – only five months old when she died. ‘I lost my little girl, Crispin. My child. Haven’t I been punished enough already without all this?’

As the knife I’d been holding all this time clattered to the decking, he took me in his arms and held me tight. ‘It’s okay, Karen,’ he whispered. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

I wished he hadn’t called me Karen. I wished he’d called me ‘little chick’ or ‘baby’ or any of the other pet names he’d used when we were seeing each other. Karen seemed so formal. But I tried not to think about that and held him back just as tightly, my head buried in his shoulder, taking in his scent, soaking up our memories, allowing his presence to calm me.

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