The Naked Room by Diana Hockley Read Free Book Online Page B

secured to our family dogs’ collars. How many times have I implored God to take me back to before that time at Wild Pony Rock? The one thing I wish I could change–
    That’s a car starting up! I press my face against the grill but it’s out of sight. Disappointment floods through me. My right forefinger is bleeding again from pulling at the mesh. No don’t think about your fingers. He was just trying to frighten you.
    Really.
    Truly.
    The mattress on the stretcher is almost as thin as a bedside mat. I pull it onto the floor and lie flat on my back, remembering when I went to yoga classes at university. Relax, close your eyes and let your mind wander …deep breaths. Go to a safe time, like when you were a child…
    We island kids attended to school on the mainland, catching the ferry early in the morning, returning late afternoon. My red hair, so beloved of old ladies, gave the townies the excuse to taunt me. ‘Carrot, carrot, island parrot!’ was a favourite. My reading glasses were broken so often that mother was offered a discount by the optometrist.
    A safe role for me was becoming a storyteller, a court jester to the bully’s monarchs. The staple literary diet of the playground became one of breathlessly gothic tales, girls in peril and dark mysterious heroes blessed with good looks, smart tongues, and libidos of gargantuan proportions. Drunk on unaccustomed popularity, I morphed into a control freak.
    So many times I’ve wished I could go back and put my worst crime right.
    If I lose a finger and my career, will it be God’s punishment, and no more than I deserve?

CHAPTER 7
    The Reckoning
    Eloise
    Sunday: 8.30am.
    My God, he’s forgotten who I am! Hang up, you fool. Then, he spoke quietly. Ice chips bouncing off a window pane couldn’t have sounded colder.
    ‘Eloise.’
    ‘Yes.’
    The silence seemed to go on forever, and then thank God, he responded. ‘And how are you?’
    ‘I’m well, thank you’ I replied. The banality of convention confused me. He waited for me to state my business, the sound of his breathing in my ear mingling with the frantic drumbeats of my heart.
    ‘I need to talk to you, James,’ I said, ‘Please would you—it’s urgent, really urgent.’ The silence stretched. Just as I was about to grovel, he asked, ‘Are you here in Brisbane?’ An almost imperceptible edge to his voice told me he was not unaffected by my call, how, I was not sure.
    ‘Yes, I’m at my goddaughter’s flat in West End. Please, can I talk to you?’
    ‘Why? What could be so important after twenty six years that you can’t tell me over the telephone? I think you showed how you felt when you left me.’
    I abandoned him? I didn’t understand what he meant, but I only had seconds to convince him of the seriousness of my request.
    ‘Please, it concerns you. Something you need to know. And it’s private.’ I sank onto the chair beside the telephone table to prevent my legs from giving way, knowing I would crawl barefoot across broken glass if that was what it took to keep him on the line. Again, seconds ticked by before he responded.
    ‘Tell me where you are. I’ll send a car for you.’
    Traumatised, I couldn’t remember the street address, but then my eye fell on Pam’s electricity bill. I reached over, snatched it out of the letter rack on the wall, and read it to him.
    ‘Be ready in half an hour,’ he said abruptly and hung up.
    9.00am.
    The passing scenery held no interest for me. I leaned back, closed my eyes and tried to rehearse my coming speech. All too soon, I feared, our reunion would end in rejection and perhaps, hatred. Conscious of his driver’s occasional glances at me in the rear vision mirror, I looked resolutely out of the window, trying to present a calm facade, pressing my knees together to prevent them bouncing with agitation. Just minutes now and for the first time in twenty-six years I would set eyes on the man whom I’d expected to marry, the man who dumped me when he