The Night Hunter by Caro Ramsay Read Free Book Online Page B

at someone’s wedding with the family as it is now. Rod at the helm, Mum holding on to him, Grant looking blond and blue-eyed, Sophie his female double at one side, me the raven-haired geek at the other. We are like bookends. Then three of us at Soph’s birthday meal for the family – that was the twenty-ninth of March – the week before she disappeared. Hindsight focuses the mind but I now realize that Soph hardly ate anything that evening. Grant acted drunk long before he was, and Mum acted sober long after she was drunk. I ignored both of them. In a paper clip I have two pictures that Belinda from Boadicea had taken at Soph’s party on the thirty-first. I wasn’t there. Soph only invited me to her social events safe in the knowledge that I would never go. I’d rather put staples in my toes than sit and listen to her pals talking about nail extensions and child protection orders. Soph loves company whereas I don’t see the point of other people.
    I didn’t need all that, I had Sophie. We had each other. We were Lizzie and Laura.
    I put the photos back in the drawer and lie back, staring out the windows waiting for sleep. When I do close my eyes, the dream is waiting. The little night-time goblin that comes out from the shadows to mess with my head is now showing me a film of Sophie in the bath in my flat, bleeding. Her head turns away as I try to speak to her, then she dissolves in the water, laughing, then screaming. Sophie is there one minute, gone the next.
    It’s me screaming, of course. I wake myself up and a glance at the clock confirms I have been asleep for all of five minutes. I crawl out of bed to go to the toilet, where my stomach retches and retches, trying to get something out of nothing. Just bile. I need to eat to be sick. I need to go out for a run; my veins feel like they are bursting.
    I open the bathroom cabinet and look at my medication. I should be taking it to control these symptoms until the tests are complete, but I’ve cancelled the appointment because I’m not taking any of this stuff; I need to be strong. In the mirror the changes are obvious. I should face the fact that I need help.
    But Sophie needs my help more.
    To fetch one if one goes astray.
    I pull on my running socks and trousers, my top and my Nikes, then head out down the road to the loch side where I can watch the seals bobbing their heads through the water as I run. On a good day I’ll tackle the lower slopes of Cruach nam Mult but today is not a good day. At the water’s edge the air is deathly still. It is cool in my lungs and my legs loosen as I wind through the bracken on the lower slope. I feel weightless and supercharged. This is what it does for me; I become another being when I run the hills in the early light. Everybody else is somewhere other than here.
    One hour and fourteen minutes later, I come out of the shower and sink on to the sofa with a strong coffee and a Pro Plus. The TV is on with the sound turned down low. I like looking at the moving pictures. It’s like having company without having to listen to any crap.
    I watch a rerun of some cop show with subtitles as the sun creeps its way across the carpet. I am in a dwam rather than asleep, the adrenaline is melting. The cop show ends and the two leads drive off in their car having caught the bad guys. It freezes on a still of them doing a high five. A subtitle comes up to tell me that there is music playing now. The TV screen changes to the seven-thirty news bulletin, the doom and gloom economy and a bit of football gossip. Then the Scottish news. Alex Salmond is the lead story. Some blue-haired coffin dodger is jabbering on about her pension, her mouth moving nineteen to the dozen while her teeth try to keep up. The colour of her lips matches her hair colour, a sure sign of insidious heart failure, so by Christmas she’ll no longer be dodging her coffin, she’ll be lying in it. Then I recognize the Rest and Be Thankful in a long panning shot. A