You Better Watch Out by Sarah Naughton

Author:Sarah Naughton [Naughton, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wednesday December 15

Mum comes home at half past eleven, in a good mood. Eleri can hear her humming as she emerges from the lift. It seems to take ages for her to reach the door of the flat, as if she needs to take regular pauses, and for a moment Eleri’s worried she overdid it. But when Mum lets herself in, phone in hand, grinning, Eleri decides the pauses were probably to text Kitten Man.

If her mum had asked her there and then what she was doing sitting alone in the dark, Eleri might have told her, but instead she just enthuses about her date and what a fascinating guy Adam is. Apparently he was kidnapped in Nigeria but escaped after paying a guard off with his jeans, and then had to run away naked through the bush. Supposedly he also once helped a zebra give birth and pitched a tent on a nest of bullet ants. Mum hadn’t laughed so much in years, and the pub was brilliant. They should go there for a ploughman’s one weekend.

Eleri tries her best to smile, but it doesn’t matter that it’s unconvincing, because her mum’s too tipsy to notice. She makes herself some toast and stands by the kitchen window to eat it, gazing across at Gibea Tower with a smile playing on her lips.

For the fourth night in a row Eleri doesn’t sleep much.

Ray might have had nothing to do with Nina’s disappearance, but someone must know what happened to her. The Secret Santa?

Sometimes the Secret Santa seems to be trying to give her a message, as if it might really be Nina attempting to communicate with her. But other times the gifts have felt malicious – and she’s not sure what she’s done to deserve this. She was never mean to Nina. The only thing she ever got wrong was that damn lipstick. She and Beni had thought Nina needed help to bring out her natural beauty, but if the photograph really is Nina, she knew perfectly well how to make the best of herself.

The Nina Eleri knew wasn’t really the type to have a boyfriend, but what about that Nina?

And what made her put on all that weight, change her style, stop wearing make-up, don those ugly glasses?

Because someone didn’t like the way she was before, and maybe didn’t like the lipstick?

Someone who didn’t like it so much, in fact, that they gave Eleri a tin full of soil? The symbolism seems horribly clear in the midnight silence. The soil represents a grave. Her grave?

This isn’t just a game any more, and she’s no longer curious about what’s going to happen on the twenty-fourth. She’s scared.

Mum is still half drunk the next morning, or maybe she’s just happy. Either way, she got up early to make batter, so Eleri can have her favourite Nutella pancakes for breakfast, and so when Eleri gets up, too tired to have any appetite, she feels obliged to eat. She ploughs through the pancakes, staring with glazed eyes at the news playing from the TV up on the wall.

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