Free Before I Let You In by Jenny Blackhurst Page A

didn’t dream again. Then at work the next day I checked my Amazon account – I thought if I did it with plenty of people around, there was less chance of me losing it again if I saw the book on there. But there was nothing. Well, nothing but the book I’d originally ordered – the one I thought I was pulling out of the package.’
    ‘Didn’t you check it when it arrived? How come you didn’t realise it was the wrong one then?’
    ‘That’s why it was in the bathroom.’ Bea winced as one of the foil letters stuck to her fingers. ‘Oh crap – I hope we have spares of these things. I’d taken it up to the loo to open it the night before, ripped it open, then heard Game of Thrones starting in the living room and just shoved it on the shelf.’
    ‘Must have been a mistake then; they sent you the wrong one.’ Noah started to grizzle, and Eleanor propped him up in his inflatable ring before it could turn into a full-on howl. She was still getting used to a baby’s attention span; it seemed like Toby had been so much more content to sit and play, but of course he’d been much older. This was uncharted territory. ‘You should have called me. Did you tell Fran?’
    It was clear from the way Bea hesitated that she still hadn’t told her sister about what had happened to her – not this week, but sixteen years ago.
    ‘I thought you were closer to Fran these days?’
    Bea nodded. ‘We are closer, but it happened so long ago, how do you bring that sort of thing up? “Hey, Fran, guess what …”’ She trailed off, unable to be flippant about what had happened to her a lifetime ago. Which just showed how much it still affected her, Eleanor thought; Bea could be flippant about just about any situation, no matter how bad. Sometimes it made her and Karen cringe, the way she could joke about the most sensitive of subjects; but not this.
    It had worried them both at the time that she’d never reported what had happened – she’d just turned up at Eleanor’s parents’ home one Sunday morning in such a frightening state that Eleanor had been on the phone to Karen before Bea had made it up the driveway. Karen had taken the first train back from Sheffield, where she was at university, and instantly insisted that Bea went to the police, but she’d refused. Who’d believe me when I can’t even remember what happened? It’d be my word against his – and everyone could see what a state I was in. I’d be the drunken slag who cried rape – it’d be me who suffered and he’d be the victim. I won’t give him that satisfaction.
    Eleanor hadn’t agreed, but at least she’d understood. Karen had pretended to as well, but they all knew that in her black and white world, if someone had committed a crime they should be punished. There was no awful grey area where a girl whose only crime was to have too much to drink got torn apart in the court of human opinion.
    As if reading Eleanor’s mind, Bea leaned forward and lowered her voice.
    ‘Look, you won’t tell Karen about this, will you? I don’t really have the energy to be psychoanalysed today.’
    Eleanor nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. Karen was amazing, the first person everyone turned to in a crisis. She always knew exactly what to do, but sometimes her concern could be a bit, well, suffocating.
    ‘No problem. I think you should just put it down to the stress at work – your prick of a boss stirring up old wounds or whatever the saying is – and the shock of seeing that book you hadn’t ordered. I don’t think you need to worry that the nightmares will start again. After all, you slept okay last night, didn’t you?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Bea nodded, reaching out to pick Noah up from the mat. ‘I don’t need to dissect it – all that “How does that make you feel?” bull. I just want to forget about it.’
    ‘Forget about what?’ Karen’s voice came from the doorway, and both women’s heads snapped up in shock. Bea shoved the banner under the sofa