Chapters (73)
- Rabbit Hole
- Also by Mark Billingham
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- PART ONE
- 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
- PART TWO
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- PART THREE
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Back Cover
He pushes trifle around his dish. ‘When I was eleven or twelve. First I thought it was, you know . . . like an imaginary friend? He turned up in my bedroom one night after my dad left, so we’d sit up there and talk about when Dad was coming back and things would be OK again and that was nice.’ He smiles, just for a second or two. ‘Then, after Mum passed, he came with me to the care home, and once the bad stuff started happening in there he wasn’t quite so friendly, you know? One day he just wasn’t around, but I always knew he was coming back and that when he did, I wouldn’t recognise him. That now it was an it and not a he any more, yeah? I knew that eventually it was going to hurt me, but the worst thing is, I never understood why.’ He lifts up a spoonful of trifle but just stares past me and lets it run off the spoon. ‘To this day, I don’t know what I did to make the Thing so angry with me.’
We sit there for a while saying nothing.
Over Tony’s shoulder I can see people starting to leave. I watch Lauren get up and notice Clare follow her out half a minute later. I glance over at Colin, but any UC worth his salt is way too smart to make surveillance of me obvious.
‘Do you know, Al?’ Tony asks. ‘Why your Thing wants to hurt you?’
I nod, because I know that telling him will make me feel better. ‘Because it thinks I killed someone.’
‘OK.’
‘And it wants to punish me for it.’
Tony grunts, like that’s all perfectly reasonable. He points the V of two fingers towards his eyes. ‘Want me to keep an eye out for you?’
I’m not going to walk round the table and hug him, but it’s the most I’ve wanted to hug anyone for quite a while. I thank him, though. ‘I’ll be fine, Tone,’ I say, and I reckon I almost sound convincing. ‘You watch out for yourself . . .’
For the third night in a row, once I’ve taken my meds, I decide to duck out of a night in the TV room and head to bed early. Well, to my bedroom at least. I’m not sure I’ll be getting a lot of sleep.
As soon as I’m there, though, I wonder if I’ve made the right decision. I can’t settle and it’s a constant struggle to hold the scary ideas at bay. With the others around to annoy me or make me laugh or just be their ordinary bizarre selves, at least I’d be distracted and there’d be less time for me to upset myself and dwell on things.
On what people are thinking about me, saying about me.