Girl Seven Read Online Free PDF Page A

goodbye, I turned away and walked out of the flat.
    ‘Um...’
    I heard him, dumb with confusion, as I slammed the door.
    ‘Um... nice to see... you.’
    There was one relative in the Relatives’ Room. One relative sit­ting in silence, picking my nails and chewing my lips. The other two people were police officers. Both had given up trying to speak to me a long time ago.
    The Relatives’ Room appeared more like a haphazard staff­room, with a cupboard and sink full of mugs, a small plastic kettle and boxes of tea left out on the side. A used tea­spoon was hanging over the sink, dripping.
    I looked down at my hands again, now clean of blood, and observed the yellow foam showing though the frayed royal-blue fabric of my chair.
    Drip.
    I’d stopped panicking by then. My breathing had slowed and I held my hands still. My face was stiff and my emotions had stopped, rigid. I tore off a piece of nail from the side of my thumb and gnawed at it, obsessing over the tag of loose bleeding skin.
    My sister had called something to me as I’d left the flat.
    ‘Kiki, look!’
    I hadn’t stopped or looked, just said I’d be back soon and left to go to Jensen’s because I’d been so bored. All the time. So fucking bored. Crawling with boredom. Boredom that made me want to claw off my own face just for the entertainment.
    Kiki, look!
    One of the officers kept glancing sideways down my top.
    I hadn’t been allowed to see my family. Not again. I was already finding it hard to remember walking into my flat and seeing them.
    Drip.
    A nurse came in, smiled at us, and efficiently made some tea with the plastic kettle and used teaspoon by the sink. She stirred a West Bromwich Albion mug and returned the spoon to where it had come from.
    I kept forgetting in the midst of these micro-episodes, things existing and people going about their jobs and their lives, why I was here. Even my memories, erratic and infused with static like shit TV reception, didn’t seem like my own.
    Thinking back, I could see myself only as an observer. In my memories, I was watching myself enter the flat from behind.
    I saw myself stare, throw up, fall, and I followed myself out...
    I could see the broken bottle of Asahi, not far from my dad’s hand.
    The hand was split down the centre, fingers parting from each other in their attempted defence against the blades like this . His hands were in pieces around what was left of his wrists...
    I rocked forwards and I saw the officers recoil a little.
    ‘There’s a sink,’ one of them said.
    I remembered throwing up on one of them on the way here and the other one had started laughing and apologizing.
    Drip.
    The nurse left.
    The officers left.
    A man walked in.
    At first, I didn’t see anything strange in both the officers leaving.
    The man introduced himself by his intention rather than by his name, badge or rank. He introduced himself by his vile black comb-over and deep-set eyes that looked as though at any moment they could be swallowed up by his face.
    He pulled one of the bright blue chairs away from the wall and rotated it until he was sitting adjacent to me.
    ‘Miss Ishida? Kiyomi.’
    I hadn’t fucking said that he could call me Kiyomi.
    ‘I’m here to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right with you?’
    It was just the two of us. I wished that the other officers hadn’t left.
    At the time, I nodded.
    ‘You didn’t directly witness anything, I understand? You were out?’
    Yes.
    I said it first in my head, before I managed to take the breath needed to speak.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Where were you?’
    There was still boiling water in the kettle. The teaspoon was still dripping.
    I saw the top of Jensen McNamara’s head, felt the flutter of words against my cunt...
    ‘The shops.’
    ‘Really?’
    He wasn’t asking. His tone was oiled with cynicism. He knew I was lying. I knew that he knew I was lying. What’s more, I could tell he’d expected me to lie.
    ‘You didn’t have anything with you