Truth Dare Kill Read Online Free PDF Page B

red and sweaty. I cut a channel for us through the smoke and the crowd and found a tiny bit of corner space with a shelf.
    “Whisky, Jock?” mouthed Terry, the bald barman. I raised two fingers twice. He got the drift and two double scotches hit my hands. He whistled when I handed him the big new fiver and checked it against the light. He nodded and rang me up the change. I fought my way back to her and perched the glasses on the shelf.
    In the heavy air her pale skin was already going pink under the eyes. The hair was gypsy black, like the Catholic girls I used to know in Glasgow. Her eyes were dark brown, not washed out like Kate Graveney’s. Two pretty women cross my path in one evening. Maybe the new year wasn’t going to be all bad?
    “Cheers!” I clacked my glass against hers. She smiled and toasted me back. She took a swig and choked and spluttered but held it down. This time the colour spread across her face and down her white neck. Someone called for quiet and several others joined in and suddenly there was still. Terry was twisting at the dial of the radio. The sound of Big Ben’s midnight chimes bonged through the waiting bar. As the last one fell, a cheer went up. Happy New Year!
    I raised my glass and shouted, “Here’s to you, Tam and Archie!” as I promised I’d do every Ne’erday till I joined them – wherever they were.
    People started embracing and kissing and weeping. Val didn’t seem to be too put off by what she’d seen of me in the light, so I leaned in to give her a quick kiss. She smiled, but like a flash, got her finger across her lips. Too hasty, that’s me. I saw her eyes brim and turned away so she couldn’t see my own tears welling. A maudlin Scot at Hogmanay. Silently I sent word to my mother, and hoped the neighbours were looking after her.
    We had another drink and tried to talk but it was like shouting into a Hampden roar. So we gave up and just smiled at each other and at all the daft folk around us and I shook hands with strangers and for a moment I seemed to lose her to drunks. Then she returned to me flushed and flustered. They started singing, all those Vera Lynn songs, trying to recapture the best bits of the war, when we were all in the same boat rowing the same way. But I’d heard “Tipperary” and “White Cliffs” murdered once too often. I sank my scotch and nodded towards the door.
    We walked back to my place without saying anything, without agreeing anything. I lit a fire and we sat gazing into it, supping more Scotch. We saw our own past in the flames and hoped
    well, all I was hoping was to wake up beside her. But she made it clear there would be no hanky-panky. She stayed with me anyway, dancing out of her top clothes in front of the sparking fire. She kept on her slip and slid shivering between my cold sheets. We lay like orphans, the folds between us, spooned but passion-free, just glad to share a bed against the dark.
    Her thin limbs shook until our bodies made a bubble of warmth under the heavy blankets.
    I smelt the fag smoke on her hair and the cheap scent on the skin of her neck and gladly relinquished the memory of Kate’s costly perfume. We began to drowse.
    A big spark would shake us and make her twitch. I’d shush her like a pony and she’d subside again. The fire dwindled and the shadows deepened. Her trembling eased and stopped, and sleep took us both.
    The morning light woke me. But Valerie was gone.

FOUR
    The first day of the year. The wireless was being determinedly cheerful: bells of liberty ringing across Europe
    first year without war since 1939, and other such breathless stuff. I switched it off. Here in liberated south London the streets were quieter than normal as the good citizens grappled with a massive hangover. But the buses were running and I could hear the steady rise in volume as folk battled into work. The Blitz couldn’t stop them. Why would a sore head?
    But I knew full well that in Scotland, it would be graveyard quiet; New Year’s day was a