Girl on the Edge by R V Knox

Author:R V Knox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 111-1-11-111111-1
Publisher: Honno Press
Published: 2014-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

The more she thought about how much she needed to sleep, the less likely it seemed that she would. Leila was lying on her stomach in bed, her hair sticking to her face like a pony’s forelock in the rain. She brought her knees up, breathing through the pillow and burrowed her way into the foetal position. She wanted her mother to carry her around, as she had once done. A sharp yearning for something like hot tea in her throat struck her, making her faint, but it wasn’t really hot tea she wanted, she couldn’t fathom what the yearning was for. Perhaps it was amniotic fluid. Under dark water she would sleep and sleep.

From the next bed Imogen’s quiet snores were reassuring. Leila was still suspicious of her father; sure that there was something more. Had he really loved her mother? He was confusing. He had spoken more freely than ever before, but he had also very obviously rehearsed his speech.

Gradually, somewhere in the penumbra between consciousness and unconsciousness, the full events of the day came back to her. There was another cause for her tired, wounded feeling. Jude was a liar. He had led her to believe that she was the only girl in his life, that she was really important. He had never mentioned a girlfriend. Was this the end of their friendship? Perhaps she was nothing more than a curiosity. The girl whose mother fell off a cliff. The girl who saw her mother’s death. Even worse, he might have been in some kind of conspiracy with his creepy uncle. This did not sound like her Jude, but she had come to realise that the important questions in life were the ones that could never be answered for sure.

As she began to slip away she found Geraint on the edge of her dreams, smiling in his sunglasses and waiting. His small smooth hands had pushed her mother off the edge. When she asked him if he was the intruder at Hafod, his smile broadened. It seemed the answer was, ‘Yes.’ And he had not been in his bungalow at the time of her mother’s death as he had claimed. It was almost certain that he had been on the moor. He was often on the moor; he had learnt how not to be seen. He liked frightening people. He had frightened Mr Parry, but no, he shook his head; he had not killed the old man. Mr Parry had done that all by himself. Then he laughed, he was sitting in a tree, like an elf. Everyone noticed and forgave him because he was a pale, delicate alien. What was he going to do to her? He did not answer but removed his glasses. His eyes were dark holes.

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