your shoe.
You tell me I have to rest it on the grass because you can’t hold it still with your bad arm. I do as you say. The grass is cold and damp against my bare skin. You start your count. ONE. I turn away and close my eyes tight shut. TWO. My body tenses in expectation of the pain. THREE.
I hear it first, the crack of a hard object against the bone. Then the pain shoots up my arm like an electric shock. I scream. Your laugh is ringing through my ears. It is distorted, grotesque. I’m on my feet, twisting in agony, about to shout at you when I taste the acid in my mouth and I retch. I bend over and I’m sick all over my shoes. When I’m finished I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and see the ground spinning around me. I think I am going to faint but then I feel your hand on my shoulder, steadying me. It is the same hand that broke my wrist but this time it is gentle and soothing. I look up and see a flush of colour returning to your cheeks. You are still shaking but there is fire in your eyes, making them glisten and sparkle. Throwing my head back I emit a sound from deep in the pit of my stomach. It doesn’t sound like me, more like an animal howling, and I hear it echo through the trees. I could get lost in that roar, the way it reverberates through my body and reaches my nerve endings jolting them into life. I don’t think I have ever felt more alive. I could go on forever.
And I understand, Clara, it is all so clear to me now – the attraction of pain, how it can be delicious and warm. How it fills you with a power that makes you strong and invincible. How you have to push yourself to the edge to realise what you are capable of.
You have been watching me in silence. Your eyes are wide with surprise. I reach out to you with my good arm and we fall into each other, our laughs and tears mixing together. We don’t speak. We don’t have to. We know what we have done has set us apart from everyone else and joined us together with an irresistible magnetic force.
Chapter Five
M Y EYES WERE half closed, heavy with sleep. A slice of sunlight warmed my face. There was a moment, between dreaming and wakefulness, when I could have been anywhere. On holiday perhaps, where a summer sky, a pool and a day of discovery lay beyond the windows. Then I stretched my leg and drew my foot over the empty side of the bed where the sheets were crisp and untouched and I remembered. There was no pool, no summer sky. There was only a face. A smile. The picture of you.
I reached for my phone. Desperate to see his name; a missed call, a text. And yours too, Clara, of course I wanted to see your name and number. But I needed to hear his voice more because he could make everything OK. The only person who ever could. But you’d guessed that much already, hadn’t you?
My inbox was empty. So I scrolled through my recent calls and found the number I was looking for. Her voice had none of the laughter of the other night.
‘We need to talk, Sarah,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said in a way that sounded like she wasn’t convinced.
‘There’s a coffee shop just off Black Lion Street, on the corner, can we meet there?’ I asked.
‘I’ll be there by eleven,’ she said and the line went dead.
I was dressed in yesterday’s clothes so I left the hotel early to shop. I hadn’t felt warm since arriving at the police station the day before. I needed an extra layer of protection. As I turned off the seafront I saw the winter sun sitting low. Beneath it the sea was bleached so white I couldn’t tell where it stopped and the sky started. Sequins danced on the water. I blinked and shielded my eyes. After the gloom of the day before, the pier, the buildings, the hotels, the people that lined the seafront, they were all cleaner, brighter under this sun. But what had changed? Nothing had changed at all, Clara. It was a trick of the light. Everything is a trick of the light.
There were pastries and cupcakes laid out on the counter, the kind
You tell me I have to rest it on the grass because you can’t hold it still with your bad arm. I do as you say. The grass is cold and damp against my bare skin. You start your count. ONE. I turn away and close my eyes tight shut. TWO. My body tenses in expectation of the pain. THREE.
I hear it first, the crack of a hard object against the bone. Then the pain shoots up my arm like an electric shock. I scream. Your laugh is ringing through my ears. It is distorted, grotesque. I’m on my feet, twisting in agony, about to shout at you when I taste the acid in my mouth and I retch. I bend over and I’m sick all over my shoes. When I’m finished I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and see the ground spinning around me. I think I am going to faint but then I feel your hand on my shoulder, steadying me. It is the same hand that broke my wrist but this time it is gentle and soothing. I look up and see a flush of colour returning to your cheeks. You are still shaking but there is fire in your eyes, making them glisten and sparkle. Throwing my head back I emit a sound from deep in the pit of my stomach. It doesn’t sound like me, more like an animal howling, and I hear it echo through the trees. I could get lost in that roar, the way it reverberates through my body and reaches my nerve endings jolting them into life. I don’t think I have ever felt more alive. I could go on forever.
And I understand, Clara, it is all so clear to me now – the attraction of pain, how it can be delicious and warm. How it fills you with a power that makes you strong and invincible. How you have to push yourself to the edge to realise what you are capable of.
You have been watching me in silence. Your eyes are wide with surprise. I reach out to you with my good arm and we fall into each other, our laughs and tears mixing together. We don’t speak. We don’t have to. We know what we have done has set us apart from everyone else and joined us together with an irresistible magnetic force.
Chapter Five
M Y EYES WERE half closed, heavy with sleep. A slice of sunlight warmed my face. There was a moment, between dreaming and wakefulness, when I could have been anywhere. On holiday perhaps, where a summer sky, a pool and a day of discovery lay beyond the windows. Then I stretched my leg and drew my foot over the empty side of the bed where the sheets were crisp and untouched and I remembered. There was no pool, no summer sky. There was only a face. A smile. The picture of you.
I reached for my phone. Desperate to see his name; a missed call, a text. And yours too, Clara, of course I wanted to see your name and number. But I needed to hear his voice more because he could make everything OK. The only person who ever could. But you’d guessed that much already, hadn’t you?
My inbox was empty. So I scrolled through my recent calls and found the number I was looking for. Her voice had none of the laughter of the other night.
‘We need to talk, Sarah,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said in a way that sounded like she wasn’t convinced.
‘There’s a coffee shop just off Black Lion Street, on the corner, can we meet there?’ I asked.
‘I’ll be there by eleven,’ she said and the line went dead.
I was dressed in yesterday’s clothes so I left the hotel early to shop. I hadn’t felt warm since arriving at the police station the day before. I needed an extra layer of protection. As I turned off the seafront I saw the winter sun sitting low. Beneath it the sea was bleached so white I couldn’t tell where it stopped and the sky started. Sequins danced on the water. I blinked and shielded my eyes. After the gloom of the day before, the pier, the buildings, the hotels, the people that lined the seafront, they were all cleaner, brighter under this sun. But what had changed? Nothing had changed at all, Clara. It was a trick of the light. Everything is a trick of the light.
There were pastries and cupcakes laid out on the counter, the kind
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