Читать книгу Her Sister’s Secret - E. V. Seymour - Страница 6

I did the wrong thing. Just once. And there is a weary inevitability about what happens next; me in a stranger’s car, sunshine tricking, morning heat ticking, with a throwaway look before I leave. Truth is, I slipped off the picture months ago, way before the terror set in.

Maybe it’s connected to the heat, the dog days of summer inducing a kind of craziness but, no matter how hard I try, I can’t catch a break. Can’t. And four fingers of vodka don’t change a thing.

I stare at the lonely road ahead. There’s the odd worker bee but mostly traffic is quiet. Nobody to see or stop me. Checking the rear-view mirror, I take another sneaky swallow, not enough to dent my reactions, but enough to make me bold. Unaccustomed to the rip and burn of booze on an empty stomach, I love it –feels perfect in the circumstances.

Perfect.

And will Nate care? I don’t know. Do I blame him for the sick chain reaction of events? Maybe. Will he feel guilty? Probably.

I’ll be honest, half of me is terrified to tear a hole in an unimaginably beautiful day, the other sad, but it’s the best I can do to keep those dirty little secrets shovelled back into the earth and buried deep. It’s why something so wrong will be so right. You’ll see.

A glance at my watch confirms it’s time. Primed for speed, the four-by-four starts, its throaty engine snarling. Power thrills through my fingers, up my arms, and takes a spin around my brain. In that petrol-charged moment, I picture how it will play out after I’m gone. They will say I was drunk. They will say I was overworked and suffering from depression. Some will scream that I was mad and bad. Out of her mind, my mother will cry. Intoxicated maybe, but the rest is false. I could never feel more sorted. If someone threatens to topple the walls and bring them crashing down, you make damn sure they lie buried deep in the rubble beside you.

Sunshine smashes through the windscreen and briefly blinds me. I take one final slug of booze. For courage. For luck. For endings. Then, stamping on the gas, I drive.