The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel by Steve Mosby Read Free Book Online

sounded matter-of-fact about it.
    ‘You are marked,’ I said. ‘Yes. What happened to you?’
    ‘Do you like them?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ I wondered what the right answer was. ‘They’re a little too elaborate for my taste, if I’m honest. They’re very detailed, though, aren’t they? I imagine they must have hurt.’
    ‘Yes, they did.’ The memory seemed to make her sad, then her expression brightened slightly. ‘But it was like childbirth. It hurts, but very quickly afterwards you forget how much. And you end up with something that makes it all worthwhile.’
    I nodded sympathetically, even though I didn’t think the two things were remotely similar. After childbirth, you ended up with a baby, a child you loved, whereas this woman was scarred for life. Whenever people saw her, they would always draw breath and look twice. She would forever be asking What are you looking at? while already knowing the answer.
    And yet, as extensive as it was, I realised that there was something oddly beautiful about the scarification. Perhaps it was the sheer intricacy of it. There was clearly a careful design to the damage that had been done.
    I said, ‘I wouldn’t want them myself.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter what you want. One day you’ll have them too. That’s how it works.’
    ‘How what works, Charlotte?’
    ‘Charlie. Not Charlotte.’
    ‘Okay.’ A small detail, perhaps, but it was obviously important to her, and since the question of identity was underpinning all this, I was happy to go along with it. ‘How what works, Charlie?’
    She shook her head, as though I couldn’t possibly understand. I thought about her choice of words. It doesn’t matter what you want .
    ‘Did you do them yourself?’
    ‘No, of course not.’ She pressed her palm to her forehead and the scarring wrinkled as she contorted her face. ‘I can’t remember it all properly. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about them any more. Not right now.’
    I very much wanted to talk about them, but there was a hint of distress there, and I needed her to stay with me.
    ‘All right, then. Let’s start at the beginning instead. You told the doctor your name was Charlie Matheson. Is that right?’
    ‘Yes. Nobody believes me, but I’m really not sure what else I’m supposed to say, or what everyone wants to hear. I’m Charlie Matheson. I’m twenty-eight years old and I live at 68 Petrie Crescent. My husband’s name is Paul. Paul Carlisle.’
    The mention of her supposed husband’s name caused a look of upset to cross her face, as though she had just remembered something painful to her. But then she blinked it away and shook her head.
    ‘I’ve been through all this a hundred times already.’
    ‘I know. And you say you were in an accident.’
    ‘Yes. Everything else is a blur right now, but I remember the accident like it was yesterday. I was driving on the ring road. It was late, and I was going too fast. There was a corner, and the wheels locked. I lost control. The car went over the embankment.’
    This was good. These were all details I could check – see what she was right about and work out how she might have known about it.
    ‘And then?’
    ‘I didn’t have my seat belt on. So stupid . I remember thinking that – and then that the airbag would save me, but it didn’t. I went through the windscreen.’
    ‘You remember that?’
    ‘Yes. I didn’t die right away. Not long. But I was on the grass for a while. Flickering in and out. There were voices, angels, I think, but they kept fading and coming back. And then ... I died.’
    ‘Two years ago.’
    ‘Yes. According to the doctors.’
    ‘And you’ve been dead ever since.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
    I leaned back.
    The thing was, she sounded so reasonable, and yet it was obviously a crazy thing for a person to believe. I found myself looking at the scars again. Hard as it was to imagine, it wasn’t impossible that she had done them to herself – and if