The Bone Clocks Read Online Free PDF Page A

hallucinations—“daymares”—were not uncommon in girls my age. He told me that Susan Hillage’s accident was a big coincidence, and that coincidences even of this size were happening to people all over the world, right now; my turn had come, that was all. Mam asked if there was any medicine to stop these daymares, and I remember Dr. Marinus saying that, before we went down that route, he’d like to try a simpler technique from “the Old Country.” It worked like acupuncture, he said, but it didn’t use needles. He got Mam to squeeze a point on my middle finger—he marked it with a Biro—then touched a place on my forehead, in the middle, with his thumb. Like an artist putting on a dab of paint. My eyes shut …
    … and the Radio People were gone. Not just quiet, but gone-gone. Mam knew from my face what’d happened, and she was as shocked and relieved as me. She was all, “Is that it? No wires, no pills?” Dr. Marinus said, Yes, that ought to do the job.
    I asked if Miss Constantin’d gone forever, too.
    The doctor said, Yes, for the foreseeable future.
    The End. We left, I grew up, and neither the Radio People nor Miss Constantin ever came back. I saw a few documentaries and stuff about how the mind plays tricks on you, and now I know that Miss Constantin was just a sort of imaginary friend—like Sharon’s Bunny Bunny Boing Boing—gone haywire. Susan Hillage’s accident was just a massive coincidence, like Dr. Marinus’d told me. She didn’t die, but moved to Ramsgate, though some people’d say it’s the same difference. Dr. Marinus did some sort of hypnotism thing on me, like those cassettes you can buy to stop yourself smoking. Mam stopped saying “Chink” from that day on, and even today she’s down like a ton of bricks on anyone who does. “It’s ‘Chinese’ not ‘Chink,’ ” she tells them, “and they’re the best doctors in the National Health.”
    M Y WATCH SAYS it’s one o’clock. Far behind me, stick-men are fishing in the shallows off Shornemead Fort. Up ahead’s a gravel pit,with a big cone of stone and a conveyor belt feeding a barge. I can see Cliffe Fort, too, with windows like empty eye sockets. Old Mr. Sharkey says it used to house antiaircraft batteries in the war, and when people in Gravesend heard the big guns, they knew they had sixty seconds—tops—to get into their air-raid shelters under the stairs or down the garden. Wish a bomb’d fall on a certain house in Peacock Street, right now. Bet they’re scoffing pizza for lunch—Vinny lives on pizza ’cause he can’t be arsed to cook. Bet they’re laughing about me. I wonder if Stella stayed over last night. You just fall in love with each other, I thought, and that’s all there is to it. Stupid.
Stupid!
I kick a stone but it’s not a stone, it’s a little outcrop of rock that mashes my toe. Pain draws a jagged line up to my brain. And now my eyes are hot and watering—where’s all the water coming from, f’Chrissakes? The only water I’ve drunk today is when I cleaned my teeth and the milk on my Weetabix. My tongue’s like that oasis stuff they use for flower arranging. My duffel bag’s rubbing a sore patch on my shoulder. My heart’s a clubbed baby seal. My stomach must be empty, but I’m too miserable to feel it yet. I’m not turning round and going home, though. No bloody way.
    B Y THREE O ’ CLOCK , my whole head’s parched, not just my mouth. I’ve never walked so far in my life, I reckon. There’s no sign of a shop or even a house where I can ask for a glass of water. Then I notice a small woman fishing off the end of a jetty thing, like she’s sort of sketched into the corner where nobody’ll spot her. She’s a long stone-throw away, but I see her fill a cup from a flask. I’d never normally do this but I’m
so
thirsty that I walk down the embankment and along the jetty up to her, clomping my feet on the old wooden planks so as not to scare her. “ ’Scuse me, but could you