Double Read Online Free PDF Page B

let her see how scared I was. I listened to the countdown in my head that ended with her disappointed scream.
    It didn’t come. I got to zero and she hadn’t let go.
    “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, shaking her head, the threat of tears drowning her voice. “I never thought I’d see you.”
    She grabbed my shirt, my mended charity-shop shirt, like she thought her hand might go straight through it. “You’re real.” She whispered it.
    “Yes.”
    “You came back.”
    “Yes.”
    I don’t know how long we stood there, in that wet, freezing air. She rocked, as if she were holding a baby, but it was me holding her up, I think. Edie had gone in. A dog came out onto the porch, sniffed the air, stretched its back legs, and went in again. My car door was still open and the light was on inside. I worried briefly about the battery. The trees thrashed wildly at the house, as if they knew there was something to be angry about, as if they knew what wrong was being committed there. I glared at them, and they thrashed wildly at me too.
    When the phone rang inside the house, Cassiel’s mother jumped, like she’d been sleeping, or miles away.
    “That’ll be Frank,” she said. She wiped her eyes and smoothed her hair back, like whoever Frank was, he’d be able to see her. “Let’s go in,” she said. “Let’s talk to Frank.”
    She took my hand to walk with me, but when I pulled back to get my bag and shut the car door, she didn’t wait. She let go and went ahead to the house and left me there for a moment in the wind and the dark, alone.
    •  •  •
    Inside, the house was warm and smelled of cinnamon and onions and wood smoke. Underneath the wood smoke there was something cloying and rotten, like garbage cans, like decay.
    It was horribly bright. I felt the light fall on each line and hollow of my face that was different to Cassiel’s. I felt my face change, looming and hideous in its strangeness. I saw my reflection in the mirror. I was me, not him. Wasn’t it obvious?
    Edie and her mother weren’t looking, not really. They can’t have been. But they might at any moment. I stood still and waited for that moment to come.
    I looked around me at the kitchen, low-ceilinged with a black slate floor and bloodred cupboards, an old stove pumping out heat, a long scrubbed table down the middle. There was a sofa against the wall, torn and scruffy, with old velvet cushions that for a split second made me think of Grandad.
    The dog was in his basket in the corner. He didn’t get up. He lifted his eyes, wagged his tail at us lazily, thump-thump- thump on the floor. He was a wiry mongrel of a thing, old and coarse and graying. I scratched his neck, read the name Sergeant on his collar. He rolled over and exposed the bald pink of his tummy, the upside-down spread of his smile.
    Cassiel’s mother was flushed from the cold air, her knuckles bone-white where she gripped the phone.
    “Is that Frank?” I said.
    Edie nodded. “He just got our messages.”
    Cassiel’s mother held the phone out to me. “Cass,” she said. “Come and speak to Frank. Let your big brother hear your voice.”
    I took the phone out of her hand, and she stroked the side of my face. I looked her in the eye. I waited for her to notice.
    “Hello, Frank,” I said, and stood still and obedient while she stroked me.
    Frank was smoking. I could hear the wet suck of him pulling on a cigarette, the thickened taking in of breath. He laughed, and in my mind I saw his mouth and all the smoke pouring from it.
    “Cass,” he said. “You’re home.” His voice was low and warm.
    “Yes,” I said.
    He sounded calm and confident. I liked the sound of him. “I can’t wait to see you,” he said.
    “Me too.”
    “I’m coming straight home.”
    “When. Tonight?”
    “In the morning.”
    “Okay. Good. Thanks.”
    Would it be him that saw it? Would he look at his brother and see the liar underneath?
    “It’s a miracle, Cass,” Frank