A Question of Identity Read Online Free PDF

down his bucket and mop and stood barring the door.
    ‘You hold on – who are you? You shouldn’t be here. This building’s closed. You on the run?’
    ‘No. Not like you think.’
    ‘Like what then?’
    Lynne Keyes told him. He was a huge man with a big belly under his overall, a thick neck, big feet, big hands. But he stood still and listened to every word and she felt safe with him. He could have reached out and strangled her without any trouble but she had no fear that he would. They were different sort of men, the stranglers.
    ‘I hear you. Only you can’t stop here. We go in an hour, place is locked and that’s it.’
    ‘I can’t go home.’
    ‘Tell you what, him getting off – it’s shocked everyone rigid.’
    She said nothing.
    ‘So . . .’ He pushed the mop down into the bucket and twisted it this way and that. The smell of pine disinfectant came off it. ‘You must have family. You go to them. Family’s better than friends, times like yours. Come with me, I’ll slip you out the side door, no one’ll be around, and I never saw you, all right?’
    She followed him because there was nothing else she could do and because he was kind and she trusted him. The side door had an iron bar that he lifted up and a chain and padlock that he opened. She could see a passageway. Concrete steps.
    The door banged and the iron bar came across it on the other side.

Just clocked what it is. They’re afraid. They’re terrified, of me. Everybody is. When I get to walk down that street, they’ll shake with fear. But they’ve got no reason. Well, have they? ‘Not guilty’ he said, didn’t he? ‘Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty.’
    So what have they got to be afraid of?

‘ I . . . I NEED to speak to someone. I need someone to help me.’
    ‘What department do you want?’
    ‘I don’t know. Police. Just the police . . . I need help, I’m . . . I’m scared out of my skull, I daren’t go home . . .’
    ‘Domestic violence? Hold on.’
    He had never let her have a mobile and she thought she hadn’t really minded. Now she did. Now, after she’d walked for ages to find a phone box that worked, she was put on hold. She waited, but she wasn’t put through to anyone else and the woman didn’t come back.
    The town was very quiet. A pub on the corner was emptying out, cabs drawing away from the rank. She slipped round the backstreets, across the bus station, in and out of the mesh of streets near the railway line. She felt better because the flat was right on the other side of town. She knew what he’d be doing – she had a sudden flash of him, sitting in the brown leather chair with a can, watching the news. Watching himself on it, smirking, raising his can to the screen.
    Lynne Keyes shivered.
    The only person left was Hilary. It was a long walk – she had no money for a bus fare, but the last one would have gone anyway. Her sandal strap had broken completely so she had to pinch her toes together to keep it on and there was already one blister on the side of her foot. Walk to Hilary’s? She sat down on the low wall in front of a house. Drawn curtains. Glow froma lamp. Flicker from a TV. She wanted to knock and ask them to let her in.
    It took almost an hour to get to Hilary’s because she had to keep stopping to fiddle with her sandal and try and move it away from the blister.
    Cumberland Avenue. Nice houses. Not large but modern with decent gardens. She’d wanted to move out this way but he wouldn’t. She’d never properly understood why, until all this had come out. He wouldn’t have been able to get up in the night and slip out, do what he did, slip back, no need for the van.
    She dragged herself the last hundred yards to Hilary’s, all the energy gone out of her, but at least the lights were still on. Hilary was seven years younger than her, same dad, different mother. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together when they were younger but they’d picked up later, got on well. She felt such