The Night House by Jo Nesbo & Neil Smith

Author:Jo Nesbo & Neil Smith [Nesbo, Jo & Smith, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2023-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

23

WHEN I WAS ALLOWED INTO the room where Karen was lying, the nurse told me I could only have five minutes. She explained that the patient needed rest.

It was afternoon, and almost twenty-four hours had passed since the fire and Karen’s fall from the school building.

‘What lovely flowers,’ she said when I put the bouquet – which I noted was much smaller than the others she had received – on the bedside table.

‘I heard that you saved me,’ she said.

‘No, the men holding the firemen’s canvas were the ones who saved you,’ I said.

‘But they say it was you who told them to be standing there.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe? Yes or no?’

I just smiled.

‘Tell me, you jerk!’ Karen sat up in bed. I could see that she was already starting to get back to her old self. ‘You see, I can’t remember anything.’

‘I heard about someone who had the same … er, illness, at Rorrim’s, and jumped off the roof, so I was thinking that you might do the same thing.’

‘But what I don’t understand is how you knew that I’d be on the roof of the school.’

‘It said in the book about white word magic that you would be hiding somewhere that only you knew about.’

‘Only me.’ She smiled. ‘And you.’

We fell silent and looked out of the open window. The sound of crickets chirruping, bees buzzing, larks singing.

‘Do you have to go back to Rorrim’s?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Agent Dale has spoken to the Principal at Rorrim’s, and with McClelland and the head teacher here. I’m starting back at school again on Monday.’

‘That’s great!’

We sat in silence again. There was no doubt about it, Karen was definitely the best person to be silent with, I wished that these five minutes could last forever.

‘By the way, do you know what happened with that fire?’ she asked.

‘The house was almost burned down, but not entirely. Because of the rain,’ I said.

‘I hope there wasn’t anyone inside?’

‘I hope so too,’ I said. Agent Dale had said they hadn’t found any remains at the scene, and asked me to keep what I knew about the twins to myself until they knew more. As he put it, they wanted to avoid frightening the people of Ballantyne any more than was strictly necessary. The oak tree had also been killed by the damage it had received, and Agent Dale said they wanted to dig up the roots to see what they could find.

‘You really don’t remember anything?’ I asked. ‘None of the things I said to you on the roof, for instance?’

‘Like what?’ Karen smiled innocently.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘I don’t remember anything,’ she said, picking up my bouquet and smelling it. ‘But I … I think I dreamed something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. It was hard to tell if she was smiling or not behind the flowers.

I took a deep breath. It was now or never. ‘When you get out of here …’ I had to pause and take another deep breath.

‘Yes?’ Karen said.

‘Would you like to go to the cinema with me?’

‘The cinema?’

‘A remake of Night of the Living Dead.

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.