Free A Taste for Malice by Michael J. Malone Page B

psychologists. Her referral had come through at last. Part of her rehabilitation was to work on regaining her long-term memory and improving her short-term memory. Jim had been unable to get time off work to go with her. Any more time off and he was sure his bosses would lose their patience. So he’d ordered a taxi to pick her up and to take her back home. It would do until other arrangements could be made. He’d heard of a local charity that helped people in this situation. He’d give them a call. Perhaps he should phone home to make sure that Angela had gotten home safely. Just as he reached for the phone it rang.
    ‘Jim,’ it was Annette down on the shop floor. ‘Look on your CCTV monitor.’
    ‘What exactly am I looking for?’ He looked at the small black box to the right of his PC, which displayed several views from the shop on its 10-inch screen.
    ‘To the right of the doors. At the three-for-two section.’
    ‘Yeah?’ Mr irritable was coming back. There’d better be a point to this.
    ‘Is that…your wife … Angela?’
    ‘Eh?’ He squinted…and there sure enough was his wife picking a book from the shelf. But she looked different, smaller somehow. And as if she’d just stepped fully clothed from a swimming pool.
    ‘I’ll be right down.’
    When she saw him walking towards her Angela twitched a smile.
    ‘So this is where you work?’ Her eyes looked anywhere but into his face. ‘Nice. I wrote it down. In case I got lost.’ She reached into the pocket of her jeans, while looking into the distance. Her hand came out empty. Her eyes told him that she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. ‘Must be lovely working with all these books.’ She looked around at the well-stacked shelves, her eyes darting from book spine to book spine like a literary bluebottle. Her arms were folded tight across her chest.
    ‘Hey. What are you doing here? What’s wrong, honey? How did you get so …?’
    ‘I felt good. Strong …you know. I wanted to see where you worked. I wrote it down and everything.’ A sob escaped from her lips. ‘It’s raining …and I got lost.’ She closed her eyes against the flow of tears. Jim drew her into his chest. Her shoulders shook with emotion.
    ‘C’mon. Let’s go up to my office and have a wee bit of privacy,’ said Jim.
    In the office, Jim sat her on a rickety blue computer chair — facing his own rickety blue computer chair. Handing her a cup of water he said in as calm a tone as he could muster, ‘Okay. Tell me everything from the start.’
    Angela shook her head slowly from side to side, closed her eyes and scrunched up her mouth. Then she bent forward, elbows on her thighs and fingers gripping her head through her soaking hair.
    ‘I can’t remember,’ she said in a strangled whisper. Then louder. ‘I can’t fucking remember.’ Then a whisper with her head down, as she was examining the carpet. ‘Fucking cunt cunt cunt cunt.’
    ‘Your appointment was at ten this morning.’ He looked at his watch and ignored the words coming out of Angela’s mouth. Pre-accident Angela would have been as likely to say the “C” word as she would have been to give Ben a backhander. ‘And it’s now two-thirty. How long were you with the doctor for?’
    ‘Can’t remember.’
    Jim guessed it wouldn’t have been longer than an hour.
    Christ. She’d been walking the streets ever since then.
    ‘You must be …’
    ‘And on the way back I thought it would be nice to go and look at the shops. You know, act like a normal person instead of a …freak.’ She took a deep breath.
    ‘Then I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to come in and see you. Celebrate my return to the big bad world and all that.’ She took a sip from her water.
    ‘Is that okay? Would you rather have a coffee?’
    ‘No, this is fine. Thanks.’ Another sip. If she could have inhaled it Jim was sure she would have. ‘And I couldn’t find your shop. Couldn’t remember where it was.’ Her eyes looked tiny