The Quarry Read Online Free PDF

happy with who I am.)
    Though Hol looks flushed, she seems more alive than she did before, her facial expressions both more animated and drawing from a longer menu. Paul appears deliberately relaxed, as though his instinct is to shout and gesticulate but he’s decided not to.
    Guy put on what he calls his Sunday Best to be with the others: the trousers and waistcoat of an old three-piece, lavender-coloured suit and a dove-grey leather bomber jacket. These clothes date from twenty years ago when he was a size thirty waist the first time, but they hang off him now, he’s grown so gaunt. Most people who knew him from the old days and who haven’t seen him for the last few years tend to go quiet and look shocked when they see him because he’s lost so much weight and his face, which was always thin, now looks cadaverous. There are dark circles under his large, blue, hooded eyes and his skin is dry and flaky. His lips look bruised all the time.
    The people who don’t go quiet and look shocked when they first see him usually haven’t recognised him at all, and think he’s somebody much older.
    He wears a hat knitted from brown wool, to hide his baldness after the chemo treatment. He used to have long blond wavy hair he was very proud of. Originally the hat had a sort of woolly bobble on top like a little fronded pompom, but Guy thought that looked silly so he cut it off with a kitchen knife. As a result the hat has started to fray and unravel at the top, so you can see a little of his baldness through the two-pence-sized hole. Mrs Gunn and I have both offered to repair this – she was going to darn it (I’m not sure what that involves) and I could at least have sewn it back together – but Guy has refused so far. He can be stubborn. Hol says this is where I get it from.
    There’s no second bell, so I start to relax.
    ‘Did I hear a bell there?’ Hol asks nobody in particular.
    ‘Just Guy letting us know he’s on his way back,’ I tell her.
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Well, there is stuff we could talk about,’ Paul says, glancing at me. ‘But maybe not with Kit here.’
    ‘Ah,’ Haze says, ‘yeah. The, ah …’ He sticks a finger in his ear and waggles it this way and that. ‘The video. The tape, the … yeah.’ He looks round at the rest of them. ‘Yeah, that.’
    ‘Don’t see why we have to excuse Kit,’ Hol says, though she doesn’t sound very sure.
    ‘Oh,’ Paul says, smiling, ‘I think we do.’ He smiles at me. The rest look or glance at me.
    I’m feeling hot.
    Silence. Suddenly Alison leans over and glares at the bottom of the couch she and Rob are sat on, concentrating on the little fringe of grubby green tassels that hang down almost to the threadbare rug. ‘I thought I could feel a draught,’ she says. She nods at the fringe. ‘Those … That fringe is moving .’ She stands, then uses her knees and hands to push the sofa back, making it scrape on the floorboards.
    ‘ Now what are you doing?’ Rob asks her, tutting as he’s moved back along with the couch. He is holding a glass of gin and orange juice.
    ‘Yeah, don’t offer to help or anything, lover,’ Alison says, pulling the rug back. ‘Look!’ She nods down at the floor. ‘There’s a damn great hole.’
    We all sit forward, crane our necks; whatever. There is a fist-sized hole in the floorboards there.
    ‘That’s where a large knot fell out,’ I tell them. ‘Out of the floorboard,’ I add, which is probably unnecessary, though on the other hand they are all quite drunk. ‘Though if you ask Guy he’ll tell you a rat gnawed it.’
    ‘What?’ Alison asks, looking horrified.
    ‘Definitely a knot, though,’ I tell her. ‘No teethmarks.’
    ‘Jesus,’ Alison says, and starts trying to pull the sofa back to where it was, grunting.
    ‘Fucking place is falling apart,’ Paul says, looking around.
    ‘Yeah, well,’ Haze says.
    ‘Guy says he doesn’t think they’ll need to actually pull the house down,’ I tell them (they all