Memory Scents by Gayle Eileen Curtis Read Free Book Online Page B

bullshit with it.”
                  “I can’t understand why you would think that anything could be more frightening than the truth of all that happened to those poor little souls. And what makes you an expert on delivering the facts?”
                  Grace leant on the kitchen worktop and folded her arms. She scrutinized his face while he busied himself with some bread and cheese, but to no avail. Not a flicker; he was as cool and calm as normal. This only made her more agitated and she needed to watch her step. The last thing Grace wanted to do was to let him know that she knew what he’d done all those years ago. She wasn’t frightened of him killing her, just the fact that he might do it before she got the pleasure of doing it to him first.
                  Grace felt she had already experienced the worst kind of fear and pain that any human being could go through. She wasn’t worried about dying; that would be a time to go to sleep and be put out of the misery that she’d endured through her lifetime. No, dying was a luxury. There had been a time when she’d wanted that experience to happen sooner rather than later. That had been the day her daughter had died in a terrible accident. She’d felt that she’d died right there and then with her on the day the police knocked at her door. Dying, for Grace felt like it would have been a light relief from the horrendous nightmare that she was about to go through.
                  She remembered an unconscious thought fleeting through her mind when she saw the two officers walking up the path; that they’d come to tell her that Tim was dead. Not her precious daughter.
                  Nadine had been playing in the garden of an old derelict house and hadn’t seen the open cess pit. The police said they thought that Nadine had been playing whilst waiting for her friend who lived next door. A dog walker had seen her there and had told her to move on saying it was dangerous but she’d ignored him. It was when he heard her screams after he’d got some way past her that he knew something bad had happened and alerted the police from a phone box. He searched for Nadine with the help of her friend Pauline and Pauline’s Father, who had heard the commotion because he was working nearby. They almost fell down the cess pit themselves, it was so well camouflaged.
                  That day had happened almost ten years ago but it was as clear as the minutes passing now. She could even remember the warm sunshine peeking through the rain clouds making them look like they were lined with silver. But there was no silver lining that day or any of the days that had followed for Grace. Tim had dealt with his grief in his own selfish way. Leaving her for days on end to lose himself in his sailing and then coming back for such a brief time she hardly noticed he was there. Even though she yearned for some support, she realised looking back she hadn’t wanted it from him. All the times she’d screamed at him that he wasn’t there for her, she actually realised in her quieter, less hysterical moments that he had done exactly what she wanted, which was to leave her alone. How could she gain any sort of comfort from someone she thought was emotionless and weak?
                  So Grace was looking forward to the luxury of dying but not until she’d had the pleasure of killing Tim first and making it look like a tragically sad accident.
              This comforting thought passed through her mind as she watched him sink his teeth into the bread and cheese he’d prepared for his supper.
     
    *
     
                  Tim found himself wandering past his shed and down the garden path and through the gate. He didn’t quite know what he was doing but he knew where he was going.
                  He was becoming increasingly bored with his boxes of memory scents; the smells were fading