Falling Read Online Free PDF Page A

knee, Fitch took the coffee cup from her and set it aside. ‘You shouldn’t think, you know. It’s bad for you. Scientists have proved it. Especially when there are so many better things to do with your time…’
    She could stay here for ever. The fire, the bed, the brandy. Fitch. If there was a way to freeze time, to live forever in a single moment of joy, Jude would choose this day, this moment.
    But there wasn’t. And when she returned to her present-past, this moment and all the other moments would still be lost forever.
    I hate my job, she thought, and ReTraced.
    Forward to her present. She’d fixed it now, surely, she was released –
    Air rush, vertigo, terror. She was still falling.
    Sick with terror, Jude let herself slide back into the past.

TWO
    Geno Bond HQ, three weeks ago
    â€˜I really wish you’d reconsider that, Jude,’ Warner sighed, settling himself comfortably with his immaculate shoes on the edge of the desk. ‘It’s a golden opportunity. Moving to the country could be the beginning of a whole new lease of life for you.’
    Jude smiled.
    Easy one this time.
    Welcome to July 2nd. Nice bright summer’s day – a rarity now, whatever the Public InfoBroadcasts said about climate stabilisation. She’d arranged to meet Fitch after an early shift at Club Andro; the evenings were long, they’d go down to the Wharf to drink coffee at that crazy Australian’s bagel stall and watch the kids testing their handcrafted sailboards, only a hundred apiece, all designs available…
    Warner was watching her across the desk, fingers pressed together in a gesture that was supposed to indicate deep thought.
    â€™You know I’d go insane in a Hurst, Mr Warner.’
    â€˜You’ve got it all wrong, you know. You’re thinking clean living, fresh air and exercise, early to bed. They are human beings, Jude. They do have music and parties – yes, and alcohol and drugs and whatever…’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah. I’m not stupid enough to believe the newscast image. I just couldn’t live anywhere that… small. And crowded. Every apartment in every building occupied. It wasn’t like that even when I was a kid in the Bankside.’
    â€˜No Hurst holds more than five hundred people. Mostly fewer. And think of all that open space, Jude. Grass. Trees. The sea, even. No broken glass and twisted metal, no ugly piles of crumbling concrete.’
    Jude grinned. ‘That’s the other thing. Green is not a natural colour for a landscape. All that vegetation gobbling up the oxygen, it just can’t be healthy.’
    â€˜I think you’ll find that vegetation is a net producer of oxygen.’
    â€˜Whatever.’
    Warner sighed, admitting defeat. ‘Your loss.’
    â€˜I think not.’ She sat back in her chair, sipping cautiously at her steaming coffee. Espresso, black. Despite the considerable resources at his disposal, Warner never served anything else.
    But then, Warner was that type. Straight down the line; nothing added, nothing taken away. Some of the others, the ones who broke the rules but weren’t smart enough to hide it, couldn’t get on with that. Jude preferred it. You always knew where you were with Warner.
    Mostly on the wrong side of the desk, taking the orders and apologising for the unavoidable, but that was life.
    His coffee might be fearsome, but he did have the best view in the whole GenoBond building. Panoramic, right across the north of the city. The broken husk of the PO tower foreground, the green smear of one of the parks behind it. Framing the distant greenery, a jagged tumble of roofs and low rise blocks, splattered red and yellow and purple by tarpaulins and folk art. Everything the city had to offer was out there, hidden from the world below: hand-thrown pottery drying on parapets, children’s toys abandoned in the sun, a colour-splash of marigolds or potted lavender on a