A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman Read Free Book Online Page B

stay and be seen or move to an adjoining carriage. He moved and watched her through a jammed window. Watched her cross her legs. Pat her hair. Pull at the hem of her perfect tweed skirt.
    It had been a dare. About a year later, Missy had called him to her room, and when he got there she was lying on her bed in a shaft of yellow lamplight. Blouse undone and breasts exposed, a single coin was balanced on the left nipple.
    Take it in your mouth, she had said. Take it in your mouth and it’s yours, Freddy.
    He was nervous. It felt wrong and a bit mucky and he was scared at first, but he knelt by her bed and lowered his head and opened his mouth and kissed the warm line of her skin. The coin came away easily but she held his head down until his tongue flickered over the coin, until flesh and metal and warmth were one. They stopped as the aunts’ footsteps neared. Breathed out as the aunts’ voices passed. And only afterwards in the dark did the dare give way to a simple need.
    This is the size of your heart, Missy had said, tracing the area of his palm with her index finger. Love just enough, Freddy.
    What’s enough?
    Enough to hold. When it hurts, you’re loving too much. Just enough to hold. Anything more than a handful and you’re in trouble. Got it? Are you listening or are you asleep?
    I’m listening.
    What did I say, then?
    You told me to never let go.
    He heard her laugh. That’ll do, she said.
    He gave her the coin. Can we do it again? he said.
    Say please, she said.
    Please, he said.
    He lingered at her breast, and when he raised his head, the sixpence gripped between his teeth, he dared as he had never done before and his mouth dropped the coin and his mouth found hers and tasted, for the first time, what he believed to be the life that existed outside of those solemn walls, outside of himself and he loved her and that was everything.
    She kissed him back – passionately, to start with – he felt her tongue exploring his mouth and the sensation felt fine, the sensation pulsed between his legs until she suddenly shuddered and pushed him to the floor. She stared at him, shocked. It wasn’t the taste of promise that coated his mouth, but that of first milk. That’s how she knew for sure and that’s why she left. That cold morning in March when life all around was beginning, his was ending. A piece of paper hurriedly slipped under his door, the drawn outline of her hand in the middle. Not too much, Freddy, she wrote. But it was already too much. Never forget me . Never. Never. Never.
    Liverpool Street. Drake stared at the station sign but nothing registered. Only when the doors were about to close did he notice that Missy had gone. He lunged with his suitcase at the narrowing doorway and forced the doors back once again. He caught sight of her not too far ahead. The platinum hair bobbing upon a lake of black and grey. He straightened his hat, took deep steadying breaths and walked a safe distance behind her.
    Missy veered right across the concourse, heading towards the Bishopsgate stairway. When she reached the top, just out of view, Drake ran up two steps at a time into the dusk and caught her as she was about to cross the road. She slowed at the police station and seemed to change her mind and she headed up Brushfield Street and the fruit market. But then she stopped. He turned away, bent down to tie his shoe. She took off again and he followed her to Commercial Street, saw her wave to a woman at the Ten Bells. She looked as if she was about to cross the road but hesitated and stopped again as if she had forgotten something. With each street the years peeled away. She turned left quickly, almost a run now. Doubled back down Folgate Street, back down . . . Jesus, thought Drake. She can’t be. But she was. When he got to the turning, the street was empty except for her.
    She was standing in the middle of the road, looking at a house. It was at a tilt, it seemed, leaning on the ruin next door, wounded but