Now You See Me by Lesley Glaister

Author:Lesley Glaister
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497694170
Publisher: Open Road Media

Twenty-two

The paving slabs were slippy with a skin of frost and all the shrubs in the gardens were petrified. I walked past car-washers and dog-walkers and hand-in-hand Sunday strollers. Past the Italian café with its windowful of posers drinking espresso or cappuccino and flapping newspapers, trying to look careless and European.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and watched my feet taking step after step till I got to the park. The football field was full of little boys with sore knees and cloudy breath. They have such amazing legs, fragile as twigs yet strong enough to kick a ball. You’d think they’d snap. In the playground mummies and daddies were pushing bundles of padding backwards and forwards on the swings, or running along behind children learning to balance on their wobbly bikes. Everywhere you looked someone had a life to be getting on with. Some purpose.

There was a church bell ringing and the ice on the pond had frozen into ridges like the sound of the bell. I stared at the cold of it till my eyes watered. I could feel the little silver hand dangling just to the right of my heart. I put my hand on the neat numb pad of gauze. All sealed now, square and white and safe. There were bits of bread on the ice, which the ducks had missed. I threw a stone and it bounced and skidded and sang a weird high note that was like the song of how I felt.

When I got back Sarah was out and Doggo still in the garden. I had another look at the picture of Zita that Doggo had noticed. White dress, dark fringe, maybe a little mole beside her mouth, her eyes dark stars. I could be related. One in four children isn’t fathered by the father on the birth certificate. I heard that on the radio. I could be anyone. I look much more like Zita than Sarah does, Sarah is the opposite type, soft and blurry-edged. No one could possibly believe that she’s related.

I went outside to see what kind of mood Doggo was in. He was in the act of demolishing another tree.

‘Thought we were leaving that,’ I said.

‘Maybe I changed my plans.’ He didn’t look straight at me. There was a mug on the ground with a froth of chocolate round the edge. Sarah must have rushed it out to him as soon as I’d gone.

‘You’ve got chocolate in your beard,’ I said. And he may have done. That’s the drawback of beards.

‘You been cutting yourself up?’ he said.

‘Pardon,’ I said.

‘She said you’ve got scars right up your arm.’

‘No.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘It was an accident.’

‘Oh yeah. Accident prone then?’ He threw a branch down and it nearly hit me. The sinews of the torn wood were pale as butter and I could faintly smell the sap.

‘What else did she say about me?’

He shrugged.

‘Where is she anyway?’

‘Dunno. Gone out somewhere, I think. What are you, Lamb, a head-case?’

I couldn’t believe his cheek.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.