Читать книгу Perfect - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 16

I expect her to tell Crevan that she’s found me, hang up, call to the others, blow the large red whistle that hangs on a gold chain round her neck, but she stays calm, her voice not changing. She is looking right through me as though she can’t see me at all. Has it come to this? Have I been hiding so long that I’m no longer visible? I actually look down at my hands to make sure I can see myself.

“You’d like us to take the grandfather to Highland Castle,” Kate says, looking me up and down, continuing the conversation as if I’m not there.

Why isn’t she telling him I’m here?

The news that they’re going to take Granddad to Highland Castle, to Judge Crevan, the man who personally branded me and destroyed my life, causes the panic to well in my chest. It’s quickly followed by a large wave of anger. They can’t take my granddad.

“We’ll bring him in now,” she says, eyes still on me, and I’m waiting for the bombshell, for the moment she tells Mary May and Judge Crevan that I’m right here, beside her. “We’ll be with you in two hours.”

I’m about to scream at her, punch her, kick her, yell that she cannot take me and my granddad, but I stop myself. There is something peculiar about the way she is looking at me.

She puts the phone in her pocket, fixes me with a long stare as if she’s trying to think of something to say, then decides against it, and turns and leaves.

“Right, old man,” she calls to Granddad. “We’re taking you in. Judge Crevan needs words with you.”

Even after I hear the vehicles drive away, I stay where I am. I sit in the cramped and damp conditions of a hollowed-out tree, trying to understand what exactly has happened.

Why didn’t she take me?