How to Fall Read Free Page A

pocket.’
    I found the bag wedged behind my left foot and dragged it onto my lap with some difficulty, since the front of the car was crammed, as was the back seat and the boot. We did not travel light. ‘What am I looking for?’
    ‘Tilly sent me a photo of the family. I think you should see what Freya looked like.’
    As she said it, I unzipped the pocket. My fingertips brushed against a stiff bit of paper and I slid it out, careful not to bend the edges. It was a family photograph of six people sitting on a grassy slope. Two adults, one the image of Mum, the other tall and fair, superficially like Dad. The sisters had a type, it seemed. Two girls, two boys. Two older, two younger.
    ‘Hugo was the eldest. Then Freya. Then Petra. Then Tom.’
    Tom with a football under his arm and a scowl on his face, as if he wanted to go and play instead of posing for a picture. He was maybe ten, a couple of years younger than Petra. She sat with one sandal off, bare brown legs crossed in front of her, still childish but not for much longer. Hugo, as dark as I am fair, a year older than me and broodingly attractive. And Freya, I guessed. Freya, who was blonde, like me. Who had the same shape of face as me, the same pointed chin. The same slanting blue eyes. The same mouth.
    The same. Top to toe. The dead girl and I could have been twins.
    I looked up. ‘Mum . . .’
    ‘Don’t worry. I sent Tilly pictures of you. She knows what to expect.’
    But everyone else wouldn’t, I thought, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
    So it wasn’t really surprising, all things considered, that people on Fore Street were acting as if they’d seen a ghost. As far as they were concerned, Freya was back from the dead.
    Awkward wasn’t the word.
    I lasted another ten steps before yet another person did a double take, this time an elderly man carrying a battered golf umbrella. He stopped in his tracks, the better to stare at me. I dived without thinking into the nearest shop, without even checking to see what it sold, looking for a place to hide. The dovecot smell of dusty old books met me and I smiled to myself as I pushed my hood back. A proper second-hand bookshop. Exactly what I had been looking for.
    It wasn’t a large shop but every inch of available space was shelved and a pair of bookcases ran down the middle of the room so that it was divided into three narrow aisles. Stacks of hardbacks teetered on the floor, waiting for a gap to appear in the row upon row of books, faded and worn and thoroughly enticing. The expensive ones were in glass cases nearest the door, the collector’s items in tooled leather or wrapped in the original dust jackets. Not for me. I wandered down the middle aisle, passing gardening and theology, politics and fishing – nothing that would tempt me to stop. There was a desk near the back with a cash register on it, but no sign of the person who was reading – I leaned over to look at the hardback that was lying on the desk –
Classic Cars of the 1970s
. Interesting stuff.
    Or perhaps not.
    Behind the desk, a sign on a frankly dangerous-looking spiral staircase promised that the fun stuff like contemporary fiction was upstairs. I put my hand on the banister, prepared to risk the narrow treads for the sake of something decent to read, then stopped. Quick footsteps overhead: someone moving towards the stairs. I stood back to let them come down. I wasn’t superstitious about passing people on the stairs – there just wasn’t room for two on the death spiral.
    The owner of the feet rattled down the steps at top speed, a mug of coffee in one hand, a stack of books balanced precariously in the other, and it was my turn to stare. He was very much not the fuddy-duddy bookshop owner I had expected, lean in jeans and a T-shirt. He was seventeen or eighteen, tall, with dark hair. Straight nose. Broad shoulders.
Oh, hello
 . . .
    He half glanced at me, his eyes startlingly grey against his tan, then did a classic double