Girl Seven Read Online Free PDF Page B

like childish cynicism.
    Out through the window I could see a guy in a flat cap was setting up for some sort of show. He was staring at the bare legs of every woman that walked by.
    ‘I totally understand why you wouldn’t trust me,’ Mark said. ‘My flatmate says that I make people uncomfortable.’
    ‘No, it’s not that. You seem pretty trustworthy. According to Noel you’re up there with the most trustworthy people I’ve met in months. I think he fancies you, to be honest; he got way too excited when we were talking about you. I could smell the man-love.’
    ‘Well, naturally.’ A wistful smile.
    ‘I just haven’t really thought about all this since it happened,’ I continued. ‘I haven’t thought about any of them. It’s weird even entertaining the idea that you could do something about it now.’
    ‘Well, if you don’t mind me writing stuff down like a hack...’ he said, going through his bag for a notebook and pen. ‘Can you just tell me what happened? No, wait, tell me about your parents first. Their names, what they did, where you lived, any personal stuff you think is relevant.’
    I noticed he was wearing eyeliner.
    ‘OK, that’s easy. My mother was called Helena and my dad was Sohei.’
    It was easy to talk about my parents like this, as if I was reciting their resumés.
    He nodded.
    ‘He worked for a company called Importas. He was man­ager or something, but he kept moving us between London and Tokyo every few years. We lived in Hampstead in London and Toshima-ku in Tokyo, and then when he lost his job we lived in Tooting. Shit-hole.’
    ‘And Tooting...’
    ‘That’s where it happened, yeah.’
    I paused. For a moment the single high-definition image came back to me. Always my sister. The five-year-old skull cleaved in two. I didn’t remember much of Mum or Dad. If I concentrated really hard I could sometimes see the broken bottle, stained red, that my dad must have raised to try and defend them. The glass was embedded in his hands. I’d seen it as I’d fallen to the floor in shock.
    Mark was watching the street performer outside. He didn’t persist in his questioning, so I answered the silence and the vast expanse of blank space on his notepad.
    ‘I was at this guy’s house, Jensen McNamara. He lived just across the road from us. But I got bored. I went home and bumped into these kids in the stairwell. I can’t remember any of their first names, apart from the oldest one, Nate. They were just kids in the building. Little scabby boys. All Williamses.’
    Blades like this...
    ‘They stopped me and said there had been a fight or some­thing upstairs. The oldest one had seen these guys go up. I don’t think he said how many... Two. A couple , he said. With blades like this .’
    I lifted my hands in the air in front of me, demonstrating.
    The bottom of Mark’s glass made a gurgling sound as he sucked the last of his drink up his straw, cutting me off.
    I raised my eyebrows.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, pushing the glass away. ‘But you didn’t see these guys though? You didn’t see the men the kid saw?’
    ‘No. If I did...’ I swallowed. ‘If I’d been there they would have killed me too. I know that. But by now it’s been so long they probably don’t care enough to... to want to track me down or anything. Sometimes I think about it, you know, if I’m scaring myself at night. I wake up and I wonder if they’re still out there looking for me, or whether their job was just done and finished then, regardless of whether I was there or not. I just... I don’t get why they wouldn’t come back for me. Why would they let me go just because I was lucky and wasn’t there?’
    ‘They won’t still be looking,’ Mark stated with some confidence.
    I worried he was about to make some sort of inane gesture of comfort or support, like touching my arm or something. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t an idiot.
    ‘How do you know they’re not still looking?’
    ‘Well,