Dancing With Mortality Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew where you were, because he’d sent you to
Cork to pick up some papers, but all he said was that you should call him as
soon as you got back. Then I heard on the radio just now that there was a
shooting last night, and I thought something might have happened to you, but
that’s ridiculous isn’t it? You only went to get some papers.’ Her eyes were
wide and misty, yet they bored into his with a steely intensity. ‘But I
couldn’t get it out of my head. Why was that horrible man calling you? So I’ve
been sitting here waiting and worrying, and inventing all sorts of stories
about what could have happened, and...’ Suddenly she came to a dead stop, her
eyes narrowing, anger distorting her features. Then she slapped him hard across
the face.
    ‘Shit!’ Harry put his hand to his reddening cheek, shocked
by the blow. ‘Nat, there was nothing to worry about, really...’
    She looked back at him cynically, then her face softened
marginally, though her eyes still blazed. Her voice was flat but clear. ‘I
don’t believe you. Now I’m going to work.’
    With that she rose from the sofa, retrieving her jacket from
the back of the dining room chair as she walked through to the hall. She
quickly adjusted her hair. ‘See you later.’ She slung her bag over her
shoulder, opened the front door, and was gone.
    Harry sat, head in hands, stunned. A tiredness, both mental
and physical, started seeping through him. He couldn’t think, and his body
became heavier with each passing second. Through the fog in his brain he
registered irritation at Litchfield’s lack of foresight with his bloody phone
calls. This was not how it was supposed to be at all, he reflected. Damn it, I
need sleep. He dragged his body from the sofa to the bedroom, stripped down to
his underwear, and got into bed. But even though he was tired, he found himself
thinking back to earlier days, to his first meeting with Nat.
    It was his second year at Uni. There was a concert on campus
one evening; he couldn’t even remember who was playing now. It had been packed
though, standing room only. A girl had brushed past him, knocking his drink
from his hand as she did so.
    ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry,’ she said.
    He looked at his beer-stained arm, and then at her. There
was a split second where something passed between them, like a flash of
recognition, though he’d never seen her before. Then she smiled.
    ‘Can I get you another one?’
    And that was it, they clicked. They started seeing each other.
She was vivacious and sporty, and had just been chosen for the New Zealand Under
21 Netball team. Her enthusiasm for her sport and her sheer love of competition
fascinated him. Sporty was the last thing he was. He loved his rugby, but
strictly as a spectator. He knew he wouldn’t last five minutes on a rugby
field. She teased him about his relative inactivity and he told her he burnt
more calories thinking than she ever could playing netball. She was sharp
witted too, and she wanted to know why people acted the way they did, hence her
study of psychology.
    It very quickly became serious. They didn’t need anyone else
for company. They were entirely wrapped up in each other. In the summer of that
year he remembered a camping trip they took. It was to one of the more isolated
West Coast beaches in Auckland, and it was approached via a steep pathway
through the bush. They parked the car and took two large packs consisting of a
tent and two days supply of food and water then found their way down.
    In the midday sun, the black sand, which glittered silver
with iron filings, was too hot to walk on barefooted. The beach formed a kind
of natural amphitheatre which swelled the sound of the waves into a constant
muffled roar, and the place seemed so elemental and primordial that you could
be forgiven for thinking you were the last remaining inhabitants on the planet.
Nobody came along in the two days they were there to dispel that illusion.
    They spent those days and