The Risk of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

bloody jumping.”
    Natalie was trying out a new recipe. She did it all the time. Cooking was the only thing she enjoyed so much she forgot where she was and that she was on her own with Kyra, jump-jump-bloody jump. In her head, she had her own restaurant, or maybe a catering business doing dinners and weddings. No, not weddings, she didn’t want to do Chicken à la King for a hundred, she wanted to do this Barbados BakedFish with Stuffed Peppers for four. Or six. It was fiddly and the fish wasn’t the right sort, she could only get haddock, but she liked trying out things she’d never heard of to see how they came up. Then it would go down in her book, the book she was going to use for showing people what she could do. For when she started up her own business. Super Suppers.
    She started coring the green peppers.
    Kyra jumped until the timer fell off the shelf.
    “KYRA …”
    Kyra seized her moment and ran.
    Next door on one side, Bob Mitchell was cleaning his car. He saw Kyra and turned the hose slowly, slowly towards her but she knew he wouldn’t really soak her. She stuck out her tongue. Mel was shutting the gate of the house opposite.
    “Hello, Mel.”
    “Hi, Kyra.”
    “You look ever so nice.”
    “Thanks, babe.”
    “I got a new hair scrunchy Mel.”
    “Cool. OK then, babe, see ya.”
    “See ya, Mel.”
    Mel was sixteen and looked like a model. Kyra’s mother had said she’d kill for Mel’s legs.
    Ed’s car wasn’t in the drive. Kyra wandered up the front path, hesitated, then went round the back. Maybe …
    But Ed wasn’t in. She’d known really.
    She tapped on the back door and waited just in case, but there wasn’t any point. She wandered back. Bob Mitchell had gone in. There was nobody. Not even a cat.
    Natalie put the foil-wrapped fish into the oven and washed her hands. Kyra slipped in through the door like grease.
    “Told you,” Natalie said. She picked up the apple-shaped timer from the floor and turned it to thirty-five minutes, before going to watch the news.

Four
    “You have to understand,” Cat Deerbon said.
    “Lizzie isn’t going anywhere. I’m fine, I can manage.”
    “Then why did you call me?”
    Max Jameson stood at the far end of the long room, looking up at the floor-to-ceiling photograph of his wife. Lizzie herself was curled on the sofa under a blanket, sleeping after Cat had given her a sedative.
    “I know how hard this is, Max, believe me. You feel you’ve failed.”
    “No, I don’t. I haven’t failed.”
    “All right, you feel that by letting her go into the hospice you will have failed. But this is bad and it is going to get worse.”
    “So you’ve told me.”
    “If this were an easier place to live in …”
    “It’s the place she loves. She’s happy here, she’s never been so happy.”
    “Do you think she still is? Can’t you see how frightening it is for her? This huge space, those stairs, the height when she looks down from the bedroom … the slippery floors, the way the chrome shines in the kitchen, in the bathroom. Brightness is painful to her now, it actually hurts her.”
    “So they’d keep her in the dark, would they? At this hospice? It would be like going into prison.”
    Cat was silent. She had been with Max Jameson for forty minutes. When she had arrived, he had wept on her shoulder. Lizzie had been sick again and was sitting in the middle of the floor, where she had fallen, her leg bent under her. Amazingly, she was only shocked, not seriously hurt.
    “But how long before she falls down those stairs head first? Is that the way you want her life to end?”
    “Do you know …” Max turned to Cat and smiled. He was a tall man and had been handsome but now he was haggard with anxiety and fear. His face had sunken inwards and his shaved head had a blue sheen. “… I don’t actually want her life to end at all.”
    “Of course you don’t.”
    He walked slowly towards Cat, but then veered away again to return to the wall with the