Chapters (49)
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Also by Graham Hurley
- LIMELIGHT
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- AFTERWARDS
For what feels like hours, I try and kid myself to sleep, but it doesn’t work. Time and again, my dizzy brain returns to the memory of those brief moments I shared with Christianne on the clifftop. Maybe, that Saturday afternoon, I should have anticipated everything that was going to follow, but how could I? Where, in Pavel’s phrase, were the narrative clues? No question, I should have thought harder about Christianne’s clumsiness, about the way she’d fight to keep her balance, and about the little vignettes I witnessed between her and Andy in the privacy of their back garden. The way he was trying to school her putting on his immaculate lawn. The way he protected her around the kitchen. The care he took of her. But the harder I try and get all this into focus, the more I realize that it’s all way too late.
Someone else is in charge of this story now. Someone else is wielding the editor’s pencil, and I have the darkest misgivings about what tomorrow might bring. How much evidence do they need before they formally charge me? And if that happens, do I swap this perch in Heavitree police station for a prison cell while the lawyers attend to their business and the wheels of justice grind little me to dust?
The key word here, oddly enough, is prison. My lovely mum, who now dominates my thoughts, never spoiled me for a moment. On the contrary, she had a very Catholic view of the wages of sin and always warned me that Hell awaits both the guilty and the weak. The latter, I always suspected, fully deserved damnation in her eyes when it came to the judgement call, and as soon as I was big enough to listen properly, she preached the virtues of strength, and something she called fortitude. The latter concept I never fully understood until I met Pavel, but after I witnessed what he could make of his life, regardless of the odds stacked against him, the more I realized that my mum was right. In the tightest corners, like now, you never bow your head, never succumb, never admit defeat. Au contraire, you fight your basest instincts and turn them on their head.
Supper arrives at what I assume to be mid-evening. A key turns in the lock and I’m looking at a microwaved Ginsters pasty with a small sachet of brown sauce.
‘Lovely.’ I sit up on the mattress. ‘You must have read my mind.’