Live to Tell by G. L. Watt Read Free Book Online

of cocoa?”
    “No, I’ll be alright. I’ve got some orange juice in the fridge. I’ll have some of that. But I think I will go to bed and try to sleep it off. Will you be alright on your own?”
    “Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’m going to pop out to the “offy” for ten minutes. Just you feel brighter in the morning, okay? Sleep well.” He kissed my cheek.
    Aidan had a friend who sometimes worked in the liquor store and I guessed he was going to meet him. I put the lights out and crawled into bed. Snuggled under my duvet I seemed to fall asleep straight away. Hours later I awoke with a dry throat and a thick head. Must get some more juice, I thought. I wonder what the time is? I switched on the light. Ugh, it’s five thirty. Bet it’s cold in the rest of the apartment. Still, I won’t be long. Then I can go back to sleep and be warm again.
    As I crept down the hall, trying not to wake the others, I could hear a strange scratching noise. Then I heard a thump. I stopped and looked about me not sure where the sound came from and realised it was from the direction of the front door. With two men in the house, even if one of them was Aidan, and another girl there as well, I felt confident I could deal with whatever lay beyond.
    I opened the door and peered out. In the dim light I saw what seemed to be a large bundle of rags. Then it moved, and Aidan lifted his blood soaked arm to me.
     

CHAPTER THREE  

    I fell on the floor beside him and started to scream. Aidan raised his head; his hair caked in black dried blood, and tried to drag himself across the threshold. From somewhere behind, Jurgen ran out from his room and caught hold of me. He dragged me, still screaming, away from the door and shouted, “Emma, Emma, Em. Emma please come. Help me. Look after her, please!”
    The sweet looking girl tip toed from his bedroom, wrapping a sheet around her body and carefully took hold of me. The hem of the Victorian nightdress that I had painstakingly made by hand a few weeks earlier was now soaked in Aidan’s blood and there were red smears across its front. As I stood up, I tried to hold it away from my body, but I couldn’t somehow manage to, and started screaming again.
    “Come away, please,” she said and led me into Jurgen’s room. “Now, where’s your phone? Is it in the main room? I didn’t see one in your hall. Someone must call for an ambulance.” She stared earnestly into my face.
    “We haven’t got one,” I shrieked. There’s one in the hall of the building, by the front door.” I broke free and flung the bedroom door open wide. It hit the wall and bounced back at me. “You know, a pay phone. I must go back to Aidan.”
    A still naked Jurgen was sitting on the floor, cradling Aidan in his arms, as Emma, barefoot and wrapped in her sheet, glided past him to the phone. I knelt on the floor beside the two men in my life and sobbing against Jurgen’s shoulder, tried to hold them both in my arms.
    “Emma,” he shouted, ignoring me, when she came back seconds later, “Please get my jeans and a shirt. I must not leave him.”
    I couldn’t look at Aidan’s blood-encrusted face but tried to hold his hand. It was swollen and didn’t feel right so I gently placed it across his chest.
    The ambulance arrived silently a few minutes later.
    “Don’t worry,” the attendant said when he came in. “We never put the sirens on in the early morning unless the traffic’s heavy. Oh, and I’ve called the police. It’s routine, in these cases.”
    I wasn’t so sure.
    “Now, let’s have a look. What’s your name son? Can you tell me?”
    “Look,” Jurgen said to me, when Aidan’s prone body was loaded onto a stretcher and placed in the ambulance “I don’t want to leave you on your own, but I must take Emma home.” He buttoned up his shirt and addressed the paramedic. “Which hospital are you going to?”
    “St. Mary’s Paddington,” said the man. “You don’t need to come right now. I’ve