Stop Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

right now. The TV news had rekindled a dread that he thought he’d got used to but which was still waiting for him as keenly and as undiluted as it had on those days directly after what had happened.
    The room closed around the faces in his foreground and when he avoided their eyes he was looking at a plate of food that he knew he couldn’t force himself to eat.
    He excused himself and, feeling his wife’s eyes on him, walked as calmly as he could out of the room and headed to the downstairs toilet – but his cheeks burnt even in the cool atmosphere there.
    He caught himself in the mirror, something he’d been avoiding for some time. He wondered what his wife saw when she looked at him. She’d stopped telling him the lines on his fifty-five-year-old features were distinguished anymore but she was the last person to stop recognising him. He’d not been able to for years.
    He felt the weight of the deception as if it hung in a heavy bag hooked to his stomach. He lifted the seat to vomit.
    * * *
    Leo ground another meal to paste and surveyed four corridors from eight different angles. He looked at the tortilla wrap in his hand to remind himself what he was eating and waited for the black and white images on the monitors in front of him to change. They did at the exact second he knew they would. He didn’t even have to count now; his brain was completely attuned to their rhythm.
    The cleaners would be coming in soon. His body clock told him this because he felt suddenly alert and it was just at the end of his shift that he was the most awake. With the effects of the pills completely wearing off it lasted about half an hour before he could get home and swallow some more.
    He wondered how pleased his employers would be to know that he dozed and hallucinated for the majority of his shift but woke up when there were other employees in the building.
    The images on the screen changed again.
    If a cleaner appears in the next five seconds it means Laura’s dead.
    Leo held his breath but no figure appeared. He felt a slight relief as he breathed out. The darker perspective of the shadowy warehouse fire exits highlighted the reflection of his sun-starved features. Ashley said he lacked Vitamin D and had bought him a canister of supplements. Figuring his insides probably already resembled a chalk landscape, he’d never taken any.
    Moments of clarity, that’s what he hated about the last half hour. He used to have a nightmare when he was a kid. It was about somebody breaking in through the back door. The frosted pane revealed only the dark shape of the intruder but the worst part was not only that he couldn’t move as the rattles of the handle became more aggressive, but that his eyes felt like they could only open a crack as he struggled to glimpse the figure as the door opened. He never did see the intruder but nowadays it was being able to open his eyes that brought him the closest to panic.
    He pictured Matty talking to Carla while the twins dangled from him and him telling her about his visit to Leo and how he’d tried his best. He tried not to imagineMolly and Greg’s disappointment. They were sweet kids but Leo didn’t trust himself not to disappoint them for real. The medication affected his moods but he knew it was more about trying to keep his patience in check with Matty rather than the kids. It annoyed Leo that Matty pretended to be their real father when actually he had only inherited the perfect family, refusing to acknowledge the spectre of Carla’s ex and the fact that she’d brought them up perfectly well before he’d sidled onto the scene.
    He peered past his reflection and into the shadows of the warehouse and felt a familiar sensation of inertia – waiting for something that wasn’t about to happen. Then the phone rang. It rarely did and its strident sound kick-started his circulation.
    ‘Security?’
    ‘Leo?’
    He recognised the dried out husk of her voice immediately. ‘Hello, Maggie.’
    ‘I’m