Nyctophobia Read Online Free PDF Page B

Callie. Not a word to anyone. You cut off all your hair. All the weight you lost, the food you wouldn’t keep down, those horrible marks on your wrists, you made yourself look so ugly –’
    ‘And you make it sound as if I could help myself –’
    ‘You could have done! You were always smart, too smart for me and your father. But you chose to do what you did. And in the process, you almost destroyed us as a family.’
    There was no point arguing. We had been over it so often that the words had lost all meaning. Everyone should recognise there are fights you can’t win, and leave them alone.
    I moved out while the deal on the house was still going through. Mateo arranged for the rest of my belongings to be shipped over to Spain upon completion. He also paid seven months of back-rent on my old flat so that I could leave the country without first having to go to court. My meagre savings had evaporated after the collapse of the practice, and Anne had refused to lend me any more money.
    I knew one thing; that I loved Mateo. But he was also my route to a better life, a happy life, and the solution was practical. I felt as if I was finally in control of myself.
    I was twenty-six. He was forty-four.

 
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
    The Housekeeper
     
     
    W E MOVED IN on the first day of September. I don’t know how to describe those days – even now I only have blurred impressions.
    Over and above everything else, there was the light, a wide, high pathway to the heavens. The landscape was a great rock tray tilted to the sun at the kind of angle you’d leave a drying rack. When I first arrived the ground was parched and cracked everywhere except in the garden, which was still watered by the spring that surfaced in a low stone well at the end of the property.
    The lawn was an emerald Eden that looked Pixar-fake until I discovered that the spring meandered back and forth beneath it, keeping it lush and fertile. The voluptuous colours were misleading – a lattice of soft orange flowers was interrupted by translucent petals as delicate as dragonfly wings, trailing into the shadows of the cliff’s spine, but the plants beneath were sharp and hardy, armed with twin thorns that dug deep into my flesh when I later tried to tear them out. In the early days Bobbie and I would sit out there listening to the drone of insects and fall into a fugue state, a dream within the dream of life.
    I soon stopped thinking of Hyperion House as an architectural absurdity. It had been decorated in an urban style because it was wide and flat and had three floors. A low traditional farmhouse would have looked ridiculous cut into the cliff. The building intrigued me. There was something about it that was just beyond the edge of my understanding, something that didn’t conform to the usual rules of architecture.
    Although our voices were always shockingly loud in the house, it was never truly quiet. There were always birds chirruping outside, clocks ticking inside. The only time it ever went silent was just before something bad happened. I got to recognise that silence later, and dreaded it.
    On that first day, as we walked from the great iron gates, we disturbed a cloud of saffron butterflies. I stopped to watch them dissipate, entranced. There was a green parrot shrieking in the trees. This wasn’t my life; it was a nature film.
    ‘The rest of your stuff should be here on Wednesday morning,’ Mateo said, sorting through the keys, ‘and Bobbie won’t arrive until next week, so you’ll have a little while to orient yourself.’ For a fleeting moment I felt less like a new wife than an employee, being given time to settle in before starting my duties. It was a big house. I wondered just how much time it would take to look after it properly.
    ‘I suppose I should carry you over the threshold,’ he added, taking my hand, but I could see his heart wasn’t in it and anyway, I had already protested the idea. ‘Maybe not,’ he agreed, ‘but Senora