Paradigm (9781909490406) Read Online Free PDF

was sore, but she didn’t feel sick any longer. As she blinked her eyes open, her mother was standing above her with a cup of tea. The steam twisted in circles dizzying upwards towards the ceiling.
    â€˜How are you feeling?’ she said and crouched down next to Alice.
    â€˜Tired—how long did I sleep for?’ Her voice came out as a whisper, raspy and hoarse.
    â€˜It’s five o’clock in the evening. I think you had a fever.’
    Alice looked out at the thick black clouds in the sky, drowned of stars.
    â€˜It’s so dark,’ she said.
    Her mother gently brushed her fringe away from her eyes. The bruise was a deep violet.
    â€˜Yes, it’s very dark. Most of the street lights are out.’
    â€˜But you’re not going out are you? Please?’
    Alice’s mother looked out of the window at the driving rain. ‘It still hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘We have electricity on and off, but the phone line isn’t working. I have to go out tonight, Alice. People need someone like me…’ Her voice disappeared into the pitter-patter of the rain.
    â€˜Can’t you stay home?’ pleaded Alice. ‘Please?’
    Her mother looked at Alice and then back out of the window. She hesitated for a while and Alice felt her lip quivering; she could see her mother’s hands were shaking as she combed her hair over the blue-black flower that was spreading down her face: the bruise that was as almost as dark as the sky.
    â€˜I have to, Alice. I’m sorry. The punters won’t wait because of the rain. The rain makes them impatient. And now there’s less chance of police out there.’ She handed Alice the tea and turned to leave, in a veil of perfume and a smudge of lipstick. She checked herself in a compact.
    â€˜I’m scared,’ said Alice, but it came out in a whisper.
    â€˜Don’t answer the door to anyone,’ called her mother, ‘and keep the windows shut.’ Then she slammed the door hard and left the echo reverberating through the room.
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    A s the evening turned into night, Alice burrowed herself deeper into the sofa, unable to steal enough strength to get her aching limbs up the stairs. She crawled into the kitchen to get a drink and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning and her mother still wasn’t home—but that wasn’t too unusual. The luminous green second hand scratched around with the rhythm of the rain and Alice gulped down two more glasses of water. She picked up the phone receiver but there was no sound.
    Outside in the street there was the noise of car alarms and shouting. There were two gunshots and then a loud explosion followed by the shattering of glass. Step by step, she felt her way back to the sofa and laid her head back down on the pillow. Although the pounding heaviness in her limbs was still there, it was noticeably less than before—but something inside her still felt wrong. Very wrong.
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    A lice slept intermittently for hours and when she fully woke, it was way past the time when the sun would usually clamber its ways over spires of the city and hang nervously in the folds of the sky. The night was fractured by frightening noises—sometimes she woke to hear the tick-tick-tick of hail against the window and other times to heavy feet outside and the banging of a fist on her front door.
    â€˜Is there anyone in there? Come on, get out here, we’re leaving!’
    The shouting was frightening, desperate and not the voice of her mother. Alice wrapped herself tighter in the blankets and pulled the pillow over her head. She heard the same voices calling along the corridor, banging on each of the doors in turn. Even if she had wanted to, Alice couldn’t move. Her legs felt glued together and full of cement.
    â€˜I’m fine,’ she said in a voice so timid that she wasn’t sure that she could even hear herself. ‘I’m fine.’ The sound of