Lights Out: The chilling, unputdownable thriller that you won't be able to put down in 2024! by Louise Swanson

Author:Louise Swanson [Swanson, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529396164
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2024-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

They’re Coming

Grace went to the room Bailey Brighthead had been allocated, a small square corner space, both windows giving a different view, one lovely, of fir trees, and one dull, of the car park. The usual cushions and curtains attempted to make the place more home than hospice.

He was asleep – understandable, it was after nine. Grace approached the bed quietly; the only noise was the sound of the air mattress and his grunted breathing. Because he was here for end-of-life care, there was no life-sustaining equipment, only a discreet syringe driver, which is a small battery-powered pump that delivers a steady stream of medication through a small plastic tube under the skin, and a catheter bag.

The dad she had known had fat fingers that traced ‘Round and Round the Garden’ on Grace’s upturned palms as a child. These hands were thin, pale, this body was gaunt, barely anything but a sliver beneath the sheet. The dad she had known had presence, filled a room, sometimes too much, too loudly, a little scarily, but she wouldn’t think of those times now.

This man was small. Small and silent.

Maybe there had been a mistake.

Then she looked at his face. Though the skin was sallow – a side effect of the final stages of bowel cancer – and hung loose in places, it was him; she knew the contours of that jaw, the shape of those thick eyebrows, even after all this time. The hair she remembered as thick though, was now thin, almost white.

She hadn’t known he lived in this area, but why would she? Why would he tell her that when he had never been in touch before?

There was a lamp on the bedside cabinet, not lit. She longed to switch it on, bathe them both in warmth, but it might unsettle him. He stirred. She backed away. Waited.

Approached again.

This could not be him. Maybe there had been a mistake. How old would he be? God, at least eighty.

And he was dying.

How did she feel? Sad. Small. Angry. Needy. Resistant. What was she going to do? Tell the hospice who he was and then not be able to care for him, or keep quiet and get to know the man who disappeared over thirty years ago when she was ten? She needed time, space to think about it. But that wasn’t possible.

She left the room, got her things and escaped, breathing hard as she ran through the frosty car park to her vehicle. She messaged Sam, said she had been violently sick so left immediately. For the first time, she didn’t notice the night; she got home with no recollection of the journey. The house was a cavernous mouth that swallowed her with a gulp. Once inside she sank to the hallway floor, sobbing, unable to remember where the camping lamp was.

It was that day again.

The day her father left.

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