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

his hands and cupped them around his nose. Their touch triggered an electric spasm of agony. He felt the gushing warmth of blood on his fingers.
    Points of light skittered and danced. Bright fireflies of pain. He squinted through eyes blurred from tears and sun, seeking the old woman. Her expression terrified him. She stepped across his chest and raised the rock above her head.
    ‘No!’
    The shout came from inside the Hillman. Charles’s eyes slid over to it. Dizziness was beginning to overcome him, but he had enough sense left to raise his arms against what was coming.
    A crash and groan of metal. A car door being kicked off its hinges.
    ‘ Mama . No!’
    His attacker turned, rock still raised high. Nicole struggled free of the vehicle. She fell on to her hands and knees. Gasped. Climbing to her feet, she raised a flat palm and shook her head.
    Stop .
    The woman stared at Charles. Her black eyes seemed devoid of emotion, but he saw that tears had traced clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. She pitched her rock off to the side and stepped away from him. When Nicole appeared beside her, the older woman began to gabble in French, jabbing her finger at him. The pair engaged in rapid-fire conversation. Charles was too dizzy to follow it.
    Nicole broke off and scowled at him, eyes blazing. ‘What are you doing? Why are you here? You could have killed us.’
    He rolled over on to his side and spat blood into the soil. ‘That’s rich. She just tried to stave my bloody head in.’
    Nicole lunged for the discarded rock. ‘I’ll finish the job unless you tell me what you’re doing here.’
    He forced himself up on to his hands and knees and shook his head to clear it, dislodging a flurry of sparks. ‘I don’t know what the bloody hell I’m doing here. I wish I wasn’t, I can tell you that much. You were the one who left me a note in the library. What the hell was that about?’
    ‘Were you the one who telephoned the house?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why did you ask for Préfontaine?’
    ‘Because that’s the name you registered at the library. Why are you using a false name?’
    ‘ I’m asking the questions, Charles. Why are you in a different car?’
    He realised, too late, that without the distinctive Jag, she would not have understood who pursued her. ‘I have two cars.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I like cars. Jesus.’
    ‘You’re a university professor.’
    ‘I can’t like cars?’
    ‘Not on a lecturer’s salary.’
    ‘I’m not just a university professor.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Just that.’
    She brandished the rock.
    ‘Look, for Christ’s sake, there’s nothing sinister! There was some inheritance, that’s all. Land, mostly. Some of it I developed. It worked out quite well.’
    ‘Why did you follow me?’
    ‘I told you; I don’t know. I was . . . I wanted to see you again. And after the bizarre conversation I had with your delightful mother here, I wanted to make sure you were all right.’
    Nicole’s mother snatched at her daughter’s arm. She pointed past Charles’s shoulder. ‘ Dépêche-toi .’
    He turned to see the lorry they had overtaken pulling to the side of the road. Air brakes hissed. He felt the tension between the two women intensify.
    Nicole switched her focus back to him. ‘You just wanted to see me again.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know, really. I just—’
    ‘You just felt compelled.’
    Charles gambled that she was not going to strike him with the rock unless he did something particularly reckless, and climbed to his feet. She moved backwards, granting him space.
    ‘Idiotically compelled,’ he said.
    ‘Instinct.’ She was searching his eyes.
    ‘Something like that.’
    ‘And what does your instinct tell you now?’
    He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the blood pooling on his upper lip. ‘That you’re a couple of lunatics.’
    ‘Charles. Look at me. I am deadly serious.’ She stole a glance at the lorry. ‘What does your