Three Steps Behind You Read Online Free PDF

clang sounds for the start of the ride. I will not let her out of my sight. This is about the chase, the thrill of pursuit. Nicole takes the car up to the other end of the rink. I follow. Round the corner she goes. I am there.
You’re meant to crash into each other
, she said, so I do. She jolts forward in the car, casts a look behind her then sets off again. I am with her, there, behind her, then parallel. I bump her again, she jolts again. She looks back, then quickly steers away from me, up to the other side of the rink. I speed after her, and catching up with her, ram her into a corner.
    ‘Hey!’ she says.
    I retreat, then ram the car again.
    ‘Stop it!’ she shouts. The attendant starts to come out of his little hut. I back off, and let her move away from the edge of the rink. I zoom down the opposite end of the rink, then do a U-turn. She is coming down the rink in the opposite direction. I carry on, full speed. She is closer, closer, tries move away but I am too quick. I ram into her full speed, a head-on collision, and she jerks forward in the dodgem, hair flying over her face.
    When she looks up at me again, I see the edge of her lip is bleeding. Her skin is white and her eyes are wide. She looks like she is seeing me, all of me, for the first time. And doesn’t like what she sees.

Chapter 10
    Nicole is edgy, nervous, when we come off the ride. She won’t look me square in the face. Her eyes dart about. I can understand why, what she might be thinking, what suspicions me crashing the car into her might have triggered, but she will not be the one to mention it; she might just be being stupid, I imagine her thinking. Instead, she flits from conversation to conversation. I hear from her about the weather, the clothes people are wearing, what she plans to order from Ocado this week. In short, everything but nothing. I wish she’d shut up. I bet Adam must do too, sometimes.
    I try to block out Nicole’s jabbering, working on book four in my head.
    Luke takes the black scarf, similar to the one that binds his lover’s hands, and ties it round her mouth. It acts as a gag, and her cries are silenced
.
    Would a scarf act as a gag, though? Or would she still be able to cry out? Hands are best to drown out cries, but then you don’t have them to manoeuvre your lover. And they can bite, quite hard. So I’ve heard. Those ball things you get on gimp masks, that’s what they’re for, I guess. ‘A ball in the mouth keeps a lady silent.’ I could do advertising, if they sack me over the punching incident. I zone back in to Nicole’s conversation when she starts asking me questions.
    ‘Maybe you should learn to drive before you next go on the dodgems, hey?’ she asks, laughing. But the laugh doesn’t work. It is too forced and does not change that expression in her eyes, half fear, half excitement.
    ‘You don’t drive, either, do you?’ I ask, knowing the answer. But that is what small talk is – asking questions you don’t care about, to get information you already know, while a subtext bubbles underneath.
    ‘No,’ she says. ‘I didn’t before, and I certainly wouldn’t now.’
    Now means, of course, post-Helen. The roads being too full of dangerously innocent cyclists.
    ‘In that case, we’re fully dependent on others, you and I,’ I say. ‘Let’s catch the bus back, see how Adam’s getting on.’
    She pauses, then starts jabbering again.
    ‘Actually, do you know what? I think I’ll grab a cab. Save you the bother. There’s one!’
    She raises her arm to flag down a passing taxi, desperate to get away. Her watch flashes in the light, a silvery-grey streak. I wonder what it would be like if that streak were red, how much blood there would be. The taxi stops and its lobster-orange light is darkened. Nicole disappears into it and slams the door, leaving me alone on the curb. Not, perhaps, a triumph for Luke, but it’s not over yet, his relationship with her.
    I decide not to go straight home.