Precious Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

being driven home inside. I don’t even try to flag one down. I just keep on walking. To your flat. Brunswick Place, number twenty-five. Top floor. I buzz outside and wait. I am supposed to be staying with you after all. I want to see if you are OK, but most of all I want to be warm and protected from the sea winds that are screaming through me right now. And I am tired of all this. So tired. I buzz again. No answer. I can’t give up. You must be there. I buzz on number twenty-seven.
    ‘Hello.’ The voice is male and impatient.
    ‘It’s Clara, from number twenty-five, can you buzz me in?’
    ‘Where are your own bloody keys?’
    ‘My friend’s inside with them, she must have fallen asleep.’
    ‘Lucky her,’ I hear the voice say at the same time as the door buzzes. I push it open and climb the stairs to your flat. You used to keep a spare key above the door frame so I reach up and sweep my fingers along it. Nothing. Then I knock again and again before I slump down and pull my knees into my chest and my eyes close on me.
    I don’t stay there all night. I wake up, my back cold from leaning against the wall, my bum aching from the hard floor. I call a cab and tell the driver to take me to The Old Ship Hotel because it’s the first one that springs to mind.
    When I arrive I see the receptionist has nightshift bags under her eyes, yellow-blond hair with dark roots and a red lipstick, too bright for her pale complexion. I wait for her to say hello and when she doesn’t I ask for a room.
    ‘What kind of room? Single, twin, double?’ The questions are fired like bullets. Her accent is strong, Eastern European. I am about to interject but she carries on. ‘Breakfast? Do want a paper? What kind of paper would you want?’
    ‘Just a room thanks, that’s all.’
    She rolls her eyes and makes a pouf sound through her teeth.
    ‘Sign here. Address. And I will need a card from you.’
    I do as I’m told and she throws a key card across the counter. Then I am in the lift and opening a door on room 312 and falling on a bed. I may have glanced at the clock before I closed my eyes. It may have said one twenty-eight a.m. But I couldn’t be sure. I’m asleep within seconds.
    So I didn’t see you that night. I wish I had. More than anything I wish I had. Because I know now that you must have seen me.

Chapter Three
    A NOISE DRILLED through my thoughts. A hand on my shoulder shook me gently. I heard a jumble of words. My brain struggled to assemble them in order.
    ‘You need to get ready, Rachel, they’re coming to you live in a few minutes, off the back of the press conference.’
    I waited. Something turned over in my head, then an explosion. I don’t think I screamed, not out loud but inside, that was where it was all happening. I looked up at the figure looming over me. The familiar features, the bitter chocolate of his eyes, the flop of his hair falling down on to his forehead. The ‘surfer at work’ look. Jake Roberts, my producer. His presence belonged to another day. All the other days when we worked as a team, when I could function and do my job.
    He thrust a black rectangle into my hand. ‘Get hooked up, they’ll be with you in minutes,’ he said.
    I held it out in front of me. The receiver that connected me to the gallery, to the presenter, and allowed me to hear them. The earpiece attached to it would be fitted in my ear. It was the equipment I used every day to do my job. He wanted me to go live on air and talk about the disappearance of a young woman. To talk about you.
    I couldn’t even begin to explain to Jake what had happened. The seismic shift that had taken place. Not there, not in the minute I had before I went on air. How your face had assaulted me in a way all the others didn’t. All those women, children, mothers, fathers, blond, black, smiling, scowling, all those people who had ‘everything to live for’ but didn’t live any more. People who had been abducted, murdered, attacked. I’d