I Found You Read Online Free PDF

she’d interjected. ‘The media teaches you all that and I’ve told you all a million times: people are fundamentally good. He’s a lost soul. I’m the Good Samaritan. He’ll be gone this time tomorrow.’
    ‘Lock the back door,’ Kai had said. ‘ Double -lock it.’
    She’d pooh-poohed his concern at the time but later, after calling out goodnight into the dark space between the back door and the studio, she’d locked the door behind her. Bolted it too. And then barely slept. She’d imagined, at intervals, a big man-hand held tight across the soft jaw of her sleeping baby girl, her green eyes stretched wide with terror. Or the pad pad pad of a strange man in her living room, silently opening drawers in search of gold and iPads. Or herolder daughter being watched in silhouette as she absent-mindedly undressed in front of the window. Even though her window faced the wrong way. And she would never do that anyway because the ridiculous child thought she was fat . But still.
    Alice gives up on the notion of sleep and decides to capitalise on the early start. She crosses the room and unplugs the iPad from the charger, switches it to the webcam app, watches her parents’ empty living room for a while. Since they both became . . . well, ill , is how she prefers to refer to it, rather than demented, loop-the-loop, bat-shit nuts, they have started to rise later and later. Their morning carer comes at ten and has to lure them out of bed like a pair of sleep-starved teenagers.
    She turns off the iPad and pulls open her curtains. The sea is blanket-flat after the rain, pink and yellow as the sun rises over it, as lush as the Caribbean. The fairy lights are still lit, as are the street lights. The pavement below is petrol-black and gleaming. It couldn’t be any prettier.
    Alice showers, moving quietly around the house, not wanting to rouse anyone any earlier than necessary. In her room she appraises herself. She never normally has time to appraise herself. Normally she rises too late to do any appraising, rises with just enough time to make sure she doesn’t leave the house naked. Her hair, she realises, is verging on bizarre. Her last set of highlights were quite bold, or, as Jasmine said at the time, stripy .And now the roots are coming through in vivid salt and pepper. And being out in the rain a lot the day before has done it even fewer favours.
    She wipes away the shadows of yesterday’s quickly applied eyeliner and starts hunting through the top drawer of her dressing table for her make-up bag, the one she usually gets out only on special occasions. She tells herself that she is doing this because she has the time to do it. That it has nothing to do with the handsome man in her studio room. She pulls the crazy badger hair up into a bun, finds clean jeans, a checked shirt that skims her tummy but clings lightly to the outline of her breasts, a favourite pair of earrings with greeny-blue stones that echo the colour of her eyes.
    Alice is a woman often described by men as sexy. Dirty, too. She’s never traded on being pretty. Never thought she’d do better in a tight dress and high heels (although when she does make the effort it doesn’t seem to hurt). Generally Alice lets it all hang out. But not this morning, for some strange reason.
    Romaine appears at her bedroom door, blonde ringlets in a disaster, drooping jersey pyjamas sagging at the crotch. Together with Griff, they tiptoe down the narrow, open-tread staircase that leads to the hallway. The other dogs greet them silently with mouths stretched into black-lipped smiles and tails beating against the flagstones. Alice holds her breath vaguely as they enter the kitchen, aware of what lies beyondthe back door, nervous of the unknowingness of the day ahead. She loads the dogs’ bowls with meat, makes Romaine a toasted bagel with peanut butter, herself an oversized mug of tea and a bowl of All Bran. All the while she has half an eye on the back door. Wondering.