Little Face Read Free

her breathing through the door. It is a sound that I adore:
high-pitched, fast, snuffly-a louder noise than you might think a tiny
baby could make. I push open the door and see her funny cot that I am
still not used to. It has wheels and cloth sides and is apparently French.
David and Vivienne spotted it in a shop window in Silsford and
bought it as a surprise for me.

    The curtains are closed. I look down into the cot and at first all I see
is a baby-shaped lump. After a few seconds, I can see a bit more
clearly. Oh God. Time slows, unbearably. My heart pounds and I feel
sick. I taste the creamy cocktail in my mouth again, mixed with bile.
I stare and stare, feeling as if I am falling forward. I am floating,
detached from my surroundings, with nothing firm to grip on to.
This is no nightmare. Or rather, reality is the nightmare.
    I promised David I would be quiet. My mouth is wide open and I am
screaming.

     

2

    Friday October 3, 2003, 11.50 AM (One week later)
    CHARLIE WAS WAITING for Simon on the steps of the police station
when he arrived for the start of his shift at midday. He noticed that for
the first time this year she was wearing her full-length black wool coat
with fake fur collar and cuffs. Her bony ankles were no longer visible
under thin transparent tights as they had been all summer. As one season succeeded another, Charlie's legs turned from transparent to
opaque and back again. Today they were opaque. Yesterday they'd
been transparent. It was a sure sign that winter was on the way.
    At least it was October. Charlie was so skinny that she normally
started to feel the cold when most people were still wearing sandals.
Today her face was pale and, behind her gold-rimmed glasses, her eyes
were anxious. In her right hand was a half-smoked cigarette. Charlie
was addicted to holding them and allowing them to burn themselves
out. Simon hardly ever saw her take a puff. He could see her red lipstick on the filter as he got closer. There was more colour on the fag
end than there was on her mouth. She exhaled a small cloud which
might have been either smoke or breath.
    A flick of her other hand, waving him over impatiently. So she was
waiting for him. It must be serious if she was meeting him on the
bloody steps. Simon cursed quietly, sensing the imminent presence of
trouble, angry with himself for being surprised. He should have known
it was on the way. He wished he could say that he had been expecting, any day now, to turn a corner and see the ominous face of somebody
who had bad news for him. Charlie, this time.

    Simon would have liked to meet whatever fate intended to throw at
him with the confidence of the entirely blameless. Ironically, he felt he
would be better able to bear his punishment if it were undeserved.
Something about the concept of martyrdom appealed to him.
    He found he could hardly swallow. This time it would be more
serious than a Reg 9. He'd been a fool to forget-however briefly,
however understandably-that he was not the sort of person who got
away with things. Those creepy bastards from the Internal Discipline
Unit had probably already emptied his locker.
    He felt a churning in his gut. Half of his mind was busy rehearsing
his defence while the other half fought to suppress the urge to run, to
take off. In Simon's fantasy it would not be a cowardly flight. It
would be slow, dignified, disappointed. He pictured himself becoming
smaller and smaller until he was a line, a dot, nothing. The allure of
the grand gesture, the silent departure. Charlie would be left wondering how, precisely, she'd let him down and then, once she'd worked it
out, wishing she'd listened to him.
    Some hope. Simon's departures from all his previous jobs had been
frenzied, chaotic, with a soundtrack of shouted threats, of fists and feet
smashing against doors and desks. He wondered how many new
starts a person was entitled to, how many times one could say it was
the other