Cross Her Heart: The gripping new psychological thriller from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author. Sarah Pinborough

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       6

      LISA

      It’s pitch-dark outside, no hint of a comforting grainy dawn grey yet, but I sit, wide awake, with my knees up under my chin and stare out at the bleak night, my stomach in terrible knots. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. I know that. Peter Rabbit is long gone. It would be impossible for it to have been Peter Rabbit, the Peter Rabbit, but I want to run down to the recycle bins at the end of the road and root it out again to be sure. I take a deep breath. It’s not Peter Rabbit. It’s just a coincidence.

      When I’d seen the soft toy out there in the rain, slumped dejected against Mrs Goldman’s gate, my heart had almost stopped. It was grubby and sodden, dropped maybe hours before, but the bright blue trousers stood out against the greying white fur. It wasn’t the same bunny, that was clear when I’d picked it up with trembling hands and a scream trapped in my throat, but it was close. So close. I wanted to hold it against my chest and wail, but the front door opened and Mrs Goldman appeared and instead I forced an air of idle curiosity as I asked if she knew whose it was. She didn’t, of course. Why would she? Her hearing isn’t great and her days are spent staring at the TV, not out of the window.

      I gave her the bag of shopping and tried to smile and chat but the bunny was heavy and wet in my hand and the soft fur was cold, and all I could think was how the blue dungar-ees were exactly the same shade and style as those dungarees and those dungarees had been hand-made, and my head started to swim and I felt sick. Once Mrs Goldman had finally gone back inside, I forced a confident walk down the path and then, out of sight of both her house and mine, I finally held the toy close as if it were a dead animal my body heat could somehow bring back to life.

      I took several deep breaths, years of therapy having drummed the technique into me as if steady oxygen could make anything better when most of the time I wished I didn’t have to breathe any more at all, and walked swiftly to the big bank of recycling bins at the end of the road and threw it inside. I could still feel the ghost of damp fur against my fingertips though, and I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me home without crumpling.

      In the kitchen, for once grateful my daughter was finally becoming the kind of surly teenager who hides in her room, I grabbed the small bottle of Prosecco Marilyn had given me from my handbag and twisted the lid off, drinking it straight from the bottle in two goes. The acid bubbles made my chest burn and my eyes sting but I didn’t care. Anything was better than the awful pain and fear at the core of me, in the place I try hard to pretend is at best empty now, until something like this happens and the scab is ripped away and all the terrible terrible hurt crammed inside is exposed once more and I want to curl up and die.

      I gasped and choked as I swallowed the last of the wine, leaning on the breakfast bar and using the physical discomfort as a distraction to calm my thinking. Slowly the buzzing in my ears faded. It was a coincidence, it had to be. Lots of children have toy bunnies. Some poor toddler was probably crying for the one I’d so ruthlessly tossed away at the end of the street. So what if it was wearing blue dungarees? There were probably thousands of soft toys in dungarees. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

      I repeated that one sentence over and over in my head, glad I’d thrown the bunny away in the communal bins rather than the ones in our garden, too far to keep running to look at it without drawing attention to myself. It wasn’t Peter Rabbit. Yes, it had upset me, but it hadn’t been put there on purpose. It was harder to reconcile myself with the second sentence. It isn’t a statement of fact. It’s highly unlikely it’s been put there on purpose, but I can’t for definite know it in the way my sensible brain knows the toy I found wasn’t Peter Rabbit.

      It’s this unease I’ve felt recently. The sense something isn’t quite right. What if it’s more than my usual paranoia? What if I’m wrong to steer away from it? I get up and creep down the corridor to Ava’s room. The lights are all off and the house is silent and I twist the handle as carefully and slowly as I can, not wanting to make any noise.

      I watch her from the doorway, my perfect girl. She’s on her side, facing away from me, curled up small, exactly how she slept as a toddler. She is so precious. So wonderful, and looking at her calms me and reminds me that I have to stay alive, I have to keep breathing. For her. She gave me back my desire to live, and I will always protect her. She will never know what I keep inside. Not if I can help it. I want her to be blissfully free. It must be a wonderful thing to be blissfully free.

      I stay for a few minutes more, the sight of Ava far better for me than any amount of deep yoga breathing, and then reluctantly leave her to sleep in private. It’s nearly three a.m. Taking sleeping pills now is a bad idea, but so is facing the day with no rest at all, and so I compromise and only swallow one instead of the usual two I need when these fearful, sad moods have me gripped tight. I’ll feel terrible all morning tomorrow but at the moment two or three СКАЧАТЬ