Falling Read Online Free PDF Page A

woman’s hand in her own, sliding her fingers down her wrist. Smiling. Always smiling.
    “Mmmm…suppose.”
    Cecilia had come home late on Sunday. Had thought that Ben would already be in bed. Instead she had found Ben and Tom in the kitchen, her son’s small hands thick with azure blue paint. “Look, Mummy.” Ben had waved towards the blue hand prints on the stark white paper pieces laid out across the kitchen table. “I did it, look.” She had known that she should smile, clap her hands. But her head was still too full of the phone call. Heather’s voice. Did you hear? They found Eddie dead. Tragic. Just tragic. But then of course, Heather didn’t know. Why would she know? Cecilia had never told her. Cecilia had never told anyone. And anyway, you had to say something nice, didn’t you, when someone died? Even if they had wandering hands and eyes that seemed to be already dead. So she hadn’t smiled at her son when he waved his paint covered fingers at her, pointing at his work with his little chest puffed out. Instead she had looked at the paint, and the spread newspaper, and the little fingers that surely wouldn’t come clean without a bath, when all she wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and cry tumbling tears of relief. So she had shook her head. Had sighed. Had watched her son’s smile falter and fade away.
    “Be lovely.” Cecilia said to Maisie. “You’ll have a great time.”
    The old woman didn’t answer.
    “Maisie? Come on. Maisie?”

Chapter 6
    Jim - Thursday, 15th March - 7.20pm
    “Your daughter’s how old? Twenty five?” The man-child detective gave him a look, the kind you give a kid who has mixed up her words. “Yeah. That’s not something we’d be getting involved in.” A ping, and he pulled a phone from his pocket, scrolling through the screen with his thumb. His shirt was creased, tie pulled loose, knot too tight, hanging askew. He hadn’t polished his shoes. Didn’t look like he had ever polished his shoes.
    Jim’s hands shook. He’d washed them, once, twice, seemed like a hundred times, but he could still see the blood there. The cat had been purring. Jim had stared at the blood. Had to think, had to calm down, had to think. Because if he could then he could figure this out. There would be an answer, something simple, and then there would be a flooding relief, a deep sigh, maybe even a laugh, his heart still pounding. Would hang his head, sick with relief. He would go home and he would tell Esther, and they would laugh at his fear. Then it would settle down, into some dim and distant corner of his memory, where it would stay forever – the day he thought he’d lost his only daughter.
    “Is Nate about?”
    The boy didn’t look up, still staring at his phone. “Mmm?”
    “The DI. Nate Maxwell. He about?” They’d joined together. Stood shoulder to shoulder as rocks and petrol canisters rained down on them in the Bristol St Paul’s riots, when they’d been pulled in on mutual aid. Played more rounds of golf than Jim could count.
    The kid looked up then, nostrils flaring. “I’m the senior officer on tonight.”
    You’ve got to be kidding me. Jim rubbed his face, turning slightly.
    Jim had stood in the empty house, and it was like he was frozen, somewhere in a no-man’s land where he couldn’t just be a father, because if he was a father than he would lose it, just lose it, and he wasn’t a policeman any more. Stood there feeling fat and old and useless.
    Jim had pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket.
    There would be an explanation. Libby would answer the phone with her singsong “hello”, and she would laugh when he told her where he was and what he had found. And she would tell him a story, something that he hadn’t thought of.
    And then everything would be all right.
    It took a moment before he realised what it was that he was hearing, why suddenly the kitchen was full of sound. It took a moment before the sounds coalesced in his head into the