Hide and Seek by Mark Ayre

Author:Mark Ayre [Ayre, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AFS Publishing
Published: 2020-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Nine

Through Mercury's letterbox, Fran called.

"You can sit in there sulking all you like, missy. I've got no job, no friends, no lover. I'm dying, and the only person I have in this world is my daughter. So you sit there, and you freeze me out for now. I’ve got the rest of my life to wait for you and hey," she chuckled, "that could be weeks."

Mercury left the living room, from where her mother could barrage her with crap. She grabbed a towel from her bedroom, undressed in the bathroom, and jumped in the shower.

When she came out, all was silent. She stared towards the door. Waiting.

One, two, three, four, five.

Perhaps her mother didn't have the staying power she had thought.

Perhaps she had died on the doorstep.

Shaking off that second option, Mercury grabbed the handle and swung open her bedroom door.

"Nice and clean are you?" Fran shouted. "Wish I knew the feeling."

Into the bedroom, Mercury was unable to keep her eyes from going to the foot of her bed, to where Laars had risen. As though he might still be there, crouched against the bed's foot, hiding, she approached the bottom of her mattress. Peered over the edge.

No one.

Where Laars had lay after falling off the bed and receiving Mercury's kicking, he had bled. A small pool had gathered and burned away a football-sized hole in the carpet. Beneath, the wood was cracked and blistering. As soon as possible, she would have to get that sorted.

The blade he had bought was still under her bed. She could smell the lavendar and peppermint. A combination of fragfrancess with which she’d never previously taken issue.

Now, they made her sick.

That would have to be dealt with.

After dressing quickly in more casual clothes, she checked her phone for a Dom update but found nothing.

Nerves began to work at her once more.

What if he had found Laars or Beth?

What if they had found him?

Someone knocked on the window.

She screamed, jumped, dropped her phone. Then swore at how she had allowed herself to be so frightened.

Fists clenched, leaving her phone on the floor, she stormed to the window, threw back the curtain, and pounded on the glass, behind which stood her mother.

"Go away," she roared. "I'm not interested."

"Can you be?" said Fran. "It's going to get cold out here."

Resisting the urge to collect something substantial and throw it through the window, Mercury almost tore the curtains off their rails, drawing them. When she left the room, she slammed the door.

Through the living room, to the kitchen. From the fridge, Mercury grabbed a bottle of white wine and poured more than a healthy dose into a glass from one of the cupboards. In one, she saw it off. Poured another. Now she definitely wouldn't be able to drive.

Back in the living room, she fell onto a sofa she loved, but wished could be more like Amira's.

Her mother was knocking at the front again.

Mercury grabbed the remote, pointed it at the TV.

"Mercury, please."

Her thumb hovered above the power symbol.

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