Читать книгу The Girl with the Fragile Mind - Claire Seeber, Claire Seeber - Страница 12

I came to in the early hours caught in the desperate state between sleep and consciousness; hearing frantic voices whispering in the dark, a woman’s voice too now, and I thought perhaps it was Tessa, and then I realised I was dreaming.

When I woke properly about six, Rafe had already gone. He was a gym addict, and there was a note, telling me to help myself to anything I wanted, and that he’d see me later, and he hoped I was feeling better.

The headache had gone, but I didn’t feel better. I just felt frightened. I’d lost a few hours from last night; I remembered leaving work, being on the bus and then – what? Waking in Rafe’s porch; being carried into the flat. An overwhelming sense of anxiety pulsed through me. Images from yesterday flickered through my mind, like a camera shutter opening and closing too fast. I sat on the sofa, my head in my hands, and tried to breathe.

Was it happening again?

I washed my face and hands beneath the expensive lighting in Rafe’s stark bathroom and, trying to calm my tousled hair, I opened the medicine cabinet above the basin, looking for what Rafe called ‘product’. A packet of Well Woman tablets fell out. I picked them up, frowning. Next to them, a pink electric toothbrush, and a jar of Clinique night cream.

I shut the cabinet door, and walked into his bedroom. It all looked the same as ever, until I opened the drawers by the side of the bed. There was a pale blue hairband and some expensive hand cream.

It underlined something I had been avoiding … that Rafe and I were really only a stopgap. Meeting by chance at the Sadler’s Wells charity do in January, it had always felt a little like I was one of his pet projects; that we were keeping each other warm on cold winter nights.

But now it was summer.

Grabbing my stuff, I ran down the stairs and buzzed myself out, the fortress door slamming behind me. I stood at the top of the shiny steps to the street. A milk float trundled slowly down the deserted road, and a ginger cat cleaned its ears discreetly as it sat beneath the frothy mimosa tree; it looked at me with disdain and then carried on licking. And I remembered Tessa’s soaked and illegible note in my hand yesterday afternoon and I had this sudden overriding feeling that I should be somewhere, and I felt a rising panic, because I just didn’t know where.