Read Online Catch Me When I Fall by Nicci French - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nicci French
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Mystery, England, Large Type Books, Fiction - Psychological Suspense, Businesswomen, Extortion, Stalking Victims, Self-Destructive Behavior
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when you next find it, it's gone all stiff and nasty and crusty."
Her tone became more serious. It's Sunday evening. It's raining. You've worked solidly for days.'
'I don't know if "solidly" is the fight word. "Hollowly", maybe."
"You're tired,' she continued. You need to go home and see
Charlie and have a long bath and sleep without the alarm clock." "Yeah."
'We can come into work later than usual tomorrow. I think
we owe ourselves that, at least.'
"In lieu of paying ourselves.'
'Maybe we'll be able to take a proper salary before long. We're doing well.'
"Sometimes I think the only grown-up thing about my marriage
is that we've started to worry about our mortgage.' We'll be fine,' said Meg.
'You're being very reassuring this evening.' ..
She glanced at me briefly. 'That's my role, isn't it?" she said drily.
'What about you?" I said.
What do you mean?'
'Are you seeing that guy? Todd? Or was I so horrible to him that I scared him away from you as well as me?"
"I'm not sure,' she said. She stared straight ahead.
Have you seen '
Leave it. I don't want to talk about it."
"Whenever you do want to..." I said. I was going to add something, but I couldn't make the right words come out.
Everyone has their own story, but sometimes they don't know what the story is, or where they fit into it. Say your parents think of you as fickle and irresponsible; say your friends think you're a cheery extrovert; say at work they insist that you're the life
and soul of the party: and there you are, you're trapped in a version of yourself, in your narrow margins, and the terrible thing is that mostly you don't even know it. And because we're all a mystery to ourselves and we need other people to explain us and make us come true, you gradually see yourself like that as well. It's the story you think you're in. A comedy. A farce. You lose the other bits of yourself. But every so often you're allowed to see yourself differently, tell yourself differently. You become another story altogether, deeper and stranger and more interesting, with new meanings.
Meg and I earn our money by shaking people up, letting the pattern fall differently for a while. But then they go home, and we go home, and what's really different? Your old world closes round you, your old self returns. People think that they can change their lives and themselves. Build a raft and cross a lake, play a game where you have to relax and fall backwards into the arms of your colleague, sit round in a circle talking about all the things in your life you've ever done wrong and all the choices you regret. And then you'll be able to start again.
When I say 'you' I mean me, of course. Me, Holly Krauss, whom I can't escape however hard I try. I'd tried so hard that weekend, harder than ever before, the most energetic person among the whole crowd of energetic, intoxicated people, so that now my tank was empty, my cupboard was bare.
I was thinking about Stuart, one of the participants. He was about forty, maybe a bit older, gangly, with long, slightly dirty, straw-coloured hair and a faintly decadent air. He smoked foul-smelling roll-ups out of the corner of his mouth and wore a battered leather jacket at all times. He was the cynic of the bunch, and kept a faint sneer on his face during the group activities. He'd been my challenge, the one I was going to disarm. So I'd tracked him down after dinner, and we'd stayed up late, very late, until everyone else had gone to bed and there was
only the sound of the wind and the stream outside. After we'd made inroads into the bottle of Scotch that Richard had left on the table between us, he told me about his two sons.
'They" re nearly young men," he said. 'I left their mother when they were three and two. I was hopelessly in love with this other woman, but that didn't last long. Anyway, they're teenagers now. Fecgal's almost nineteen, for God's sake. They have girlfriends and take drugs and I might as well be invisible to
Her tone became more serious. It's Sunday evening. It's raining. You've worked solidly for days.'
'I don't know if "solidly" is the fight word. "Hollowly", maybe."
"You're tired,' she continued. You need to go home and see
Charlie and have a long bath and sleep without the alarm clock." "Yeah."
'We can come into work later than usual tomorrow. I think
we owe ourselves that, at least.'
"In lieu of paying ourselves.'
'Maybe we'll be able to take a proper salary before long. We're doing well.'
"Sometimes I think the only grown-up thing about my marriage
is that we've started to worry about our mortgage.' We'll be fine,' said Meg.
'You're being very reassuring this evening.' ..
She glanced at me briefly. 'That's my role, isn't it?" she said drily.
'What about you?" I said.
What do you mean?'
'Are you seeing that guy? Todd? Or was I so horrible to him that I scared him away from you as well as me?"
"I'm not sure,' she said. She stared straight ahead.
Have you seen '
Leave it. I don't want to talk about it."
"Whenever you do want to..." I said. I was going to add something, but I couldn't make the right words come out.
Everyone has their own story, but sometimes they don't know what the story is, or where they fit into it. Say your parents think of you as fickle and irresponsible; say your friends think you're a cheery extrovert; say at work they insist that you're the life
and soul of the party: and there you are, you're trapped in a version of yourself, in your narrow margins, and the terrible thing is that mostly you don't even know it. And because we're all a mystery to ourselves and we need other people to explain us and make us come true, you gradually see yourself like that as well. It's the story you think you're in. A comedy. A farce. You lose the other bits of yourself. But every so often you're allowed to see yourself differently, tell yourself differently. You become another story altogether, deeper and stranger and more interesting, with new meanings.
Meg and I earn our money by shaking people up, letting the pattern fall differently for a while. But then they go home, and we go home, and what's really different? Your old world closes round you, your old self returns. People think that they can change their lives and themselves. Build a raft and cross a lake, play a game where you have to relax and fall backwards into the arms of your colleague, sit round in a circle talking about all the things in your life you've ever done wrong and all the choices you regret. And then you'll be able to start again.
When I say 'you' I mean me, of course. Me, Holly Krauss, whom I can't escape however hard I try. I'd tried so hard that weekend, harder than ever before, the most energetic person among the whole crowd of energetic, intoxicated people, so that now my tank was empty, my cupboard was bare.
I was thinking about Stuart, one of the participants. He was about forty, maybe a bit older, gangly, with long, slightly dirty, straw-coloured hair and a faintly decadent air. He smoked foul-smelling roll-ups out of the corner of his mouth and wore a battered leather jacket at all times. He was the cynic of the bunch, and kept a faint sneer on his face during the group activities. He'd been my challenge, the one I was going to disarm. So I'd tracked him down after dinner, and we'd stayed up late, very late, until everyone else had gone to bed and there was
only the sound of the wind and the stream outside. After we'd made inroads into the bottle of Scotch that Richard had left on the table between us, he told me about his two sons.
'They" re nearly young men," he said. 'I left their mother when they were three and two. I was hopelessly in love with this other woman, but that didn't last long. Anyway, they're teenagers now. Fecgal's almost nineteen, for God's sake. They have girlfriends and take drugs and I might as well be invisible to
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