One Night Read Online Free PDF

contents to one side and ran up the stairs. I pulled the note from
under the little flower pot, fumbled for the lamp switch, and read it again.
And now I saw clearly it wasn’t her handwriting. Mona had a sharply-sloped,
rigidly neat style, no loops or sweeps, everything elongated and properly
finished. The writing in front of me was small and round and childish. Mona
would never have written like that.
    Was it Brent’s writing? I
remembered birthday cards from Mona, Brent’s hasty, childish scribble at the
bottom, Love, Brent. A match with this?
    I looked at it for a long time,
wondering what these facts were telling me. Was something wrong? Where had she
and Brent gone? I felt suddenly edgy, a little panicked. Were they coming back? Was Sticky’s broken leg an unforeseen hitch to a longer holiday? Mona had said
they would be back on Sunday – and Mona never lied. Well, not up to this point
of my knowing her. Perhaps they’d gone off for a week or so to Spain and left
me, literally, holding the baby. Mona would know I wouldn’t leave Sticky. If
they didn’t come back, I would take Sticky home with me. She knew that.
    I chewed this over. It didn’t fit. Mona
would never do something like that to me. True blue, straight as a die,
ingenuously honest sometimes. That was Mona. It was that aspect about her that
made her relationship with Brent so incongruous. He struck me as just the
opposite; a little too smooth, that empty smile hovering, a hint of
patronization in his wide blue eyes.
    I sat puzzling over it, wondering
if there was anything to worry about at all. Perhaps she’d been in a hurry and
asked Brent to write the note. But that soup! Jeesh! That was rather old .
Mona would never have expected me to eat that!
    There was a thump from downstairs.
    My heart leapt in my chest. Sticky
had fallen over!
    I scrambled out of the tiny room,
down the stairs, and stopped, rigid with shock.
    A man was standing in a corner of the
room, his back to the wall, one arm in mid-stretch, a hand splayed towards the
window, a tiny track of dried blood on the pale skin like an old wound
carelessly treated.
    This was one of those moments where a whole lot of things happen – and they’re
all in your mind; physically nothing moves. Fright stopped my breath. All I
could think of was the deadbolt on the front door. It was still locked. How had
he gotten in? Had I been careless? Who was he? What did he want? Should I be
frightened? Why shouldn’t I be frightened? Was I in danger? Would he
attack?
    Most pertinent thought: I didn’t
have a weapon.
    Our eyes locked in equal shock. The
muscles in my neck contracted in such painful spasm I thought I was already
being strangled. My voice came out in a tight shriek, ‘ What are you doing here? ’
    Shadows swooped. The man was the
only thing I could see. He was pressed so close to the wall it looked as though
he was trying to hide. Sticky, the alert guard dog, was engrossed in balancing
on three legs and eating his supper. He seemed not to notice there was an extra
person in the room.
    Bizarrely, the man said, ‘It’s all
right.’
    He stepped away from the wall. He was
tall, at least six one or two, and slender with long arms, rangy shoulders. Longish
brown hair touched his collar, the trim of a thin black beard framing his face.
He was wearing dark grey trousers and a light grey shirt, both smeared with
stains. One shirt sleeve was torn across the shoulder. I could see the white of
a t-shirt or vest beneath. As he held out one large hand towards me in what
seemed a soothing gesture, I found my voice.
    ‘You get out ,’ I hissed. ‘You
get out now before I call the police.’
    The big hand wavered, the soothing
motion now more urgent, a definite signal to shush. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
    ‘You fuck off, you bastard!’
My voice lifted to a squeal. This couldn’t be happening! I was blinded by fright,
outraged. Terror washed through me, bone by