I Know You. Annabel Kantaria

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СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Twenty-two

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       Thirty

       Thirty-one

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       Thirty-five

       Thirty-six

       Thirty-seven

       Thirty-eight

       Thirty-nine

       Forty

       Forty-one

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       Fifty

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       Acknowledgements

       About the Publisher

Prologue

      I stare at the computer screen, my eyes flicking as they keep up with the feeds rolling down the pages like ticker tape. The only movement in the room comes from my hand clicking on the mouse, and the occasional staccato burst of my fingers on the keyboard ringing out like gunfire in the silence of the house. Everything around me is still, which is exactly how I like it. The curtains are drawn, and just one beam of sunlight escaping through an imperceptible gap illuminates dust motes suspended in the stale air. Not that I notice. My attention is focused entirely on the 24-inch monitor I’ve angled to face me, the iPads on the desk next to me, and the screen of my mobile phone. All show live social-media feeds, internet searches and live chat rooms.

       My fingers flick over the keyboards, the key strokes rattling in the silence of the house as I follow the fast-moving feeds. I lean towards the screen, my attention focused 100 per cent as I scroll, click and type, and then the printer whirs into action, spooling out a colour picture. I pick it off the tray and stare at it almost lasciviously: new material. Even though there’s usually something fresh each day, I’m pleased. It’s a good one. I roll my chair over to the filing cabinet and locate the right scrapbook from the top shelf, then I flick through it, smiling to myself as I go through the familiar images. While the other books all show pictures of people, this one has images of things: cars, streets and houses. Some are older now, their corners starting to curl: I didn’t used to laminate.

       I run the new image through the laminator, picking it off the machine while it’s still hot, then carefully fix it in the book using corner mounts. Without the images of her blonde hair and his easy smile, this mightn’t be as interesting a scrapbook as the others to a stranger’s eye – but you have to trust me: it’s way more valuable.

One

      I remember well the day this story started. It was the day I joined the walking group: the day I met Simon; the day I met Anna. It was a wintry December day – dry and bitterly cold. People had their Christmas trees up and fairy lights hanging in their windows but it wasn’t close enough to Christmas for the real excitement to have begun; for people to have started realizing just how few days they have left to rampage through department stores, grabbing aftershave and perfume, leather gloves, lingerie and watches.

      The day I joined the walking group marked the beginning of a cold snap that lasted well into February. December to February. By March, when tiny green buds were starting to form on the trees, and flowers were beginning to push their cheerful colours through the earth, by then it was all over. Three months of brutal cold before spring started. That’s all we’re talking about here. Three months.

      So let me begin. My mother always told me to be choosy. She’s not really in this story, though I feel she should be.

      ‘Be choosy with your clothes, be choosy with your make-up, be choosy with what you put in your mouth and with whom you share your bed,’ she used to say, leaning back against the kitchen counter, her arms consumed by marigold gloves. ‘But most of all,’ she would say, ‘be choosy with whom you make СКАЧАТЬ