Dying for Christmas by Tammy Cohen Read Free Book Online

and now you’ve lost all your privileges. If you want the toilet badly enough, you’ll go. Fully known, remember? That means no secrets, no hiding, no private places.’
    Just then my stomach made a noise like it was tearing itself loose from the rest of me and I lunged for the toilet, yanking my jeans down just in time.
    ‘God, that’s disgusting ,’ said my own voice in my head. I kept my eyes fixed on the grey floor tiles at my feet, but even without looking I could tell he was staring at me.
    And smiling.

Chapter Nine
    In the dog kennel was a tartan wool blanket. At least there was when I first looked in there. By the time I actually crawled inside, feeling hollowed out like a butternut squash, the blanket had vanished, leaving only the bowl on the wooden floor. There was just about enough room for me to sit upright in the centre of the space where the gable cut across, but even there the top of my head was grazing the roof.
    ‘Give me your leg,’ Dominic commanded from outside the arch.
    I was silent.
    ‘Your leg. Stick it out through the opening.’
    So weakened was I that I’d forgotten about the chain and the metal cuff. I began to beg.
    ‘Don’t plead, Jessica. It isn’t attractive. I’ve told you, privileges must be earned. Now, your leg.’
    I stuck my right ankle out of the archway and heard the sound of a key turning in a lock. I felt Dominic’s fingers on the bare skin under my jeans.
    ‘You might want to take these off,’ he suggested.
    ‘No!’ The word shot out of me like a bullet.
    I heard him chuckling. ‘OK. I just thought you might be more comfortable. These jeans seem a little restrictive. Don’t you understand about blood circulation? We can’t have you clotting up. Not on my watch.’
    That seemed to tickle him for some reason. I told him I was fine.
    ‘OK, sweetie. Just for tonight, though, while you’re getting used to things.’
    Sitting just inside the kennel I couldn’t see his face, only my leg attached by a thick chain to the metal cuff which was itself attached to the heavy frame of the bed.
    Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. When I’d got up that morning and put those clothes on – the jumper, the jeans, the thick stripy socks – I’d thought the most interesting thing that could possibly happen that day would be if I bought myself some knickers from the lingerie section. Yet here I was, still wearing those same clothes, sitting in a dog kennel and chained to a stranger’s bed.
    ‘That’s enough, Jessica,’ he said after a while in a flat voice I hadn’t heard before.
    Laughter is a nervous thing with me. I used to do it whenever I was called in to see the head teacher at school, which was quite often. Every time she kicked off with a ‘it saddens me to see you here again, Jessica’ or a ‘how disappointing when I thought we’d turned over a new leaf’ or even just a wordless sigh, I’d start to giggle, and wouldn’t be able to stop.
    I even did it once when Travis and I were held up at gunpoint. We were in a bank in Madrid, standing facing the wall at the end furthest from the door, leaning against a counter and arguing about whether it was better to transfer money from the UK or withdraw it straight from a cashpoint, when all of a sudden I became aware that the rest of the room had fallen silent. I turned slowly round and found that all the other customers were kneeling with their hands on their heads and expressions of terror on their faces, and that there was a man a few feet away with a gun pointing at my head. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, and the hand holding the gun was shaking. Slowly I turned back to Travis. And then I started laughing. ‘Shut up!’ Travis urged. But I couldn’t work out how. Luckily for me, the bank teller nearest to us thrust a black bin bag with notes in it at the gunman and he legged it out of the door. Afterwards Travis had looked at me like I’d done it on