Fall From Grace by Tim Weaver Read Free Book Online Page B

tethering you to certain people – to places as well. It’s like …’ I paused. ‘Like connective tissue. You’re bound to things, whether you like it or not, and it doesn’t matter if you fight it, you’re always drawn back to them.’
    She nodded, but then slowly seemed to drift away.
    ‘Am I getting too mystical?’
    A flat kind of half-smile. ‘No. I was just thinking about how hard it is for me to leave Olivia alone these days. The crazy thing is, the rational part of me knows she’s safe. I only texted her about five minutes ago.’
    ‘She’s fine.’
    ‘I know. But every minute of every day, it feels like I’m watching her. And I get scared …’ She stopped. ‘I get scared I can’t protect her.’
    ‘You don’t have to be scared.’
    She glanced at me, her eyes glinting in the subdued light of the room. ‘What if it happens again? What if someone comes for us? I couldn’t do anything about it last time.’
    ‘They won’t.’
    ‘Are you saying that to make me feel better – or do you genuinely believe that?’
    ‘I genuinely believe it.’
    ‘What makes you so sure?’
    ‘I promise you, whatever you do now, wherever you go, I’ll have your back. Yours and Olivia’s. She might not be mine, but that doesn’t matter. I have a responsibility to you and, in turn, to her.’ I looked at the files, then back to her. ‘But what happened to you, it was a one-off. Most people will go their whole lives without experiencing what you two did. What’s getting to you, what’s making you think like this, isn’t reason – it’s fear.’
    She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: ‘Don’t you ever get scared?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I don’t mean by an unexpectedly large gas bill.’
    I laughed. ‘Neither do I.’
    ‘So what scares you?’
    I briefly considered something soft and reassuring, something to allay her fears and send her back to Devon with the confidence to push on. But she wasn’t seeking fortitude, and I never wanted her to question anything I said.
    ‘Desperate people,’ I told her. ‘They’re what scare me.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    My eyes drifted to the files again, to the sixty-seven cases that had become the only life I knew. ‘I mean, sometimes it’s hard to believe what they’re capable of.’

8
    Before dinner, I’d laid some of my work out on the living-room table, so we ate at the kitchen counter instead. Eventually the subject got back to Olivia.
    ‘How are you finding it?’ I asked.
    ‘Looking after Liv?’ She rocked her head from side to side. ‘It’s tiring.’
    ‘Why don’t you ask Emily for help?’
    She didn’t look up, turning her beer bottle gently on the counter in front of her. Emily had been one of the keepers of Annabel’s secret – the same secret that had been kept from me – and in the months since the truth had come out, it was clear Annabel was having a hard time looking at her in the same way. Eventually, she just shrugged.
    ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘We don’t have to talk about it.’
    ‘It’s not that. It’s just …’ She paused, then took a mouthful of beer. ‘I don’t know, I just … I can’t even look at her. All those years she knew the truth about me, and about you – and she never said anything.’
    A second later, I clocked movement out of the corner of my eye. Through the kitchen window, I watched my next-door neighbour, Liz, moving through her living room. I couldn’t see much, but I could see enough: she had boxes stacked up against one of the walls, already taped shut; and then there were more beyond that, in a line, these ones all open. As she toured the living room, she was picking things off shelves and placing them into the boxes. She’d been doing it every night for a week.
    I looked from her house to her front garden. It was dark outside now, but all the homes in the street were illuminated by Christmas decorations, Santa smiling at me from the other side of the road, a reindeer two