Читать книгу Ride or Die - Khurrum Rahman - Страница 14

I pulled into our driveway. The front bumper of my Prius gently kissed the back bumper of Stephanie’s Golf. The red and white Christmas lights draped across the houses either side of our bare home reflected and blinked lazily on the windscreen.

I didn’t move for a moment, or a while. The soft, synthetic leather of my seat cradled me gently as the wind whipped and whistled around me and the rain beat down on my windscreen, making shapes in the darkness that resembled the holes in my heart. I could see her. In the driver’s seat of her car, her blonde hair falling across her face, as she leaned across to pick up her work files before emerging out of the car, clumsily balancing the files and kicking the car door shut with the heel of her sneaker. She turned to me and smiled, transforming the storm into sunshine.

The wiper swooped over the windscreen and she disappeared.

I stepped out into the rain and rounded the car. I opened the passenger side door and picked up the Glock. I slipped it into the back of my trousers, letting the tail of my suit jacket conceal it. I slipped the plastic food bags and elastic bands into my inside pocket, along with the suppressor. As I walked past Stephanie’s Golf I allowed my fingers to slide gently across the slick windows, leaving my mark.

I unlocked the front door and pushed it open with the palm of my hand. A dark empty hallway greeted me. Behind the darkness I knew the coat stand was filled with jackets and hats and scarves and them. I knew Jack’s handiwork was sprawled across the wall in red crayon as high as he could reach. I knew Stephanie’s hairbrush sat on the shelf underneath a single Post-it note stuck to the hallway mirror serving as a school run reminder.

Book bag. Bottle of water. Lunch box.

It gripped me instantly. Paralysed me. My legs felt like the heaviest of weights and I was unable to cross the threshold. The wind howled in my ears, the voices and the laughter and the fucking hope that we once shared rushed at me like a physical force and dropped me where I stood onto my haunches. I reached out for support and my hand found the doorframe, my nails clawed into wood. I could feel a breath caught somewhere inside me, desperately trying to escape. I wrenched my tie away from my neck and ripped away the collar, the cold rain snaking its way down my back. I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed my teeth together. My jaw pulsed and my head pounded as their faces filled it. I screamed through gritted teeth, a guttural sound from deep within, willing me not to fall now, not to fail now.

In one quick motion I forced myself up to my feet and stepped inside the hallway and punched the lights on, slamming the door behind me into silence. Their faces disappeared and finally I released a breath.

I stood perfectly still in the hallway, the house now as still as me.

I had too much to do. Afterwards, the ghosts can take me.

For now, I had to focus. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and positioned it on the shelf. It would remain there and place me at home. I picked up my baseball cap and scarf from the coat stand, adjusting the cap low, finishing just below my eyebrows, and the scarf high, covering my mouth. With the cover of the darkness and storm, I didn’t think that I could conclusively be picked up on CCTV.

I stared in the hallway mirror at what I had become, what I always was, and what I had tried so desperately to get away from. The black suit that I wore to bury Stephanie and Jack and Khala was drenched and clung to me. I wouldn’t change. It felt fitting, somehow, for what lay ahead.