Happy Hour by Anne Mitchell

Author:Anne Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-19T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

I’m lying in bed, looking at the ceiling. Something’s niggling me: something on the very edge of consciousness. Something small, but important. Something that’s not quite right. After a while I realise what it is. It’s the wrong ceiling. It’s too low, and the light in the centre has the wrong colour shade. It’s a pink shade, and in our bedroom at home the central light has a blue paper shade I bought about five years ago from the hardware shop in town. It’s faded and dusty now, and each time I notice it I think I should replace it, since it didn’t cost very much in the first place and it will be really difficult to clean. And then I move my head, and see that the curtains are pink too, which they definitely aren’t at home, and then again the window seems to be on a different wall. Other things are strange, too. Although it seems bright daylight – very bright daylight - the curtains are drawn across the window. There’s something else too: a noise, coming from somewhere outside. It’s a whirring, throbbing, droning sort of noise like.. I try to think what it’s like - like a helicopter. Yes: it’s just like the loud, steady, pulsating beat of a helicopter’s rotor blades, very close. What on earth can it be?

‘Awake at last?’ Susie’s leaning against the doorway, watching me and smiling. ‘You’ve been asleep for ages. Are you feeling better? Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ I say automatically. ‘Suse, what’s that noise? It sounds a bit like a helicopter.’

‘That’s because it is a helicopter,’ says Susie, matter-of-factly. ‘That’s why I’ve drawn the curtains, so they can’t take pictures through the windows.’

‘What? Why..?’ I sit up, and then it all comes flooding back, and the memory of the events of yesterday – if it was yesterday – hits me like a punch in the chest. ‘Lou! Oh my God! Is he..? Did they..?

‘Lou? Ha! He’s okay, don’t worry about him. They didn’t shoot him, though it’s a miracle they didn’t. By rights he should be dead by now.’

‘But I heard the gun go off!’

‘That wasn’t the gun that was pointed at Lou, it was one of the other bodyguards’ guns. Apparently it went off accidentally. It’s a miracle no one else was killed either, with all that fire-power around, and everyone running around screaming and yelling, and all the security people thrashing around on the floor with Lou underneath.’

I feel almost dizzy with relief.

‘So what happened? After I – ’

‘After you fainted?’

‘Did I faint? It just went sort of all black and muffled, and then I don’t remember any more.’

‘Yeah, you were in a dead faint. You’d sort of flung yourself on top of the pile – what you thought you were doing I have no idea - and then there was even more yelling and screaming, including by me by that stage, because of course everyone thought you’d get shot too.

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