Killing You Softly Read Online Free PDF Page A

or kicking a ball? She was exercise-phobic, unless high-octane flirting falls into
    that category.
    ‘You look knackered,’ Connie told me in her no-holds-barred way.
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Less prowling up and down corridors,’ she recommended as she went across the room to bother Hooper.
    I followed her with my cereal and yogurt, and saw the grateful look on his face when I joined them.
    ‘Why so bleary eyed?’ he asked.
    ‘Am I? Sorry.’
    ‘It’s not because you regret these pics by any chance?’ Hooper turned his iPad towards me and gave me time to study an image of a girl in a tiny red and gold bikini, posing
    provocatively by the edge of a swimming pool. I say ‘girl’ because it took me a while to realize that this was a picture of me.
    ‘Whoa!’ I gasped.
    ‘Let me see.’ The Black Widow grabbed the iPad. ‘Jeez, Alyssa, you’re not leaving much to the imagination!’
    ‘But . . . !’
    ‘Where did you find this?’ she asked Hooper.
    ‘It’s on Alyssa’s Facebook page.’
    ‘I didn’t put that there. It’s not even—!’ I whimpered.
    ‘Oh yeah. Here’s more of the same. Wow, Alyssa.’ Connie stood up and called for Zara to come and look.
    ‘It’s not . . . I didn’t . . . oh my God!’
    Zara ignored Connie. Hooper looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
    I grabbed the iPad back from Connie and skimmed through the pictures. ‘It’s not even me!’
    ‘It is – look!’ Connie leaned over my shoulder. ‘You by the side of the pool, you lathered in sun cream, slithering up and down a sun umbrella pole, you spread-eagled
    on a sun lounger. It says they were taken in the Maldives on Christmas Day.’
    ‘Everyone knows I wasn’t in the Maldives. I was in Richmond upon Thames. I don’t have a red bikini – it’s not me!’ It would have been funny except that it
    wasn’t.
    ‘Maybe someone stole your username and password and Photoshopped your face on to existing pictures of a glamour model.’ Hooper suggested what he thought was a helpful solution.
    ‘Jeez, Hooper!’
    He shrugged and apologized again, while Connie physically dragged Zara across to our table.
    ‘Wow!’ Zara said when she saw what she thought was me oiled and spread-eagled. ‘Damn, Alyssa, you look hot!’
    ‘It’s not . . . I don’t . . .’ Stupidly my face went bright red and I felt the hot prickle of tears in my eyes.
    ‘It’s a joke,’ Connie told Zara sardonically. ‘Alyssa says she wasn’t in the Maldives – she was in Richmond.’
    ‘With my aunt,’ I bleated. I didn’t care how stupid I sounded.
    ‘Look – she’s freaking out,’ Connie said as if I wasn’t there. ‘I have no idea why. It’s not as if they stuck her face on to an ugly body.’
    ‘Whoever did it must have a weird sense of humour,’ Hooper commented. ‘To me it looks suspiciously like revenge porn.’
    Connie considered this. ‘Oh yeah, where an ex-partner posts intimate stuff online so the world can see images that were meant to be private. Count yourself lucky, Alyssa – at least
    you’re not fully naked.’
    ‘Only an idiot would think you’d really pose like that,’ Zara sympathized. ‘Still, you’d better hope that Jack doesn’t see it – he’ll go
    crazy.’
    ‘God, yes,’ I gasped, punching buttons to delete the photos. ‘It’s the middle of the night in Colorado so let’s hope he’s asleep.’
    ‘Text him, just in case,’ Hooper advised as I fled.
    I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of the dining room, away from the Black Widow’s smirking face, across the courtyard and out past the main school towards the bike shed, away
    from St Jude’s.
    Against my better judgement I cycled shakily along the lanes towards the Bottoms. It was Sunday morning – one of those bleak winter days that never seem to get light.
    There was no colour in the monochrome landscape, just shades of black and grey.
    It was the same monochrome inside my head – grey and shadowy – and would be until Jack finally