Shadows on the Nile by Kate Furnivall Read Free Book Online Page A

That’s all right, I don’t like him. But I say ‘thank you’ when he gives me the paper I asked for, the way Jessie taught me and which for years I forgot until you reminded me.
    I sit at my desk. It’s not really a desk, it’s a wobbly bentwood chair that I like and a small mahogany table, but to me it is a desk. The paper waits in front of me. Alongside it sits theink, a squat fat bottle of Quink. Royal-washable blue, not permanent blue, I was adamant about that. Permanent blue is an ugly colour, neither blue nor black, like the colour of sin, but washable blue is the colour of your eyes. No. I won’t think it. It will make the ache in my chest grow too fierce and I need to think clearly today. It is not always easy because of the drugs they put in my food. This morning I refused to eat breakfast, so I can think with precision, and I remember everything with perfect clarity.
    I pick up my Swan fountain pen, dip its nib in the wishing-pool of blue ink and work the tiny metal lever to make the rubber tube inside fill with ink. I find it pleases me, this small simple action. I like the efficiency of it. The cleverness. I make a mental note to discover who invented the fountain pen.
    I have decided to start at the beginning. It is the only way to discover why you have not come. At first I planned to start at the end and work my way backwards but no, that would be a mistake. During the night while I sat on my chair by the window, waiting to see if you would flash a signal from your torch in the garden, I realised that I was going about it the wrong way, that I need to study everything in the correct order. In a straight line. Logically. That way, I will not miss any clues.
    Sherlock Holmes never missed any clues. If I follow his methods, I will, as Dr Watson says of his brilliant friend, ‘see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart’.
    The first time. It was as sharp and unexpected as a stamp on the foot. Two fourteen-year-old boys taking bites out of each other with their words. It was July 25th 1921. I am eating breakfast, the same one I’ve eaten for the last twenty years. Two fried eggs on toast, three fried tomatoes and three fried mushrooms. I always eat my food in an anti-clockwise spiral around the plate leaving the bright yellow heart of the eggs till last.
    There are twelveof us in the room – twelve people, I mean. I don’t count the staff as people. Their faces are false. Behind their masks they are guard-dogs and their teeth are needle-sharp, spilling poison into my blood. The twelve of us look towards the doorway where you materialise unexpectedly, all windblown blond curls and legs too long for you and a way of holding yourself that has the scent of freedom about it. It makes me want to howl with fury.
    The skin of my neck prickles, tiny spiky points of pain, which I know means the start of an episode. That’s what they call them – when I lose control.
Episodes.
Like part of a story. Episodic. The story of my life. I look away and concentrate on my egg, adding salt and cutting the toast into small triangles. I sit alone at the small square table, it’s how I like it, no one too close. When I hear you place a chair opposite me and see your blazer-clad elbows on my table, I have to fight back the words that charge onto my tongue and clamp my hands between my knees to stop them hitting you. If I have an episode in the dining room in front of everyone, it will be more than just the needles coming for me.
    ‘Good morning, Georgie. I’m Timothy.’
    Georgie. Georgie. Georgie.
Only one person ever called me
Georgie.
    ‘Go away.’ I don’t look at you.
    ‘I’d like to talk to you.’
    ‘No.’ I back away to the limits of my chair, as far from you as I can get.
    ‘Please, Georgie. I have gone to a lot of trouble to find you.’
    ‘You haven’t found me. I wasn’t lost.’
    ‘You were to me.’ You hesitate. ‘And to Jessie.’
    I take my handkerchief from my pocket, unfold it