Sometimes When I Sleep by Helen Salsbury

Author:Helen Salsbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

Be ready to leave at 2:15 tomorrow.

It had been under her door when her alarm clock woke her at midday. The note was unsigned but Mark’s writing was easy to recognise. She’d been relieved.

‘You’re fascinated by him,’ Iquis says. ‘I used to watch you fighting with him last term, and you were so intent you didn’t even realise I was looking.’

‘Only because I hated him.’

‘You always knew where he was in the room.’

‘So?’ Harriet shifts uncomfortably.

‘And the way you fought with him when he pulled you from the river; so much passion. There was nothing else except him.’

The crushing rosemary. His hand around her ankle, spinning her round.

‘Is that why you wanted me to keep away from him?’ Iquis says. ‘So that you could have him?’

‘No. It’s not like that. You think I fancy him or something – I don’t.’ Harriet’s words spill out, as Iquis’s jibes cause her to feel things, to make connections. It’s like being given the key to a complicated puzzle. ‘It’s just…’ She’s scared, she knows she’s going to say something that she doesn’t want to admit, the dream is flooding her mind, spinning her around, faster and faster, ‘that…’ and then, thudding to a halt. ‘He reminds me of Stephen.’

She feels strangely empty. How long have I known? How long have I been denying it for?

‘It’s stupid,’ she says. ‘I worshipped Stephen. I hate Mark. And yet there’s something…’ she frowns. ‘There’s the obvious things. They’re both blonde and they’re both competitive, sport mad.’

She flashes through images of each of them flushed and sweaty, filled with excitement and triumph, surrounded by friends, confident in their right to lead, to win.

‘But that’s it. Nothing else.’

Iquis is silent.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Harriet says. ‘I don’t understand why a smug git like him can remind me of Stephen. It’s wrong. He’s not fit. It’s like insulting Stephen’s memory.’

Yet I’m looking forward to seeing Mark tomorrow, to sparring with him, to trying to get the better of him. I’ve missed it. Things have been a bit flat without the competition between us.

I better not let Iquis realise.

‘Maybe you didn’t always like Stephen,’ Iquis says.

‘Don’t be stupid!’

Iquis traces a geometric pattern in the mud with a stick which has mysteriously appeared in her hands while Harriet was wrestling with her thoughts. It’s disconcerting, in the same way that a jump in a film would be.

‘Perhaps I’m scared,’ Iquis says.

‘What!’

‘That if you go, you won’t return.’

Harriet is jolted away from her thoughts of Mark/Stephen. Iquis couldn’t possibly know about her fantasy of being adopted by Dark Island at the concert, could she?

‘That’s daft,’ she says. ‘Of course I’ll return. I came back after Christmas, didn’t I?’

Iquis’s stick slows against the mud, continues to trace, but very slowly, very gradually.

‘Look… there’s something…’ Unusually hesitant.

‘What?’ Harriet says, leaning forwards.

Iquis scribbles out the patterns with a swift movement.

‘Share blood with me.’ She whispers the words. Harriet can only just catch them.

‘What do you mean?’

Iquis’s expression is intent, unnerving. She doesn’t answer. Just waits, the stick stilled in her hand.

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