Something Hidden Read Free Page B

winced but didn’t put it down. ‘You don’t understand – it wasn’t him. I
know how it looks . . . I know what everyone says happened but he wasn’t like that. He was just a bit sad – anyone would be if they’d been through what he had.’
    Fiona tried to drink from the mug but her hand was shaking so much that she spilled the tea across her chin. She gasped, rattling the chair backwards and dropping the almost-finished biscuit.
She scrambled forward to make amends but Andrew already had a cloth in his hand. He took the tea from her, placing it on the table next to them and briefly rested a reassuring hand on her knee. It
crossed his mind – as always – that this was rather creepy, but then Andrew always thought that. Accidentally glance at a girl on a bus: creepy. Give a homeless person who just happens
to be female some change: creepy. Offer a girl directions when she’s clearly lost: creepy. Ask a crying woman outside a club if she’s all right: creepy. Sometimes – or a lot of
times in his case – a man could try to be nice to a woman without there being any more to it than that.
    Andrew tried to make eye contact but Fiona was doing all she could to avoid looking directly at him. She had found a spot on the wall behind him instead.
    ‘You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,’ Andrew said, ‘but if you want help, we’re going to need to know.’
    Fiona nodded pitifully, one arm hugging herself, the other dabbing at her chin.
    ‘I’m sorry, it’s just . . . my dad was Luke Methodist.’

3
SIXTEEN MONTHS AGO
    Ishan Chopra was bored. There was no getting away from it: mathematics was really dull. It was one of those degree subjects he’d thought his parents would like him to
take, something he didn’t find too hard, a subject which would hopefully help him find fortune, if not fame. That might all be true but it was as interesting as watching paint dry, or staring
at grass growing. The people were nice, but still . . .
    He gazed down at the lecture amphitheatre from the back row as the screen flipped from one PowerPoint slide to the next. He would download the notes from the uni portal later and might get
around to reading them at some point before the end-of-semester exams. There really was no reason to turn up, except to meet the attendance criteria.
    Below, the lecturer was droning on in a monotonous tone of voice, hypnotic in the sense that it made a person feel sleepy . . .
very
sleepy . . .
    A gut-wrenching yawn forced its way up from Ishan’s stomach until it felt as if his head was going to split in two, not that anyone around him noticed he was on the brink of hibernation. A
handful of maths nerds bashed away on their laptops and tablets, with a few others actually using a pen and paper to take notes.
    Unbelievable.
    Most of the class wallowed in their boredom, leaning back into their seats and strapping themselves in for at least another ninety minutes. Ishan often wondered what might happen if he smuggled
in a small rodent. There were enough of them making a racket by the bins at the back of his flat for him to be able to catch one. He could wrestle it into a rucksack, wait until the lecturer
started sending everyone to sleep, and then set it free. If that didn’t liven up proceedings then nothing would. If not a rodent then how about—
    Bang!
    Bang!
    Everyone turned as the sounds boomed from somewhere behind the theatre. The lecturer stopped speaking, mouth half-open as if he had forgotten what he was talking about. In an instant, Ishan was
awake. He’d heard those noises a few months previously when he and his friend Vikram had been chased home from the city centre after dark. Vikram blamed a backfiring car, saying they
shouldn’t worry about contacting the police, but Ishan knew the truth.
    One or two people near the back started to stand but Ishan was ahead of them, sliding along the aisle until he was next to the door. He opened it a sliver,