Dying for Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

swung open the door of the huge American-style fridge-freezer, and I felt hope drain away through my veins and arteries right down to the polished wood floor. The shelves were packed with plastic boxes, all labelled. I caught sight of ‘Lasagne’ and ‘Thai Green Curry (chicken)’ as well as the ‘Beef Stew’ he eventually brought out.
    ‘Did you cook all that?’
    ‘Do I look like the kind of man who spends his life in the kitchen?’ His tone was calm but his face remained unsmiling.
    So he’d bought it in, all this pre-prepared food. He must have been planning this for a while.
    The thought was a punch to my stomach. He’d bought in the food, locked the relevant doors, and then gone looking for a victim.
    Me.
    And if it was planned, he already knew what was going to happen next. And how it would end.

Chapter Seven
    We sat down at the long dining table that delineates the end of the living-room space from the beginning of the kitchen space.
    This flat is all about the space.
    The shallow white bowl he put in front of me was huge – the kind you might buy on aesthetic grounds and never use once you find they don’t actually fit in the dishwasher. The brown gloop nestled on a bed of rice, glistening with fat where it caught the light. The lumps of beef half submerged in gravy the consistency of mud.
    ‘Dig in,’ he said.
    He was watching me intently with those close-together eyes, so I picked up my fork and scooped some rice with a bit of brown sauce.
    ‘Delicious, isn’t it? I get pre-prepared food delivered from the same company every week. I can’t bear cooking. People who dwell too much on food make me sick.’
    I dipped my fork again into the rice and brought it up to my mouth which was still coated with the dregs of the last mouthful.
    ‘You’re not eating the beef.’
    ‘I don’t eat meat.’
    Dominic put his fork down in his dish and slowly ran his tongue around his gums.
    ‘Then we have a problem, Jessica Gold.’
    I swallowed down a clot of rice.
    ‘It’s no problem,’ I said.
    When it happened, it was so quick, I didn’t even notice him moving. One moment he was sitting there opposite me, staring with his head to one side as though listening to what I was saying, and the next he’d leaned forward and picked up the biggest lump of meat from my plate with his fingers and rammed it past my teeth, clamping his hand over my lips so that I couldn’t spit it out. I was choking, the meat lodged in my mouth, big as a boiled egg.
    ‘I’d chew it if I were you,’ he said as my eyes streamed.
    I pressed my teeth into the beef, feeling that stringy texture at once so familiar and so alien.
    ‘What is it about meat that offends you?’ His hand stayed pressed to my mouth. ‘Is it the idea that you’re chewing on something that was once living that you don’t like? Is it biting into a mouthful of tissue, fat, skin? Let me guess. You had a pet you loved once – a cat maybe, you seem like the cat type. Do you think about that cat when you’re chewing on meat, I wonder? Do you imagine you’re sinking your teeth into its flesh?’
    I began to retch, with a violence that shocked me, although nothing came out but a trail of thin bile. He moved his hand away, looking with disgust at the traces of yellow liquid on his fingers. After washing his hands at the sink, he sat back down opposite me and sighed.
    ‘It’s like you’re deliberately trying to spoil things,’ he said. ‘Now, will you please just eat.’
    It wasn’t a question.
    By then the retching had died down, but still I could feel the strings of flesh caught between my teeth.
    I remembered Sonia Rubenstein, and how at one session she’d been asking me about my fear of buttons. It’s a real phobia. Even writing the word just now gave me the heebie-jeebies. Nasty, threatening things. I’d been talking about how it affected my life. How I couldn’t stand to touch Travis when he was wearing a shirt, how if I came into a room and found