Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- 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
- THE BEGINNING
She dreamt a voice calling to her, ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy!’ She jerked awake, and gazed around her room, which was the room she had slept in for so many years, night after night, and yet which looked so different now, ghostly and bare; stared down at the bottom of her bed half-expecting to see a child there, stretching out its arms, wanting her.
She dreamt a baby’s cry that went on and on and in her dream she couldn’t find where it was coming from, under the bed, in the cupboard, between the twisted sheets, but she knew she had to get to it before the crying stopped. But then the crying did stop, suddenly, just when she was close to it, and she woke to find tears rolling down her cheek.
She dreamt of bodies winding together on a bed. Whose bodies? She didn’t know if she was dreaming her past or Frankie’s present.
She didn’t want to dream because she had no control over her dreams, anything could happen in them; she might see things she had hidden from herself; she might discover things she didn’t want to know. But she didn’t want to be awake either.
She lay on her bed, in the drying blood, and pictured them getting off the plane into a new and wonderful landscape. She remembered travelling with Adrian, shortly after they’d met. They’d backpacked through Europe together, sitting in coaches for days, hitching lifts, spending nights in their sleeping bags in fields off the roadside or in cheap, dark hotels in Paris, Naples, Athens, eking out their money as long as possible. She could still recall as if it were yesterday a day when they’d walked for miles along a dusty road with no cars passing and hills in a jagged rim around the horizon. They’d come to a small town where they’d bought a loaf of bread still damp and warm from the oven. They’d sat by the fountain in the main square and torn hunks off it. Moist, chewy bread and cold water in cupped hands; grimy golden skin.
‘Come on, honey,’ Adrian said in her dreams, holding out a hand to pull her up, smiling down at her. ‘Come with me now. Come along with me.’
She held her arms towards him. Oh so happy to be here again. So very happy she could fly. Her heart was leaping in her throat; her heart was booming with joy and desire. No more dread. Everything beginning and everything possible.
