The Sleeper by Emily Barr Read Free Book Online Page B

Friday: the air is thick with expectation. People are going home from work and not coming back tomorrow; or they are heading away for the weekend, bags packed and ready for fun. I walk diagonally across the concourse, looking forward to seeing my friends.
    Then I stop. For a second, I am convinced that someone is close behind me, so close they could reach out and touch me, wishing me harm. The malevolent presence is almost tangible: in fact, I think something did touch me, so gently it was barely there at all. I spin around, looking at the people in the crowd, scanning faces, but there is nothing. Nobody is even particularly close to me. Most people are walking in different directions, or standing still as I bustle past. Someone was there, though. Something was there.
    It was not, I tell myself. Nobody was there. You are being ridiculous. This has happened several times. I feel something, eyes on me nearby, and I shiver, utterly convinced that someone is there and that something catastrophic is about to happen. I feel, at these moments, as if I am tightrope-walking like Philippe Petit between the towers, and wobbling.
    I march straight to the first-class lounge, flash my ticket at a woman reading Metro , who smiles briefly at me, and go to join the rest of the waiting night-train passengers.
    I am the first of my little gang, so I take a plastic bottle of fizzy water and a little packet of two biscuits, and sit down to wait. I am still shivering, despite the fact that nothing happened, and grab my phone to occupy myself.
    I send Sam a text announcing my location, adding then deleting a rant about Olivia’s latest rudeness (dumping the broken microwave in my bedroom), and look at the news headlines which are appearing in cack-handed subtitles across the bottom of a muted TV showing the BBC news channel.
    ‘Lara,’ says Ellen, sitting next to me, tapping on her iPhone, tucking her hair behind her ears and rearranging something in the pocket of her overnight bag, all in one go. ‘Good evening. Happy Friday.’
    ‘Hi,’ I say, opening my biscuits, delighted to see her. ‘Good week?’
    ‘Fine. Yes thanks. You? How’s that sister of yours?’ She looks at me with narrowed eyes. As she has only had my word for it, she considers Olivia to be quite the witch. I constantly try to qualify my stories by adding things like ‘I’m sure if you asked her she’d have a completely different perspective’, but Ellen and Guy never care about that.
    I look around quickly for Guy.
    ‘Oh, you know,’ I say.
    ‘Get your own place! I’m going to keep saying that until you do, you know. You’re a professional woman. You earn. You’re allowed to rent yourself a studio. It doesn’t have to be hideously expensive. You can take yourself out of that whole toxic relationship, you know.’
    I sigh. Ellen, I have realised in the short time I have known her, says exactly what she thinks. She is right, I know it.
    ‘If I tell her I’m moving out, she’ll never let me forget it.’
    She shrugs. ‘And? You live in her box room. She snubs you at every turn. She makes you feel like shit. You don’t have to be there. Rearrange your life.’
    ‘I know. I’ll think about it over the weekend.’
    ‘Talk to Sam about it. Properly. You know he’ll say the same as me.’
    I look around, again, for the third member of the gang. Guy, Ellen and I are the only ones who do this every week, all the way from west Cornwall. He lives somewhere near Penzance, with a wife and teenage children. For the past two Friday nights the three of us have consumed too many gin and tonics in the lounge car on the way west.
    ‘Is Guy coming back tonight?’ I ask.
    She nods. ‘He said he was. Who knows? Maybe his family have come up for a London weekend or something. You see? That’s another reason why you should totally leave Olivia’s place. You could get Sam up for a weekend if you had a studio. Just a tiny place in north London or something would do it. It