The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

another thought overtook him. Far darker than the first.
    What have you done?
    Driving back to the place where the Hillman had left the road, Charles turned through another U and nudged the Stag up on to the bank, out of the path of following traffic. He switched off the engine and rubbed his face. Examined his trembling fingers.
    Was he responsible for the accident? Certainly, he had wanted to help her. But he could not pretend that his motivation had been entirely altruistic. He had been driven, just as much, by an urge to satisfy his curiosity. And a desire to see her again.
    He opened his car door and jumped out. Bracing himself for what he might be about to see, he scrambled up the raised grass verge. A bramble-choked drainage ditch separated him from the field. Beyond the ditch stretched a brittle carpet of close-shorn wheat stalks, except where Nicole’s car had gouged a dark scar.
    The Hillman was a buckled and twisted box, caked in earth and dust. It must have flipped full circle at least once, because it had come to a rest on its broken axles. Smoke fluttered out of the engine block, dispersing on the breeze. Behind the car lay a litter of metal and broken glass, evidence of its destructive progress through the field.
    Charles slid down the far side of the verge and into the drainage ditch, his shoes slipping on weeds and stones. Grimacing, he pressed through a tangle of gorse, blackberry and ragwort. Thorns tore through his shirtsleeves. Barbs pricked his arms. He felt blood running long before he fought his way clear.
    Dragging himself up the far side of the ditch and out of the last clutches of undergrowth, Charles fell into the field. His arms burned where brambles had raked him and nettles had brushed his skin. His scalp itched from the burrs he had collected. Something buzzed near his ear. He waved it away and studied the Hillman. Close up, he saw it was even more damaged than he had first thought: a contortion of jagged metal.
    And then, with a lurch of adrenalin and fear and excitement, he spotted Nicole’s passenger. She was moving gingerly, picking her way around the far side of the vehicle as if feeling her way through mist. Blood seeped from a cut on her forehead, and her cheek was swollen and red. But she was alive.
    Jubilant, Charles shouted out to her. On hearing his voice, the woman looked up, hesitated. She glanced back at the wreckage. Then she raised a hand and stumbled towards him.
    The sun had baked the earth to a hard crust. Beneath the bristling mat of stalks, the ground was fissured with cracks. It made fast progress difficult, and by the time he reached her, he was panting with effort.
    She had once, Charles saw, been a handsome woman. Age lines – he could not have called them laughter lines – criss-crossed her face, but they had not concealed the defined features beneath. When her eyes flashed over him, he thought they looked almost black. Her hair was the same rich auburn as Nicole’s, but it had lost its lustre long ago. He wondered if the scowl that tightened her lips into a thin line was caused by pain.
    As he closed the last few feet, she bent at the waist and moaned. Concussion, he wondered? Broken ribs? He stared down at the top of her skull, at the speckled white skin of her crown that peeked through a frizz of unstyled hair. It reminded him of chickens’ feet. ‘Are you all right?’
    She ignored him. Or perhaps she did not understand him. Or was in too much discomfort to answer. From this angle, he couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open, whether they were haemorrhaged, whether she was suffering.
    Charles reached out to her and as he did she straightened. He saw what she clutched in her hands just before she swung it up at him.
    The blunt edge of the rock crunched into his nose, snapping back his head. Pain rushed screaming into his face. The world tilted, unbalancing him, and he found himself on his back, the air knocked out of him, blinking up at the sky. He lifted