Missing (Susan Lewis) by Susan Lewis

Author:Susan Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9780434014590
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

THE CHURCH CLOCK on Kew Green was striking midday as a dark-haired woman in a camel coat passed by. She was counting the chimes absently in her mind: one, two, three … through to eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. She halted. Her eyes came up from the pavement to look around. Had anyone else noticed? It didn’t seem so, because the world was continuing on its way, cars speeding in either direction, dog-owners and their pets roaming the green, early lunchers heading for the pubs. She was certain she hadn’t made a mistake, so perhaps she was the only one who’d bothered to count.

She glanced up at the tall bell tower with its elegant green dome and intricate arches. Both golden hands of the clock were pointing to twelve. There was no fourteen, but how could there be? Her gaze lost some focus as her thoughts became blurred by curiosity and a little amusement. Then it occurred to her that maybe only she had heard the final two chimes, because only she was supposed to. At the suggestion of a coded message, a hidden sign, her heart gave a jolt. She wished it was possible to have the last two minutes over again, to be certain she’d heard right. Then, as though surging up from a bottomless well, the chilling echo of the same refrain – please let me have the last two minutes over again – made her turn from the church and walk on.

It was an ordinary day; a dullish sky, with an occasional skip of wind, and leaves gently falling. She paid it no attention, because the weather held no more interest for her than nature, or people, or places. She and the world were strangers now, passing one another by like ships in the night, or hands on a clock. There was no desire to renew their acquaintance; they only had old animosities and an uncrushable spectre of hope to bind them together.

Life, on the other hand, was her enemy. She detested its trickery as much as its extravagant promises and barefaced artifice. It had dealt so cruelly with her that to punish it she had simply withdrawn from its game. Never again would she be seduced by its persuasive glimpses of a rosy future or believe in its ability to come good in the end. She had no heart to engage with it anyway, no blood left to shed, or even tears to cry. Now, when she cut herself, guilt ran from her veins, and when she cried shame rolled from her eyes.

If only she could have those few minutes over again. Life didn’t allow that though, did it? It delivered its blows then left the defenceless to the harrowing torment of their own minds, and the insupportable burden of a conscience that could never be salved. The screaming in the night had never been her baby crying for his mother, it had always been her. Wild, plaintive howls of grief and despair to break the harshest of hearts and soften the coldest of souls.

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