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Back Too Close Save as PDF
Chapters (28)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. Chapter 1
  6. Chapter 2
  7. Chapter 3
  8. Chapter 4
  9. Chapter 5
  10. Chapter 6
  11. Chapter 7
  12. Chapter 8
  13. Chapter 9
  14. Chapter 10
  15. Chapter 11
  16. Chapter 12
  17. Chapter 13
  18. Chapter 14
  19. Chapter 15
  20. Chapter 16
  21. Chapter 17
  22. Chapter 18
  23. Chapter 19
  24. Chapter 20
  25. Epilogue
  26. Acknowledgements
  27. About the Author
  28. About the Publisher

I’m not sure policemen are meant to say things like this.

He turns around and walks out of the room, letting the door slam behind him. Dr. Robinson lets out a kind of gasp, like a sob.

‘Hey!’ I cry. ‘It’s the death game. They play it all the time . . . they do it at the swimming pool, in the street . . .’

She bends down hurriedly to pick up her bag; she won’t look at me. She is putting her jacket back on. The Rhino has come in and is uncuffing me from the chair.

‘There were three of you in the car, Connie,’ Dr. Robinson says, her voice harsh and cracking. She’s lying. Anyone can see that there was no one in the car apart from me. I haven’t seen Dr. Robinson like this before. She’s really angry; she keeps dropping things on the floor in her rush. She is desperately trying to get away from me, to get out of the room as fast as she can. How dare she be like this? How dare they lie? I get up and rush after her, making the most of being uncuffed, but the Rhino grabs me by the wrist, spinning me round, making me cry out in pain. I lash out, I hit her. I scream after Dr. Robinson.

‘No, you wait!’ I shout at her. ‘What are you doing? Trying to make me think my daughter is dying? Fuck him and fuck you! You don’t play with people like that. You don’t tell a mother that her daughter is dying! You’ve got no fucking idea what that’s like!’

Dr. Robinson is in the corridor just outside the door but she stops quite suddenly and turns around to look at me, her face flushed and blotchy, her perfect shiny hair partly hanging over her face.

‘You’re wrong there, Constance,’ she says. ‘I know exactly what that’s like.’

For a moment I don’t understand what she means. Then I see it, her gaping sadness, the black grief that fills her up. And all my anger leaves my body; the Rhino seems to feel it too as she lets me go.

And slowly I move towards Dr. Robinson. No one stops me. And she doesn’t try and get away; she is staring at me, her blue eyes boring through me. I stop right in front of her. I reach out my right hand, the cuffs hanging off my wrist. I touch her cheek and still she doesn’t move. She is trembling. Then she nods briskly, turns and heads off.

Chapter 7