Lasting Damage Read Free Page B

it’s also true – true in exactly the same way – that less than ten minutes ago I took a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge, and saw a dead woman lying on a blood-soaked carpet.
    ‘Bingo: the lounge,’ I hear Kit say. His tone sends a chill shooting up my spine. How can he sound so flippant, unless . . . ‘Interesting choice of coffee table. Trying a bit too hard, I’d say. No dead woman, no blood.’
    What? What’s he talking about? He’s wrong. I know what I saw.
    I push open the door and make myself walk into the room. No. It’s not possible . 11 Bentley Grove’s lounge turns slowly on the screen, but there’s no body in it – no woman lying face down, no pool of red. The carpet’s beige. Moving closer, I see that there’s a faint mark on it in one corner, but . . . ‘It’s not there,’ I say.
    Kit stands up. ‘I’m going back to bed,’ he says, his voice stiff with fury.
    ‘But . . . how could it disappear?’
    ‘Don’t.’ He raises his fist, smacks it against the wall. ‘We’re not going to talk about this now. I’ve got a good idea: let’s never talk about it. Let’s pretend it didn’t happen.’
    ‘Kit . . .’
    ‘I can’t go on like this, Con. We can’t go on like this.’
    He pushes past me. I hear our bedroom door slam. Too shocked to cry, I sit down in the chair that’s still warm from Kit’s body, and stare at the screen. When the lounge disappears, I wait for it to come back, in case the dead woman and the blood also come back. It seems unlikely, but then what’s happened already is also unlikely, and yet it happened.
    I sit through the tour of 11 Bentley Grove four times. Each time the kitchen fades, I hold my breath. Each time the lounge returns spotless, with no dead woman or blood in it. Eventually, because I don’t know what else to do, I click on the ‘x’ in the top right-hand corner of the screen, shut the tour down.
    Not possible.
    One last time, starting from scratch . I click on the internet Explorer icon, go back to Roundthehouses, retrace my steps: find 11 Bentley Grove again, click on the virtual tour button again, sit and watch. There’s no woman. No blood. Kit is still right. I am still wrong.
    I slam my laptop shut. I ought to clear up the broken glass, and the real bloodstains on my own carpet. I stare down at Nulli’s certificate of incorporation, lying on the floor in its shattered frame. In my shock at seeing the dead woman, I must have knocked it off the wall. Kit will be upset about that. As if he hasn’t got enough to be upset about .
    Reframing a certificate is easy. Deciding what to do about a disappearing dead woman that you might have imagined in the first place – not so easy.
    As far as I can see, I have two choices. I can either try to forget about it, talk myself into believing that the horrific scene I saw only ever existed in my mind. Or I can ring Simon Waterhouse.
     
    *
     
    POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/12IG
     
CAVENDISH LODGE PRIMARY SCHOOL
BULLETIN NO. 581
Date: Monday 19th October 2009
 
Autumn Thoughts from Mrs Kennedy’s class
 
Conkers are . . .
Silky smooth,
Velvety and chocolate brown
And rusty red on the outside.
Their shiny shells are crusty
Creamy and cool to touch.
I love Autumn because
Conkers fall off the trees in Autumn.
I love conkers SO much!
by Riordan Gilpatrick
 
Conkers
They fall off trees
Hit you on the head.
You can tie them on strings
Have fights with them
You can collect them
And put them on your shelf.
Green-brown-orange-red, that’s the colour of . . .
Conkers!
by Emily Sabine
 
Well done to both of you – you have really brought Autumn to life in all our minds!
Thank you!

Chapter 2
    17/07/10
     
    Betting man that he was, DC Chris Gibbs would have put the odds against Olivia’s persuading the concierge to serve them yet another drink, long after the hotel bar had officially closed, at several thousand to one. Happily, he’d have been wrong.
    ‘Just one more titchy little