Читать книгу Never Tell - Claire Seeber, Claire Seeber - Страница 15

James was shouting desperately in his sleep. As I came to, I could hear him moaning that he was being crushed.

‘It’s so dark,’ he kept repeating. ‘Let the light in, please.’

Befuddled with sleep, I pulled the curtains back although it was still night, and gently tried to wake him. He hadn’t had one of the really bad nightmares for a while. Now he was sweating and gurning, his face pallid in the moonlight, thrashing across the bed like a fish in a net. I tried to hold his arms still but it was impossible, his desperation making him strong as Samson. As he flailed he caught me hard across the face – but it was only the next day I realised he’d cut my cheek.

In the morning he said he didn’t remember the dream, but he looked unkempt and exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all, huge circles beneath his Labrador-brown eyes.

‘You’re up early,’ I said, plonking some toast in front of him that he pushed away. ‘Are you all right?’

He didn’t speak. He just sat at the breakfast table drinking black coffee and reading the Financial Times in sullen silence whilst the children ate cereal and bickered, and the Today programme murmured in the background. Liam and Star were still in bed; I didn’t expect to see them before noon.

I was plaiting Alicia’s hair when James ordered me to turn the radio up.

‘News just in this morning: as feared, the Nomad Banking Conglomerate has gone down with the most devastating effect,’ John Humphrys announced. ‘A huge shock to all involved. What exactly is it going to mean for the investors?’

‘Turn it off, for fuck’s sake.’ James stood up, his face horribly taut, a muscle jumping in his cheek. ‘Christ, all this fucking doom and gloom. I thought this was meant to be boom-time.’

I realised it wasn’t the time to reprimand the swearing.

‘Mummy,’ said Effie, ‘can I have a cross hot bun, please?’

‘I’m not sure how much more I can take actually.’ James rammed his chair into the table. ‘We’ll be lucky if we’re not out on the street soon.’

He was prone to exaggeration, but I wondered now if the warning signs of his former depression were rearing their head again. I thought rather nervously of the troubles he’d mentioned the other day.

‘James, please,’ I beseeched as Alicia looked at him curiously. ‘Let’s talk about it in a minute, OK?’

‘Cross hot buns, cross hot buns,’ the twins began to chant, oblivious.

James threw the paper on the table and slammed out of the room. It was obviously not the time to tell him I wanted to go back to work, although if the money worries were real, he might welcome it. I slathered my toast with marmalade and glanced at the front page.

‘Art Dealer’s socialite daughter protests for Islamic Fundamentalism,’ the headline read. There beneath the print was a photo of a girl struggling with a policeman in Parliament Square, dark hair falling across her beautiful but angrily contorted face, a black boy with short dreds behind her, partially obscured. Licking marmalade from my fingers, I pulled the paper closer and looked again. It was the girl from the petrol station.