Read Online (2002) Deception aka Sanctum by Denise Mina - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Denise Mina
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because she was young, worn over her shoulders, falling halfway down her upper arms. Her velvet blue eyes flash. She leans into the camera, saying something and pouting as she finishes a word. I notice my arm around her waist is holding her up: she can bend over at an acute angle because I am holding her weight.
Photo Three
Susie is sitting on my knee. We are on vacation with friends, eating dinner in a Corfu restaurant with white plastic chairs and a blue oilcloth on the table. It is nighttime, in an open-air taverna. Twelve shiny, sunburned faces grin around the table. It was our last year of med school, and we all went on a cheap package tour together. They were my friends. Susie came everywhere with my friends. This strikes me as significant somehow. She didn’t seem to have a crowd of her own, or if she did, we don’t have photographs of them.
I’m very involved with her in the photograph. I’m smelling her hair and my hand is on her slim, brown thigh, my index finger disappearing up the outside leg of her high-cut shorts. I remember how completely wrapped up in each other we were. We kissed in public and touched each other, behavior I find appalling when I witness it now. But then, in the very early days, nothing seemed real or important but that we were together.
* * *
It wasn’t all blindness. Susie’s wrong about that. I did know she had flaws, and I didn’t fall in love just because I projected things onto her, either. She had qualities that I had never even thought of before I met her.
She had a sharp analytical mind, could tease the essence from a phrase or picture, see grades of meaning in statements. I’m just not that bright or interested in dissection. She’d think of a joke and laugh uncontrollably before she told it. She wouldn’t ever give an inch over the house cleaning and always made me do my share before we found Mrs. Anthrobus. I loved the fact that she had principles and was so self-contained. Those weren’t qualities I went out looking for. They blew me away. It wasn’t blindness at all.
* * *
Margie’s sleeping through the night and seems to be adjusting finally. I wish I’d paid more attention to her before the verdict, but I was sure Susie would be coming back with me that night. We should have introduced the possibility that Mummy might not come home. I think she knows how bad it is. When she says “Mummy,” she immediately looks at me and Yeni, waiting for whatever reaction we’ve unknowingly been giving. She’s more clingy than she used to be. Still, she asks for Anna, her little friend from nursery, more often than she asks for Susie.
I know I should take Margie back to nursery as soon as possible, but I’m dreading it. They’ll have read the verdict in the papers. I told Mrs. McLaughlin that I wouldn’t see her for a while because Susie would be dropping Margie off for the next few weeks. I’ll look like an idiot.
If the other parents snub me, I’ll feel terrible, and if they’re nice, I’ll feel even worse. I’d like to move Margie into a different nursery and never see any of them again, but she likes it there and has made friends.
I wish I could sleep.
chapter eight
FOUND A CONTACTS DATABASE ON THE COMPUTER, AND WHEN I typedin “T,” I found this: Harvey Tucker, 191 Orca Road, Cambuslang.
* * *
Susie’s comment on the tape, about how love is a mistake, wasn’t directed at me. She could just have been pissed and showing off to the journalist, flirting with him, letting him think she was available. She’s entitled to a bit of private head space, allowed to talk to people without me there. That’s all she was doing. In some ways it speaks well of our relationship. I want her to feel autonomous. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
She managed to call me this morning, a full seven days after the verdict. The phone rang while I was standing in the hall eating hot garlic bread (all that’s left in the freezer). If I’d been in the living room, I
Photo Three
Susie is sitting on my knee. We are on vacation with friends, eating dinner in a Corfu restaurant with white plastic chairs and a blue oilcloth on the table. It is nighttime, in an open-air taverna. Twelve shiny, sunburned faces grin around the table. It was our last year of med school, and we all went on a cheap package tour together. They were my friends. Susie came everywhere with my friends. This strikes me as significant somehow. She didn’t seem to have a crowd of her own, or if she did, we don’t have photographs of them.
I’m very involved with her in the photograph. I’m smelling her hair and my hand is on her slim, brown thigh, my index finger disappearing up the outside leg of her high-cut shorts. I remember how completely wrapped up in each other we were. We kissed in public and touched each other, behavior I find appalling when I witness it now. But then, in the very early days, nothing seemed real or important but that we were together.
* * *
It wasn’t all blindness. Susie’s wrong about that. I did know she had flaws, and I didn’t fall in love just because I projected things onto her, either. She had qualities that I had never even thought of before I met her.
She had a sharp analytical mind, could tease the essence from a phrase or picture, see grades of meaning in statements. I’m just not that bright or interested in dissection. She’d think of a joke and laugh uncontrollably before she told it. She wouldn’t ever give an inch over the house cleaning and always made me do my share before we found Mrs. Anthrobus. I loved the fact that she had principles and was so self-contained. Those weren’t qualities I went out looking for. They blew me away. It wasn’t blindness at all.
* * *
Margie’s sleeping through the night and seems to be adjusting finally. I wish I’d paid more attention to her before the verdict, but I was sure Susie would be coming back with me that night. We should have introduced the possibility that Mummy might not come home. I think she knows how bad it is. When she says “Mummy,” she immediately looks at me and Yeni, waiting for whatever reaction we’ve unknowingly been giving. She’s more clingy than she used to be. Still, she asks for Anna, her little friend from nursery, more often than she asks for Susie.
I know I should take Margie back to nursery as soon as possible, but I’m dreading it. They’ll have read the verdict in the papers. I told Mrs. McLaughlin that I wouldn’t see her for a while because Susie would be dropping Margie off for the next few weeks. I’ll look like an idiot.
If the other parents snub me, I’ll feel terrible, and if they’re nice, I’ll feel even worse. I’d like to move Margie into a different nursery and never see any of them again, but she likes it there and has made friends.
I wish I could sleep.
chapter eight
FOUND A CONTACTS DATABASE ON THE COMPUTER, AND WHEN I typedin “T,” I found this: Harvey Tucker, 191 Orca Road, Cambuslang.
* * *
Susie’s comment on the tape, about how love is a mistake, wasn’t directed at me. She could just have been pissed and showing off to the journalist, flirting with him, letting him think she was available. She’s entitled to a bit of private head space, allowed to talk to people without me there. That’s all she was doing. In some ways it speaks well of our relationship. I want her to feel autonomous. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
She managed to call me this morning, a full seven days after the verdict. The phone rang while I was standing in the hall eating hot garlic bread (all that’s left in the freezer). If I’d been in the living room, I
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