Cold Shoulder Read Online Free PDF Page A

and had drunk most of that before she wandered into the children’s room. She was humming tunelessly. She got into Sally’s tiny bed, holding the bottle to her chest. She could smell her daughter on the pillow; it was as if the little girl was kissing her face, she felt so close. She reached over to the other bed for Julia’s pillow and held it to her cheek. She snuggled down clasping the pillows. ‘My babies,’ she whispered, ‘my babies.’ She looked drunkenly at the wallpaper, with its pink and blue ribbons threaded round children’s nursery rhymes. ‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run…’
    She could feel a lovely warm blanket begin slowly to cover her body, a soft pink baby blanket, like the one tucked round her when she was a little girl, like the one she had wrapped round the dead child’s body. She felt her chest tighten with panic, her body tense. She could hear him now. Lubrinski.
    ‘Eh, how ya doin’, Page?’
    ‘I’m doin’ okay, Lubrinski,’ she said aloud, startled to hear her own voice. ‘I’m doin’ fine, partner.’ She frowned. Who was screaming? Somebody was screaming, the terrifying sound going on and on and on, driving her nuts. She rolled out of bed and ran from the room. She tripped and fell to her knees until she was crawling on all fours into the bedroom. The screaming continued. She heaved herself up and caught sight of a figure reflected in the dressing-table mirror. She clapped her hands over her mouth, biting her fingers to stop the screams.
She
was the woman, it was
her
screaming. The terrible sweating panic swamped her.
    It was Lubrinski’s smiling face that calmed her, looking up at her from the dressing table. She snatched up the photograph. ‘Help me, Lubrinski, for chrissakes help me.’
    ‘Sure, honey, take a shot of this, then what say you and me go and rip up the town? You wanna hit the bars?’
    ‘Yeah, why not, you son-of-a-bitch?’ Lorraine gave a tough, bitter laugh, and felt herself straightening out as the panic subsided and she was back in control.
     
     
    That was the first night Lorraine went out to drink alone in one of the old downtown bars. She never knew who she ended up with, she didn’t give a damn, and they didn’t mind when she called them Lubrinski. A lot of Lubrinski lookalikes came and went, and there were many more drunken nights when she didn’t care if Lubrinski was with her or not. All she cared about was getting another drink to keep her away from the terrified woman who screamed.
    The downward spiral began the night after Mike left her. It was a long road she travelled, searching for oblivion. It was frighteningly easy. People were real friendly in the bars but they used and stole from her. When the money had gone she sold the furniture, and then the apartment. It was good to have a big stash of money, never to worry where the next bottle came from, and still she kept running from the woman in blue whose terrible screams frightened her so much and dragged her down so far, She could take the fights, and the taunts of prostitutes and pimps. Hell, she had arrested many of them. They pushed her around and spiked her drinks but drunk, she didn’t care. Drunk, the screams were obliterated. Drunk, the men who pawed her meant nothing. Drunk, she could hide, feel some comfort in slobbering embraces, in strange rooms, in beds where the little rabbits didn’t creep into her mind and she didn’t hear the children singing, a high-pitched shrill voice that turned into a scream.
    ‘Run, rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run… RUN.’
     
CHAPTER 1
     
CALIFORNIA, 11 April 1994
     
    S HE HAD almost died that night. The hit-and-run driver had probably not even seen her, and Lorraine could remember little. She had been taken to hospital with head injuries. The following weeks were a blur, as she was moved from one charitable organization to another; she had no money and no medical insurance left. Eventually she was institutionalized and