Read Online To Catch a Rabbit by Helen Cadbury - Free Book Online Page A

Arms, leaking warmth and yellow light into the darkness. She was tempted to go in and find Jackie, but she was scared; not just of Mackenzie and any friends he might have, but of herself. She’d never been one for picking fights, but now she’d started she was afraid she might not be able to stop. She tipped the lights to full beam, put her foot down hard on the accelerator and headed for the main road to Doncaster.
    She parked in the allotted space and posted the keys through the door of the car-hire office. Her heels rang out in the station forecourt. It was Saturday night, but the place was almost deserted. In the ticket hall a couple leaned drunkenly against a shuttered counter, lost in each other’s faces. The girl pressed against the boy, and he gripped her to stop himself from falling. Karen checked the departure board. The last train to York had left half an hour ago. She walked outside to a scratched metal bench where she sat down, breathed in cold, damp air and let the tears come. When she’d exhausted the only tissue in her pocket, she got up and walked away from the station. A man passed her, weaving slightly, pausing to look at her for just too long. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but on the next corner she came to a large Victorian pub with a Vacancies sign trapped behind a grey net curtain. She pushed open the door and there was a brief murmur, which she just caught the end of, ‘…lady present. Thanks Sid.’
    There were four men in the warm room and a television set high up on the wall. The picture was frozen. She caught sight of a leg and a head of long, blonde hair. She looked away, feeling the men watching her as she walked to the bar.
    ‘Do you have any rooms?’
    ‘We do, love.’ The barman was large and smiling, a diamond patterned jumper stretched over his belly. ‘How many would you like? Eat in or take away?’
    She smiled weakly at his joke. ‘Just one, just for tonight.’
    ‘Follow me madam, or would you like a drink first?’
    ‘I’ll take one up, if that’s okay. A glass of red wine please.’
    While she waited for him to pour her drink, she found herself looking at the pictures on either side of the bar; two Turner prints, their cloudy colours smudged under dirty glass. She knew them like old friends, ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ and ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’, two of a set of place mats her mother used to get out for Sunday lunch. Phil’s favourite was the ghostly warship limping home in the sunset, while she always chose the little black steam train, hurrying through a yellow-grey mist. She picked up her glass and followed
    the landlord through a door at the side of the bar. There was a buzz of relief from the men behind her and she heard the elaborate orchestral score of their porn film start up again. It sounded like Debussy.
    The sheets were clean but cold. Karen sat up in bed in her blouse, a cardigan round her shoulders. Probably not what the men at the bar would consider foxy, but she locked the door and put the chain on anyway. The room was uniformly yellow with years of cigarette smoke, or maybe it was intentional. Perhaps Dulux had a special colour called Pub Fag Yellow. There was paint peeling from the cornices on the ceiling and the embossed wallpaper was scratched and torn. The bulb in the bedside lamp had blown, so she sat with the stark overhead light on and sipped her wine. Its rough, raw tannins hit the roof of her mouth and sucked at her cheeks. She phoned Max and told him what had happened and that she was safe. He said she should have checked the timetable, which she didn’t need to hear. She wished she had a radio, the low mumbling of a documentary or even the shipping forecast, but there was just the sound of the occasional passing car below the window and a swarm of questions buzzing round in her head. She tried to think things through, but nothing would stay put.
    Karen had a sudden start, as if a door had banged. She knew she’d been asleep,