Now You See Me by Lesley Glaister Read Free Book Online

UNEVEN GROUND! and pick our way across the dangerous ground, holes and oil shimmering rainbows even in the dark.
    Inside the warehouse was a great space, like a cavern you couldn’t see the edges of, and in the middle a blazing fire. It was so thick with smoke I didn’t see how many people there were straightaway. More and more gathered as it grew late. People smoked, shot up, drank cider, dogs scratched and yawned. Someone played a guitar and two girls started dancing, twining a scarf about each other’s necks. I lost the girl I came with, she was with some man.
    In the morning cold light leaked from the roof on to the sleeping heads. I got up and went out for a pee, picking over the litter of bottles, needles, rags of cloth. I went back to get my stuff and a guy called me over. He was shooting up. ‘Give us a hand,’ he said. He’d tied a sock round his arm. The needle probed the grey flesh but he couldn’t find a vein. I tightened the sock for him and watched the needle pierce a slow green worm of vein. I saw the light come into his eyes. He offered me some crack. I balanced for a moment on the point of saying yes. Trying it. Why not? Wanting what? Maybe to belong.
    I looked around. No one would care. But others were waking by then, two smoke-faced girls kissing with wet tongues, an old man pissing against the inside wall. It was not me, not for me. I could not get dragged in. I got up and left there fast.
    See, it is best to be alone.

Six
    I got my balance back by concentrating and by luck. You can’t control the outside things but sometimes they go right. For a week the sun shone every day. Mrs Banks didn’t notice the scorch-marks on the table, or if she did, didn’t connect them to me. Mrs Harcourt had a Jacuzzi thing installed in the en-suite bath. Mrs Brown-Withers bought a much better hoover and even Mr Dickens stayed off dodgy subjects and was quite cheery. I hadn’t turned up at the Duke’s Head to see Doggo – and nothing bad had happened. He hadn’t stalked me or turned up outside Mrs Banks’ house again. He’d melted off into whatever world it was he belonged to. I was off the hook.
    Helped by all these things, I got myself back on the high wire, arms out, poised, eyes straight ahead, because whatever you do you must not look down. Everything was fine. Fine and balanced. OK, so I sometimes felt lonely. I took the whole Doggo episode as a warning. He had nearly messed things up for me. Or I had nearly let him.
    Sometimes I did lie in bed and wonder what would have happened if I had gone to meet him. What would have followed from that? Not that I regretted it. Not that I even liked him. It was surprising how often I wondered. But then so little happens in my life I do wonder each thing to death.
    I’m not really lonely. It’s just that sometimes when I’m free the cellar isn’t big enough, the city isn’t big enough. I get restless in my bones. One low bright restless afternoon I scuffed my boots on the path all the way into town which is miles. I went to the reference library. I love the serious/sleazy atmosphere in there. Two main types of people – students studying and dodgy old men looking at the racing pages and clearing great chunters of phlegm out of their throats into their hankies.
    The old men had all the papers out. I never read the papers anyway. Who wants to know the news? I like to read the books. Not the fiction, the lies – but about things, real things in the world. But this time I got a book down without even looking what it was and sat with my chin resting on my hands as if I was reading, but really I was miles away. Couldn’t tell you where but it was peaceful.
    In the library it’s like the world has gone into slow motion, drowsy and warm with people rustling papers and murmuring to each other. It reminds me of school, how some summer afternoons you could practically drop off to sleep