The Skin Map Read Online Free PDF Page B

replied sweetly. “Liar! Why should I believe this load of old rubbish? Give me one good reason.” She glared defiantly. “Liar!”
    Her disbelief angered him and he was seized by a powerful compulsion to make her understand. In that instant, he realised he simply could not carry the weight of the experience on his own. Nothing else mattered but that she should know he was telling the truth—as if getting another human being to acknowledge what had happened to him would make it more believable to himself.
    Gripped by this conviction, he leapt to his feet. “I’ll do better than that,” he declared. “I’ll show you.”
    “Yeah, right.” She yawned. “Pull the other one—it’s got bells on.”
    “No, really. I’ll show you.” He crossed the room and lifted her green blazer from the coat stand. “Here, take this. It’s likely to be raining when we get there.”
    “Might as well. The day is shot anyway.” She yawned again, rose lethargically, and padded after him. “Where are we going again?”
    “You’ll see.”
    A quick tube journey followed, and soon the two were marching along Grafton Street in search of Stane Way. “It’s just along here,” Kit assured her.
    “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Mina said. “As if I didn’t have better things to do.”
    “You don’t, honest,” he said, her reluctance forcing him to become a cheerleader for the expedition. “This’ll be fun, I promise.”
    “Quit saying that—because so far it isn’t.”
    “C’mon, Mina,” he cajoled. “Just think—you’ll get to see some fetching landscape, have a nice cream tea somewhere, and a walk in the fresh sea air. You’ll like it. It’ll be fun.”
    By way of reply she scowled and gave him a smack on the arm.
    “Ow! What was that for?”
    “I warned you,” she said, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. “Anyway, I don’t want to go to the seaside, thanks all the same.”
    “You’ve got to see this.”
    “So is he going to be there?”
    “Who?”
    “The bloody pope!”
    “You mean my great-grandfather?”
    “Who else?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “Then again, maybe.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “If I said I believed you,” Mina ventured, “would we have to go through with this?”
    “You make it sound like an ordeal,” he countered. “This’ll be”—he saw her eyes glint dangerously, and abruptly changed tack—“an education.”
    They walked on. A few hundred yards later, Kit spied the street sign for Stane Way. “Look! This is where it happened—or hereabouts.” He stepped to the mouth of the alley and started down the long, shadowed street. “This way, and don’t worry—it’s not as bad as it looks.”
    They walked a short way, the shadows deepening around them.
    “My, this is a lovely spot.” Mina stepped over a plastic carrier bag spilling sandwich boxes and crisp packets onto the pavement. “Why haven’t you brought me here before?”
    “Just keep walking.”
    “You’re gonna make this up to me, boy,” Mina warned. “And it’s gonna take more than a cup of tea and a microwaved scone.”
    Kit was striding down the middle of the alleyway with big, exaggerated steps. She followed, imitating his walk—more from boredom than conviction. “I don’t know if it will work,” he called back to her. “I was closer to the other end when it happened.”
    “When what happened, exactly?”
    “This fierce little storm boiled up out of nowhere, and—”
    “What?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the sound of the wind just then gusting down the alleyway.
    “I said,” he shouted back, “a storm came along—”
    “Like this one, you mean?” she hollered, shouting at the top of her lungs.
    He stopped. The storm! Black clouds roiled above them, a wild wind screamed through the gap between the buildings, and it started to rain. “This way!” he yelled. “Do you feel it?”
    “What?” cried Wilhelmina,