Spiking the Girl Read Online Free PDF

tried to counter this memory with another: the sweet scene some days later at the hospital, where Steve had made it very clear to Lorraine that he loved Gemma, and Lorraine’s enraged response had been, ‘ You’re dead, bitch!’. But that memory wasn’t enough and it was too painful to stay in the past. Gemma forced herself back into the present.
    ‘Steve said he’s tired of being punished by me about something that meant nothing to him. He brought up how I’d endangered him last year. I let him have it about Lorraine Litchfield. Things went from bad to worse.’
    She shrugged, trying to minimise the pain of their fight. It was painful, too, to acknowledge that the memory of Lorraine Litchfield still exerted such a grip. Even though she’d completely disappeared from their lives like the thirteenth fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.
    Gemma bit into a pastry, still starving. ‘Steve got angry,’ she continued. ‘I got furious. He walked.’
    ‘Hey!’ Spinner interrupted. ‘We’re on!’
    On the laptop’s small screen, Daria Reynolds’s double bed and the dressing table beyond it could be seen. Then the screen changed as feed from the cameras at the front and back of the house rotated with the internal view. Anyone approaching the house from any direction would be captured on video. Anyone in the bedroom would be picked up by the camera in the clock radio.
    Satisfied with the reception from Daria Reynolds’s room, Spinner packed up his receiver, laptop and handycam while Gemma flicked through the completed cases.
    ‘I’ve never seen you like this,’ Spinner said. ‘Your colour’s lousy.’
    Suddenly his radio crackled. ‘Tracker Two here. Copy, please.’
    ‘Copy, Mike,’ Spinner responded. ‘What’s up?’
    The static behind Mike’s voice made him a little hard to hear. ‘I’m trying to contact Gemma. She’s off the air.’
    ‘She’s here with me. Stand by.’ Spinner handed Gemma the radio.
    ‘Mike?’
    ‘I’ve just had a call from a Mr Bertram Dowling. Wants to make an appointment with you.’
    ‘My diary’s on my desk. Try and fit him in tomorrow morning.’
    Spinner rehoused the radio.
    Gemma’s mobile rang and she switched it over to voice mail. Just a few moments, please, she thought, without being online to the whole world.
    ‘I’m sad, Spinner,’ she said. ‘My heart hasn’t accepted the news about Steve.’ She felt like crying and covered her face with her hands. She felt Spinner gently take them away.
    ‘Look,’ he said to her, still holding her hands, ‘I’m sure you could salvage things. Don’t ever lose hope.’
    ‘Don’t you dare go religious on me!’ she warned.
    ‘I wasn’t going to.’ He sounded hurt. ‘Remember I’m your friend as well as an employee. I know you. I know Steve.’ He relinquished her hands. ‘Have you ever thought,’ he asked ‘that maybe your attitude’s pushed Steve away?’
    ‘Me push him away? How do you work that out?’ Now she felt irritated.
    ‘Okay, okay,’ said Spinner. ‘I’m sorry. I was out of place.’
    ‘I’ve got to get going,’ she said, still unreasonably angry with him.
    She climbed out of the Rodeo and headed for her own car. Spinner gunned his engine and did a U-turn. As she sat in her car the reality of the break-up with Steve hit her like a dumper at Maroubra. The anger left her and suddenly she felt like howling.
    •
    An hour later, red-eyed but with fresh lipstick, Gemma drove through the grand entrance to Netherleigh Park Ladies’ College, past the letters carved in gold on the tall sandstone pillars of the wrought-iron gates. The main building was set back from the road and Gemma drove slowly past what had once been rolling lawns and playing fields but was now built up with modern additions. Behind her, the constant roar of the traffic dimmed to a distant hum, absorbed by greenery and dark, ancient Moreton Bay figs. The winding driveway ended at a magnificent Georgian mansion, the