Walkers Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mexican dancers, and down the end to the
bathroom.
    ‘Is Susan going to your barbecue?’
her grandmother asked, busily flapping her duster.
    ‘She said she would,’ Daffy replied.
She hesitated by the bathroom door, and then knocked. ‘Susan? Are you okay?’
    ‘She’s taking a shower,’ said her
grandmother, testily. ‘Of course, I’ve only just cleaned up the bathroom. Now what
am I going to get, soap all over the tiles and hair in the wastepipe. Not to
mention the wet towels all over the floor. She really has to be the messiest
girl ever.’
    ‘Susan?’ Daffy repeated.
    ‘Go on in,’ said Susan’s
grandmother. ‘She probably can’t hear you because of the water.’
    Daffy opened the door and peered
into the bathroom. The shower was clattering loudly and the room was clouded
with steam.
    ‘Susan?’ she called again, and
stepped inside. For some reason, she began to feel frightened, and she suddenly
thought about the story that Susan had told her. The dead girl, eaten by eels.
The policeman, whose face had been half bitten off. The glass door of the
shower-stall was obscured with steam, although Daffy thought that she could
make out a pink shape on the other side of it, which must be Susan.
    Her throat was constricted with
alarm. She slowly approached the shower, and knocked tentatively at the glass.
‘Susan? Suze? Are you okay?’
    At that moment, there was a
hair-raising moan, and Daffy jumped away from the shower and whispered, ‘Oh,
Jesus.’ But then the moan was followed by an anguished, suppressed sobbing, and
Daffy tugged open the shower door to find Susan crouched on the tiled floor,
her legs drawn up, her hands clutched over her head, shivering and weeping with
delayed shock.
    Daffy turned off the faucet, and
then reached over to the rail and dragged a large bath-towel off it, which she
wrapped around Susan’s shoulders.
    ‘Susan, come on; you’re upset,
that’s all. Susan, it’s Daffy. Come on, baby, let’s get you out of here.’
    Susan numbly and shakily allowed
Daffy to lift her up, and half carry her out of the bathroom. They encountered
her grandmother as they came down the hallway, and for one split-second the old
lady was going to protest about Susan’s wet feet on the carpet, until she saw
how white and distressed Susan was, and how determined the challenge was on
Daffy’s face.
    ‘What on earth’s the matter?’
    ‘She fainted, that’s all. Her
period.’ For some reason Daffy was reluctant to tell Susan’s grandmother about
the body on the beach. Between them, they helped Susan into her bedroom, and
quickly dried her off. Susan’s grandmother searched through the untidy heaps of
clothes in her closet drawers, until she found a striped nightshirt, which
Daffy pulled over Susan’s head.
    ‘Maybe I ought to call Dr Emanuel,’
said Susan’s grandmother, anxiously.
    Susan opened her eyes. Her
fragmented thoughts were beginning to slide back into place again, like the
film of a car-bomb explosion being played slowly in reverse. She found that she
could focus again, and that sounds coagulated into words. She recognised Daffy,
sitting on the end of the bed smiling at her. She recognised her grandmother,
peering at her from a safe distance through her gold-framed spectacles, as if
she were worried that whatever she was suffering from might be contagious.
    ‘Did I faint?’ she asked, with a dry
mouth. ‘I thought I was someplace else.’
    Daffy squeezed her hand. ‘You’re
okay now. You’ll live. But you gave me a scare, I can tell you. Would you like
some coffee?’
    Susan nodded. ‘That would be great.’
    Her grandmother said, ‘I’ll fix it,’
pleased to have something to do that didn’t actually involve nursing. She
fretted endlessly about her own ailments, but she was totally squeamish when
other people were sick. She wobbled off to the kitchen in her bright pink
tracksuit, leaving the door open.
    Daffy told Susan, ‘Get under the
blanket. You need to keep