Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set by Andy Conway

Author:Andy Conway [Conway, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective Historical, gaslamp, urban fantasy series, fiction historical, fantasy historical
Publisher: Wallbank
Published: 2014-12-24T22:00:00+00:00

— 11 —

SHE STRUGGLED, ARMS flapping, clawing at air in blind panic, stumbled to the side and almost fell out of bed.

Her room. She was safe. She sat up propped on an elbow and gasped for air, trembling violently, trying to calm herself.

She was lying on her bed in her chartreuse summer dress. Evening sunlight through the window and a blackbird singing in the back garden. A beautiful summer’s evening.

She sat up, her bare feet touching the rug and hugged herself, rocking to and fro.

She rushed to her dressing table and peered at her face in the mirror. Pale but for the red welt of pressure around her mouth where he’d held her.

This is not a dream, she thought. This is more than a dream. She knew it now. You do not dream of a man gagging you and wake up with his hand still imprinted on your face. She shuddered. Her legs and arms were still cold with the unmistakable burn of frost.

No dream carried on like this, time after time, night after night, every time you fell asleep. It was more than a dream. It was the key to something. She knew it now. Whatever this waking dream of Kings Heath station was, she knew she couldn’t escape it — that it was waiting for her every time she slept. She knew now that she had to stop Deirdre Foster throwing herself under that train.

Feeling her gorge rising, she rushed to her tin waste paper bin and retched. The sight of the train crushing Deirdre’s body on impact. Nothing came up. Choking, coughing, gasping for air. No, she hadn’t seen it. Only heard it. Deirdre leaping into white air, like an angel, disappearing into the roar of the train.

She dragged herself up and looked out of the window.

Olive was in the garden below, on her knees, planting a begonia in the flowerbed. Martyn dozed in a striped deck chair, newspaper folded on his lap and crossword half done.

It was a beautiful summer’s evening and everything was normal and safe and perfect. She was home.

She wondered what had happened and how she’d got here. She’d fallen asleep on the train with Danny and now she was here in her room.

She rummaged in her handbag and found her address book and flicked through the alphabetized tabs to find Danny’s name and a phone number scribbled next to it. She skipped barefoot down the carpeted stairs to the red Bakelite phone that sat on the hall table and dialled his number.

He answered, reciting the telephone number.

“Danny?”

“Hey, Rachel. How are you?”

“I’m... okay. I think. I just woke up.”

“You poor thing. You took quite a turn.”

She could hear a radio in the background playing a familiar tune and someone rattling about in the kitchen. He lived with Jessica, she remembered, and was it Stacy too? A vague memory of them all in a giant Victorian town house converted to student flats in Moseley on Chantry Road. Or was that only in her time travel dream?

“I don’t remember getting home.

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