Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

father.
     
    ‘Daddy!’ I screamed. One or two of the paramedics looked up - those closest to my dad, the ones actually bent over him, doing stuff to him - didn’t. A woman with a ponytail came over to me.
     
    ‘Are you Sophia?’ she said.
     
    ‘It’s Sophie, actually,’ I said. Sophia was the name my parents called me. The woman looked at me strangely.
     
    ‘Well, Sophie ,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid your dad’s had a very serious heart attack.’
     
    Oh God, oh God. Was he going to die?
     
    I knelt down on the floor, but the ponytailed woman gently pulled me back. ‘It’s best if you let our team work,’ she said. ‘We’re doing all we can.’
     
    I looked at my father’s face. It was the most peculiar colour.
     
    ‘Well do MORE,’ I screamed. ‘Fix him!’
     
    ‘We’re trying our best.’
     
    ‘Well, try your best FASTER!’
     
    There was a sudden silence in the room. I couldn’t work out what it was; but there’d been lots of machines beeping and humming and making breathy noises. Suddenly I realised that they weren’t making those noises any more.
     
    A burly man with a shaved head who’d been bent over Daddy knelt back on his haunches. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking at Gail and me. ‘I’m really sorry. He’s gone.’
     
    From somewhere deep within me, I didn’t even know where, I heard a great howl . . . ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
     
    The paramedics looked embarrassed. I reached him - Daddy - the body, I didn’t know, and collapsed on top of him, hugging him with all my might. He still felt warm. But that was all. He didn’t feel of anything else. He didn’t smell of his normal smell - cigars, whisky if it was in the evening, cologne in the morning. He smelt of antiseptic wipes and, oddly, burning.
     
    ‘Daddy,’ I whimpered again, feeling the tears start to gather and run down my face. And I think the paramedics were as polite as they could be, and waited as long as they could before they had to pack up their things, wait for the undertaker, and leave.
     
     
     
    Later, the house silent, Gail and I finally looked at each other. Years of animosity stood between us, like a huge rock. Suddenly I wanted to push it out the way, run to her, forget all the tantrums and the jealousies. I just wanted someone to hold me.
     
    ‘Gail—’
     
    She cut me off curtly. ‘He called you. He wanted you. But you seemed to be too busy to pick up the phone.’
     
    And she abruptly left the room.
     

Chapter Five
     
    It’s hard to describe the weeks after my father’s death. I’ve never known pain like it. Nowadays I have taken that grief and locked it in a box, and buried it deep inside. Those weeks of swirling, half-awake nightmares, where I would wake up with a start and relive the whole thing again; the hazy, Percodan-fuelled days when I didn’t even open the blackout curtains. It was a dark place, and I never want to go back there again.
     
    Gail made all the arrangements, because I couldn’t do anything at all. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t leave the house. I needed so badly for someone to put their arms around me and tell me everything was going to be all right. I needed my boyfriend. I needed my friends. I had neither.
     
    I called, once. Carena didn’t pick up, although she must have recognised the number. Then I tried Philly, who after a few piss-weak expressions of sadness about my dad, put on a little girl’s voice, and said, ‘Are you really cross with Carena?’
     
    ‘Am I what?’ I said. Cross didn’t really cut it. ‘She’s been . . . she’s been a complete fucking . . .’
     
    ‘You know she feels really terrible about it,’ said Philly. ‘And those Gina shoes really hurt.’
     
    ‘Good,’ I said grimly. ‘I was hoping the diamante might take out someone’s eye.’
     
    ‘She says that it was a passion bigger than both of them . . . that she was just swept away . . .’
     
    ‘You know what, I think I have more important things on my