Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 by Sonia Paige Read Free Book Online

saw Anthea’s pale feet sticking out of the bottom of the duvet. He pulled it down to cover them and gave them a pat. Then he got back into bed and picked up his pen:
    â€˜And in the Homeric poems the professional minstrels are not the only oral storytellers. Odysseus himself tells King Alcinous’ court the saga of his journey home from Troy: about the Cyclops, the Sirens, Circe and his other fantastic adventures. At another dinner table King Menelaos tells the assembled gathering about his brush with the shapechanging sea-god Proteus on the shores of Egypt, in the course of which Proteus also launches into a story of his own. Everyone can tell a tale. Stories nested within stories, all oral.’
    Anthea twitched in her sleep, then her body shuddered. ‘No!’ she said loudly. Then, almost a shriek, ‘No!!’ She yanked the duvet round her as if she was hiding from something and rolled away from him. Morton’s sheet of paper and the book underneath it fell into a valley. He tried to extricate them but Anthea rolled back with some unintelligible words, sealing the entrance. Morton gave up. The clock said 6.37 am. He put the top back onto his pen, laid it on the bedside table and switched the lamp off. Then he pulled on the edge of the duvet and slid underneath it towards Anthea. He folded his arm around her warm shoulders and shut his eyes.
    The room was left to its quiet early morning noises. The window rattled. From the kitchen below came a dull thudding as the dog scratched herself, banging against the cupboard door. The central heating boiler switched off and made a sucking sound. Morton stirred in his sleep. For a few moments the bed was still. Then Anthea spoke again, ‘Help me!’ Her eyes opened and she stared at Morton’s sleeping face as if she did not recognise it. She slid out from under his arm. He twitched without opening his eyes and rolled back the other way.
    She reached for the torch on her bedside table, climbed out of bed and found her furry slippers. She crept to a chest of drawers on the other side of the room. From the bottom drawer she took a small wicker box; inside it were some pieces of bone. She took out a small fragment about three inches long. It had an irregular diagonal break across the top, and at the other end it had a neat edge like a knife cut. On the outside it had a smooth, cream-coloured surface with a series of lines ingrained along it. She tried to clean it with the nail of her little finger; it made a grating sound. She turned it over in the palm of her hand. The inner surface resembled a sponge turned into stone: irregular, porous. Like the inside of marrow when the pips have been removed, it had viscous threads running along it, but these too were petrified. In one of the pockmarks was a tiny bit of soil.
    Anthea cupped the bone in her two hands. ‘I’m listening,’ she whispered. ‘What is it you’re trying to tell me?’
    Monday 17th December 7.25 am
    A sluggish light through the narrow prison windows tells me it is the beginning of another December day. My second day in prison.
    The headache is still banging and my clothes are sweaty. My body feels as if it has been infused in a toxic pool. The other women are still asleep. I negotiate getting out of bed. I put a hand on the bed to steady myself: the cream cell walls are spinning around me. The toilet behind the wall next to my bed is doorless. Must be so that staff can check on prisoners through the hatch in the door. Stop them from shooting up, or hanging themselves. I guess the possibility we might die of embarrassment is not a consideration. Luckily the hatch is closed and there is no eye pressed to the door at this moment. I hobble back to my bed, pull my watch out of my bag and sit on the floor beside my bed. I gasp for breath. Confused images whirl in my mind. I stare at the graffiti. ‘I love Tracey.’ Who is Tracey?
    A woman down the corridor starts