Читать книгу Guilt: The Sunday Times best selling psychological thriller that you need to read in 2018 - Amanda Robson, Amanda Robson - Страница 16

I watch delicate fingers making the spliff, sprinkling the tobacco, spreading the shaken bud on top of it. Rolling tightly. Licking the edge of the Rizla paper, pressing the paper together with casual but practised insistence. You always roll the perfect spliff, don’t you, Zara? I have never been an expert. I don’t even know where to buy the stuff. But neither of us smoke much. An evening of you to myself. An evening of best Colombian Gold.

We lie on the rug in front of the TV – on our stomachs, facing each other. Your golden eyes sharpen beneath the electric light of the wintry evening as you light the spliff and take the first drag. You inhale deeply, as if you are sucking the elixir of life into your very being. A passing frown as you concentrate. Holding in. Holding in. Holding in. Release. The musky aroma of cannabis spreads thickly around us. Clinging. Sickly. Sweet. You pass the spliff to me. The same routine: holding, holding, release. The cannabis is making me feel floaty.

‘You and Sebastian. Don’t you think it’s too quick?’ I pause. ‘Is it lust, or love at first sight? Don’t you think it might just be lust?’ I ask.

‘I thought you’d ask that,’ you sigh, looking into the distance beyond me. ‘But it isn’t lust, it’s definitely love,’ you continue. ‘And when you really love someone you want them to love you back. You want to possess them.’ There is a pause. ‘I do worry that I love Sebastian too much.’

‘What’s different about Sebastian?’ I ask, handing the spliff back.

‘You sound disapproving.’

‘No. I’m curious. Just interested. I want to know.’

The spliff is burning down in your hand. Slowly, slowly, you take a drag. Then you say, ‘He’s volatile. Dark. There’s nothing bland about him.’

‘Don’t you think a bit of bland might be more relaxing?’

‘No. Bland is boring.’

‘So for you dark and volatile means love?’

‘You’re twisting my words. I didn’t say that.’

‘Come on, tell me, really tell me about love.’

‘Should I quote the Bible or Shakespeare?’

‘No. Tell it for yourself.’

‘When I touch him, something jumps inside me.’

‘That’s sexual.’

‘When I’m in a crowded room with him I don’t see anyone else.’

‘That’s antisocial.’

‘I think about him all the time when I’m not with him.’

‘Try being an accountant, not a photography student.’

‘That’s condescending.’

You laugh your heady laugh. You raise the spliff in the air, in sudden proclamation.

‘Listen Miranda, when you love someone you just know. It’s a physical actuality, a certainty that settles in your mind. And from that moment on, the rest of your life swings around it. The love, the certainty, is the pivot from which everything else flows.’