“Never mind all that,” Lindsay said. “The important thing is that you stress that you knew nothing about all of this, and you want them hammered because you don’t want your company destroyed. I know it’s casting against type, but for once play the dumb broad,” she added wryly.

“Oh, God,” Helen groaned. “I should have known better.”

“That,” said Sophie, “is what they all say.”

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

At first when she woke, Lindsay couldn’t figure out where she was. She knew she wasn’t at home, remembered she was staying with Helen, but the silence disoriented her. She couldn’t recall ever waking into quiet in Helen’s home. If it wasn’t the radio, it was music, the volume pumped up till it threatened to explode. But there was nothing. Just the distant hum of traffic on Fulham Palace Road and the chatter of city sparrows from the open sash window. That and the pounding of her head, a throb so intense it seemed audible.

Something else was wrong, she realized, still not moving. She was alone. Her memory of the night before was trickling back from behind the barrier of drugged sleep and she knew she shouldn’t have been waking alone. Sophie! Sophie was in England. She had been there with her when the hospital painkillers had finally carried her over into what felt like a coma. But where was she now?

Lindsay rolled over, making the mistake of turning on to the side where a row of stitches held her face together. “Shit,” she exploded, squirming swiftly up the bed and into a sitting position. Sophie, sitting by the window in a basket chair, looked up from the book she was reading.

“If it hadn’t been for the snoring, I’d have started to think you’d died,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

Lindsay’s face twitched as another worm of pain snaked down her jaw. “My face feels like it’s wired for electric shock treatment and my body thinks it’s been hit by a bus. My brain seems to have been connected to a bass drum machine and while I was sleeping, somebody stuffed my mouth with cotton wool, then left a dead reptile there for long enough to make my mouth taste of decaying lizard. Apart from that, I feel terrific,” she grumbled.

Sophie smiled sympathetically, closing her book and crossing to the door. “I’ll get you some coffee and a couple of painkillers.”

“Great. But just some paracetamol or aspirin, not those industrial-strength ones the hospital gave me. I’ve decided I want to put the zombie lifestyle on hold until I’m actually dead.”

“Wise move.”

“What time is it anyway?” Lindsay asked, looking around vainly for her watch.

“You broke the glass on your watch when you did your swallow dive into the asphalt. It’s ten to twelve,” Sophie said on her way out.