In Your Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

There isn’t anything left to say, really.
    I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean it to end up like this, but I think we both knew it was coming, sooner or later, and it’s best to get it over and done with rather than dragging on. I think we’ve both been kidding ourselves all along. It’s not because you’re a bad person or anything that you’ve done. I should have been honest with myself earlier, and then it’d never have got this far. Don’t forget that the rubbish has to go out on Thursday evening. I think the seal’s gone on the vacuum cleaner.
    I hope everything works out for you.
    Sophie

Chapter Two
    A nd then I woke up , he told himself, and it had all been a dream.
    People are sometimes easily overlooked. The holes they leave behind when they aren’t there any more are far harder to miss. It made Paul think of science lessons at school. He’d never been able to get his head around concepts like negative numbers and antimatter, but now it made complete sense. Everywhere he looked, and even when he closed his eyes, all he could see was the absence of Sophie, the gap where she used to be, should have been, no longer was. It was so large, it dominated the landscape so much that he was pretty sure it must be visible from orbit, like the Great Wall of China or the lights of the San Francisco freeways. Maybe (he speculated, not that he gave a shit) that’s what ghosts are ; the huge empty spaces left behind when someone dies, kept wedged wilfully open by the self-destructive human mind. Above all, for some crazy reason, Sophie’s tangible absence put him in mind of the ridiculous Portable Door, except that it was a gap in Nature that opened only into the past, and through which it would be extremely perilous to go. Paul made himself a strong cup of tea, but it didn’t really help much. He considered going to the pub on the corner and drinking himself into a spongy mess, but he had to go to work tomorrow and learn how to fight stupid dragons. Just on the off chance he tried magic, but he gave himself a headache concentrating very hard, and when he opened his eyes Sophie still wasn’t there. That figured: magic only repairs that which has got screwed up. In this case, apparently, the mistake had already been rectified.
    There wasn’t anything on the telly apart from game shows and snooker, and he wasn’t in the mood. He tried going to bed, but the hole next to him was so wide and deep that he was afraid he’d roll into it and never climb out; so he sat in the armchair. He’d have read a book, only all the books on the shelf were hers.
    At three o’clock in the morning, Paul came to the conclusion that he didn’t like himself very much; which was a pity, since he was stuck with him, forsaking all others.
    At seven o’clock he got dressed, shaved, combed his hair. There wasn’t any bread, and the milk wasn’t entirely liquid. Magic would’ve set it right, but he couldn’t be bothered. He went to work.
    The receptionist smiled at Paul as he went past the front desk, which showed how much she knew about anything. He really didn’t want to go to his office, because there’d be a hole on the other side of the desk he didn’t particularly want to meet. Fuck Ricky Wurmtoter , he thought; just when I could use a Portable Door, he’s got it. But he went and sat opposite the hole for a few minutes, until suddenly he remembered that he was supposed to report to Benny Shumway first thing to begin his Heroism lessons.
    â€˜Sorry I’m—’ he started to say as he opened Mr Shumway’s door, but the office was empty. He stood on the threshold, frowning. He’d been at JWW long enough to know that the cashier’s absence ( Dammit , he thought, is nobody here any more? Pretty soon, I’ll have the whole place to myself ) could mean many things. It could be an intelligence test, the first step in