Read Online To Catch a Creeper by Ellie Campbell - Free Book Online Page B

might have been vomiting half the day and having all sorts of alarms, but I might not have wanted to tell you about it. So as not to worry you. With all your work problems.’
    ‘Oh, so you did then?’ He scrambles in his pocket for change.
    ‘No,’ I say very quietly, so quietly, I can’t even hear it myself although I feel my lips move.
    He sighs and stares in the middle distance. ‘I expect I miss a lot of things by spending so much time in the office. Life’s so–’
    ‘Sacred?’
    ‘No. So–’ He taps three digits from his number plate into the Pay and Display keypad and presses the green button for his ticket.
    ‘Sweet? Short? Sad?’ For some reason I’m only coming up with suggestions beginning with S. What’s after S? Oh yeah, T. ‘Tumultuous? Terrible? Terrifying?’
    ‘I was going to say, perilous,’ he stops my flow. ‘One minute everything’s going according to plan, like Rosa’s pregnancy, the next there’s floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes. Thousands perish and then we all seem to carry on, as if nothing’s happened.’
    ‘Not exactly as if
nothing’s
happened,’ I correct as he sticks the ticket onto the windscreen. ‘Bob Geldof or someone similar steps in, everyone pledges on telethons then they set up Help the Victims charities, Anneka Rice does a come-back in a helicopter still looking the same as ever and coerces people to build buildings in twenty-four hours.’
    ‘Maybe, but it’s still odd how soon we forget and revert back to the status quo. Do you know how insignificant we are? Do you know…’
    I tune out as we head up the corridor. In one way I know what he’s driving at. I was insignificant once. Or felt it. The first few years of being at home with my newborns and I couldn’t be bothered getting dressed hardly, let alone applying make-up. Although in one way I was blissfully happy, wrapped up in first steps and obsessed with counting teeth and things, in another, I was downright depressed, having lost my identity, having gradually grown…I don’t know, so old and staid and sensible, I guess. I wasn’t the adventurous, optimistic girl of my twenties with the slim figure, constant bright smile and queues of admirers. No I was in my early thirties, tied to the house, and Rosa, my elixir of life, was living in another country. Henrietta, my near neighbour, saved me in a way, co-founded the Tuesday Twice Monthlies, now Wednesday Once Weeklies, gave me something to live for every fortnight.
    ‘…grains of sand as all the stars…in all the galaxies…’
    We wander up the corridor and enter a lift. Declan’s still mumbling in the background.
    Ah well. Those were the days my friend. All behind me. Not so insignificant now.
    ***
    ‘This is it,’ I say eventually, ‘Ifield Ward. She’s third from the end on the left. Hey, Rosa, how are you?’ I rush to greet her. She’s sitting propped up in bed, white crocheted blanket over her legs, her long blonde hair loose and flowing around her shoulders. Like an angel. ‘Guess who I brought in to see you?’
    ‘Deccers!’
    He leans forward and she puts her arms around his neck. They kiss once left cheek, then once right, then left again…finishing it off with a big long hug.
    ‘Oy, steady on,’ I protest. ‘Watch you don’t start anything down below…’
    They both turn their heads and give me odd looks. ‘I meant the baby,’ I add and then both their expressions turn to grins. They know I’m only kidding. I’d never be jealous of those two. Rosa loves Declan almost as much as I love him, but in a strictly platonic way, and vice versa. It’s so sweet. We’re really like one big happy family. And now with Alec making our triangle a square, it’s just ideal.
    ‘How’s everything?’ She says patting for me to sit next to her. ‘How’s Josh and Sophie?’
    ‘Oh they’re fine.’ I plump up her pillow and tuck in her bedclothes. ‘Pimple’s got them well under control.