Poison Heart Read Free Page A

but something distracted me – a flash of green – except that when I looked properly the green must have been in my mind. Walking past the window next to me was the girl, and she was dressed in blue denim. She swivelled around to stare at me.
    ‘Did you see her?’ I asked Merlin. ‘That girl with the green eyes.’
    He hadn’t taken his eyes off me for a second. ‘I can see her now. You have beautiful green eyes.’
    ‘Not like these,’ I protested. ‘They’re really … impenetrable and creepy.’
    He laughed, kissed my hand and went to the counter to pay for our drinks. I shivered, realizing she must have been in the cafe at the same time as us.
    ‘Excuse me,’ I asked the waitress. ‘My … friend was in here, but we must have missed each other. She has straight dark hair and she was wearing jeans and …’
    ‘She was sitting over there,’ the woman replied, pointing to the end booth. She gave me an odd look and I began to cough to cover my embarrassment.
    I felt spooked again, thinking of
her
sitting close to us, although, thankfully, not close enough to hear our conversation. Merlin walked me home and I tried to push her to the back of my mind. It wasn’t hard – with him beside me I was almost floating. When we reached my road I pulled Merlin into a small alleyway that ran along the back of my house, the entrance flanked by a two-metre wall, just the right height to keep us concealed from prying eyes. It took us ages to finally say goodbye. Whenever I tried to prise myself away, Merlin would pull me back again. My face and neck burned as if they were on fire. I rubbed my cheeks self-consciously, wondering how to explain away my kissing rash, but when I finally got inside Mum didn’t seem to have noticed. She gave a brave smile when I asked how her day had been, but I could detect an undercurrent of reproach.
    I hummed around the house, delirious with happiness, reliving every minute of the day and texting Nat and Hannah to tell them about it. Midway through my exclamation marks, Mum called my name. I raced into the living room to find her waving a packet of cigarettes in the air, her face like thunder.
    ‘I’m very disappointed, Katy,’ she said, lowering her voice to a hush that was somehow worse than being roared at. ‘You’ve always promised not to take up such a disgusting habit.’
    ‘They’re not mine,’ I replied incredulously. ‘Smoking is horrible.’
    ‘They fell out of your bag,’ she continued, her eyes boring into mine. ‘I suppose Merlin’s convinced you it’s fashionable or something and you want to please him.’
    ‘Merlin hates smoking,’ I insisted, growing more and more indignant. ‘All my friends do … I can’t think how they got there.’
    Mum cut an imaginary line in the air with one hand. ‘End of discussion, Katy. If Merlin
is
involved, I won’t hesitate to stop you from seeing him. You can count on that.’
    There was no point in arguing further. Mum always had the last word. It was a mystery how the cigarettes had got into my bag to make such a sour end to a perfect day, and I felt aggrieved to have been accused so unfairly, but Mum had made it clear that the subject was closed. I had the definite impression that she wasn’t happy with me seeing Merlin and this had provided an excuse to express her disapproval.
    It took me ages to drop off to sleep and I tossed and turned all night. That dream always came when I was feeling stressed and it had never changed … until tonight. This time, when I grabbed the figure sitting at the mirror and forced her to look at me, the face wasn’t mine, it belonged to the girl on the bus. This time her eyes were green and fathomless. I stood back, drowning in her hatred.

CHAPTER
THREE
     
    No matter how busy I kept myself, a nagging sense of foreboding lurked deep inside, but I tried to suppress it and concentrate on Merlin instead. It was official – we were a couple. There was no need for an announcement at college