Free House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill Page B

Incongruously, self-pity filled her with what felt like helium and a brief euphoria.
    She ruffled two twenties on to the table.
Thank fuck you’ve got cash.
The thought of a card transaction nearly made her scream with horrible laughter.
You’d have me
operate a machine with these hands?
    She knew she wouldn’t get across the room and to the door on her heels. Her humiliation at the table wasn’t sufficient, the universe wanted her down on her hands and knees, sobbing
as strangers grinned.
    Why?
    Because he’s found someone else.
    You are too intense, you are exhausting, you are pessimistic, you are depressing, you are strange, no one actually wants you around once they get to know you.
    He’s met someone else. He’s been withdrawn for weeks. Should have trusted your instincts. You suppressed them as an unhealthy paranoia, just like you’ve been shown how
to.
    He’s met someone else to have children with.
    Because you miscarried.
    She walked home, pressed into the cold brick walls of the town that seemed to be a thousand miles long, and she looked at a blurred and watery world but didn’t see much of it at all.

 
FOURTEEN
    Catherine got to her bedroom with a bottle of lemon vodka and yanked the curtains closed. Outside, a group of laughing men walked under her window.
    She freed herself from the skirt that had been a hobble the moment she put it on, a fool’s tapered manacle. She tugged both stockings down her legs and fell upon the bed. Rolled on to her
side and choked as much as cried.
    A sudden thought made her snatch at her BlackBerry and she scrolled through menus to delete the folder that contained all of
his
messages. Get them out now so there would be no time
spent trawling through them and imagining clues in the coming months, or even years. But her hands were shaking too much to operate the ridiculous keypad. She let it drop to the floor.
    How could he? Why? Is there someone else? Who? It’s not possible, because of . . .
started until her head hurt and she ran out of conspiracies and clues.
    She stayed on the bed until it was dark, sipped the vodka. When her phone chimed the arrival of a text message, she scrambled undignified amongst the detritus of her outfit, shoes and underwear
on the floor. It was a message from a company asking her to claim compensation for being mis-sold insurance. She sent the word CUNTS back to them. Then felt the urge to send messages to Mike.
    Tell him you’re pregnant again.
    Silence and indifference are the greatest weapons.
    She deleted the three lines of text she’d composed. Even in her grief, their churlish and pathetic sentiment shocked her into the first assault of self-loathing. And that’s when it
really went wrong. She felt her own gears changing and the engine of her heart revving to reach despair as quickly as possible. Nought to sixty in three seconds.
    Put me in a case with the kittens. So I can be safe from the pain. I can wear a pretty dress and have big open eyes and never have to go out again. Because there’s
not enough of me left to take any more pain. I’m done.
    She stood up and tried to run for the kitchen and the scissors with the orange plastic handles. But weaved. Her legs felt useless. ‘Fat bitch,’ she said at herself. She’d been
brought back down to size, so it was time to cut herself down to an appropriate stature. At least
he’d
know why she did it.
    And in no time at all, she found herself standing on the kitchen lino in bare feet and holding the scissors that had almost leapt out of the rattling utensils drawer beside the sink. She held
the points of the scissors before her belly. Stared at them with horror. She knew she wouldn’t do it again. But at the same time a reckless hateful desire to punish herself made the closed
blades twitch.
    Each hand around the handles fought with the other. She imagined the metal going in, deep, and then she would turn it around inside and sever all the relevant tubes and she would put