Nobody True Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t like the idea. In fact, I don’t think you’d ever trust me again. Everyone needs their privacy, their own space. It’s what makes us civilized.
    Now and again, I felt the overwhelming need to confide in a close friend or special girl, but common sense always prevailed, something—call it instinct, if you like—always shut me up before I said too much. Later, even marriage could not persuade me to disclose my little secret; maybe I’d kept it to myself so long it had become unimportant.
    In truth though, it was never an issue.
    7
    Something else for you to consider:
    You’re physically near to someone, a person you love more than any other in the world, more than life itself. That person is about to be murdered.
    That person you love so much is helpless.
    And so are you, even though you’re present at the scene and you’re free to move around. You cannot protect your loved one no matter how hard you try.
    You have to watch as death slowly, and oh so painfully, begins to claim its victim.
    8
    My name is—was—James True. Anyone who knew me called me Jim: James was just for passports and tax returns. I was pretty average, five-eleven tall, slimmish, good mid-brown hair, blue eyes, not bad-looking. Like I said, average, quite ordinary. I did have a lively imagination though, which was just as well given the career choice I’d made at an early age.
    I dreamt a lot. I don’t mean daydreams, reveries; I mean sleep dreams. Always lucid, full colour, Dolby sound. Reality dreams, but not too logical. Busy, wear-you-down dreams. The medical profession deny the possibility, but often I wake mornings more exhausted than when I’ve gone to sleep. Hard day’s night, and all that. I always figured I was putting in another seven or eight hours’ labour when I slumbered.
    Content was anything from fantasy to mundane everyday stuff. Usually a fair bit of angst in most of them. I’d lose something, couldn’t quite reach something, would be placed in an embarrassing situation—you know the kind: in a crowded room or at a bus stop wearing only my vest. Nothing abnormal though, nothing any different from the dreams of other dreamers; it was their lucidity, I suppose, that made them special plus the fact that I could always remember them. I’ve no idea if any had particular significance, because I rarely tried to analyse them. Except for one that was recurring.
    In this dream, which came maybe once or twice a year, I could kind of fly. I say kind of, because it was more like long floating hops: I could rise from the ground, sometimes high over buildings, or zoom along several feet above the surface, pushing myself off with my hands every fifty yards or so, gaining altitude whenever it was necessary to rise above people or obstructions. I always thought that these particular dreams were informing me that I was a dreamer, that I had high expectations, perhaps wanted to break away from reality, aspired to things that could only be fantasy, that my own pragmatism, which was tempered by the realities of life itself, unfailingly brought me back down to earth—literally, in the dreams. The way I saw it this was no bad thing. It meant I was grounded. And that was a plus in my eventual profession, where the ideal was advanced—the best soap powder, the finest lager, the greatest value—all of which claims had to stay within the realms of possibility and true to the advertising standards code (I admit that often—no, most times—we pushed those selling virtues to the limit, but we never quite lied).
    I soon got over my motorbike accident at seventeen—the hairline skull fracture had been caused by my crash helmet having been dented by the edge of the kerb, but it was one of those lucky fractures (if such a break could ever be deemed lucky) that cause no pressure on the brain and it healed itself within weeks. No surgery was required. Headaches for a few weeks afterwards were the only penalty, and mercifully even these were