Читать книгу Her Perfect Life: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist - Sam Hepburn, Sam Hepburn - Страница 6

Hard heels clack across the floor above Juliet’s head. One way across the sitting room to the window. Then back the other – clackety bloody clack – to the door. Juliet slides her legs off the sofa, blinking groggily into the gloom as she gazes from the pale flicker of the television to the timer on the cooker – 02.13.

She stretches to ease the crick in her neck and feels the first throb of a hangover behind her eyes. She checks the bottle on the floor beside her. It’s empty. She searches the fridge and the cupboards, wincing at every stab of sound from upstairs – the judder of water into a kettle, the yank of a drawer and the endless clack of those bloody heels. She grabs hold of the broom, about to thump the handle on the ceiling. Then she laughs – not much of a laugh – and lets the broom drop. It’s been a bad day but not bad enough to turn her into the mad old woman in the downstairs flat. At the back of the cupboard under the sink she finds a half-bottle of whisky. She doesn’t usually drink spirits, just on nights like tonight, when it all gets too much. She pours half a glassful, fills it up with orange squash and takes it back to the sofa, lighting a cigarette as she goes. She reaches for the remote and flicks through the channels. An impossibly shaped blonde in silver lamé spins a roulette wheel – ‘be lucky, lucky, luckeee …’ – a cheese-ball preacher begs her to find a place in her heart for Jesus, a lizard darts its tongue to catch a fly and – fuck – there she is. Our perfect pocket-sized Gracie Dwyer. Clean, clean, clean in her perfect kitchen. She’s leaning ever so slightly towards the camera, a come-on-we-can-do-this together smile on her lips while her nimble little fingers beat flour into a pan of yellow gloop on a spotless stone worktop. ‘The trick to perfect choux pastry,’ she is saying, ‘is to keep beating until every fleck of white has gone from the mixture.’

Juliet tries for the off button but her clumsy fingers hit the pause. Gracie freezes on screen. She stares at the face. Always if you look long enough at a frozen frame you can find something – some imperfection: a spot, a patch of caked makeup at the hairline, a drag in the skin at the throat. If not that, then something gormless and off-guard in the eyes or in the halted movement of the mouth. Something.

But there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Gracie Dwyer is perpetually perfect. Even frozen.

This time Juliet finds the off button. She stubs out her cigarette, lurching a little as she totters to her bedroom.