BooksBarbecue
Back Afterlove Save as PDF
Chapters (86)
  1. Title Page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. Love
  4. Before
  5. One
  6. ONE
  7. Two
  8. TWO
  9. Three
  10. THREE
  11. Four
  12. FOUR
  13. Five
  14. FIVE
  15. Six
  16. SIX
  17. Seven
  18. SEVEN
  19. Eight
  20. EIGHT
  21. Nine
  22. NINE
  23. Ten
  24. TEN
  25. Eleven
  26. ELEVEN
  27. After
  28. One
  29. ONE
  30. Two
  31. TWO
  32. Three
  33. THREE
  34. Four
  35. FOUR
  36. Five
  37. FIVE
  38. Six
  39. SIX
  40. Seven
  41. SEVEN
  42. Eight
  43. EIGHT
  44. Nine
  45. NINE
  46. Ten
  47. TEN
  48. Eleven
  49. ELEVEN
  50. Twelve
  51. TWELVE
  52. Thirteen
  53. THIRTEEN
  54. Fourteen
  55. FOURTEEN
  56. Fifteen
  57. FIFTEEN
  58. Sixteen
  59. SIXTEEN
  60. Seventeen
  61. SEVENTEEN
  62. Eighteen
  63. EIGHTEEN
  64. Nineteen
  65. NINETEEN
  66. Twenty
  67. TWENTY
  68. Twenty-One
  69. TWENTY-ONE
  70. Twenty-Two
  71. TWENTY-TWO
  72. Twenty-Three
  73. TWENTY-THREE
  74. Twenty-Four
  75. TWENTY-FOUR
  76. Twenty-Five
  77. TWENTY-FIVE
  78. Twenty-Six
  79. TWENTY-SIX
  80. Twenty-Seven
  81. TWENTY-SEVEN
  82. Twenty-Eight
  83. TWENTY-EIGHT
  84. Eleven Months Later
  85. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  86. Copyright

‘We have to go.’ She reaches for my arm, but I shrug her off as Nish rushes back into the shop.

When he returns, he has a phone pressed to his ear. ‘Yes, ambulance, please. Quickly.’

‘We have to get out of here, Ashana,’ she tells me and I stop and stare at her.

‘Who are you? How do you know my name?’

Before she can answer, I hear Nish say, ‘Please. Come quick. Someone’s been hit by a car.’

She tries to stop me, but I look around her and there, lying across the street is a body. It’s dark and they’re all in black so, I didn’t notice them. They must have been going into the mini-mart as I was leaving.

The girl in the teddy-bear coat – Dev? Is that what she said her name was? – reaches for my arm again as I take a step towards the body, but I pull away and see the dot of nail polish on the toe of their right DM, like a glossy drop of blood on the black leather, and everything becomes white noise again.

It’s me.

I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out, and when I turn to the girl, she’s looking up at the fireworks fizzing over our heads, scattering shards of coloured light across the sky.

‘I knew it.’ When she looks down, she smiles at me in a way that makes me want to turn and run. Before I can, she holds out her hand to me. ‘I knew it was going to be you, Ashana.’

After

images

One

images

ONE

I wake up with such a jolt, I half-expect to find my mother standing over my bed, telling me off for getting make-up on my pillowcase again. My head doesn’t feel good. God help me, how much did I drink last night? I shared a can of beer with Poppy and we didn’t even finish it so I shouldn’t feel this awful.

Before my eyes can adjust, everything goes blurry again and not that nice kind of blurry, just woken up from a nap on a drizzly Sunday afternoon kind of blurry, but the bad kind. The kind that makes you feel like you’re being swallowed whole.

It’s then that I know that I’m having that dream again, the one where I’m under water and just as I break the surface, someone grabs my ankle and pulls me under. I tell myself not to give into it, but I’m already gone. Arms out. Palms up towards a sky I can no longer see as the water fills my nose and mouth until it’s inside me. My bones washed clean and my heart bobbing like a red rubber buoy in my chest. I can taste salt, the sharp burn of it on my tongue, stinging my eyes as I sink down.