Krysalis: Krysalis by John Tranhaile Page A

drink, then she could attend to whatever it was that seemed so important. Oh, yes: the safe …
    Anna had a second drink without noticing. What possessed David to talk to her like that? She had been cradling her head in her arms, but now she raised it and shouted at the ceiling, “How
could
you?” before dissolving into tears.
    “How could you?” a voice murmured inside her. “You’ve been drinking too much, you’re feeling rotten … but it won’t mend matters if you snap at David, will it?”
    Strange. There wasn’t only this one voice inside her, there were others, too, all speaking at once … a senseof weirdness stole over her. She remembered hearing how people felt when they lived on Valium….
    She knew she had to do something. But she couldn’t remember the whole of today. Again—another of those fearsome blanks. One moment she was in the kitchen, the next she found herself entering the study, without any recollection of going there. Of course, the important thing. The safe.
    Why was the safe so important? David’s safe. Surely she ought not to touch it without his permission?
    Anna was swaying. She raised a hand to her forehead. Sleep. What she needed was sleep. Forget the safe. Tomorrow.
    Bed.
    The safe.
    Her hands knotted themselves into fists; she raised them to her temples in an attempt to drown out the monotonous drumbeat that was pounding in her head.
    David, where are you?
    Why aren’t you here?
    Sitting on her bed, she found she had made herself coffee.
How could she have done that without remembering?
She took the cup back to the kitchen, washed up, dried her hands, folded the tea towel neatly.
    She recalled knocking over the phone when David rang. It was suddenly important that she put it back on the hook. For a long time she sat on the lowest stair, gazing at the telephone, trying to work out why it meant so much to her.
    Then she was in her bedroom again, putting on her nightgown. But it was all wrong, because she ought to be dealing with the safe, for David’s sake, only she didn’t much care for David, right now. Yes, of courseshe did, she loved him…. Tomorrow. Everything could wait for tomorrow.
    Once in bed, however, her mind remained active. Outside in the darkened square, a passerby, or perhaps it was an animal, knocked over some empty milk bottles. Anna raised her head to listen, but the sound was not repeated. London seemed oddly silent beneath the faint, familiar sigh of mingled traffic and voices.
    Her vision blurred. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, then opened them and strove to focus on the window. She must be getting sick, she supposed; this wasn’t just alcohol. Flu … just when she was planning a few days off. No, worse than flu …
    Her mind strayed again, along with her eyes. The orange street lamps made bars of shadow out of the window frame, gridding her bed with black, so that for an instant she felt herself inside a cell.
    Fear gnawed at her. She was sick, all alone inside this big house. Helpless.
    She was so tired. Why, then, couldn’t she sleep? If only her head would stop
pounding!
    Take a sleeping tablet.
    The pills were in the top drawer of her bedside table. She tipped some onto the sheet. David’s words were reechoing in her brain.
Successful barrister, good-looking, rich, a husband who loves you … what else do you want?
Anna picked up one of the tablets and chewed it, unable to face going to fetch a glass of water.
    She couldn’t hold her head upright. It kept falling forward. But still her brain wouldn’t let her rest.
    She absentmindedly took another tablet.
    Tomorrow, first thing, she would attend to the safe. If only her headache would go, perhaps she could do what she had to do tonight, before she slept?
    No. Too tired.
    Her fingers made contact with something small and round lying on the sheet. A pill would help….
    If Saturday had been a nightmare for Gerhard, Sunday was to become living hell.
    He’d given his housekeeper a couple of days