Echoes. Laura Dockrill
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Название: Echoes
Автор: Laura Dockrill
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007352135
isbn:
‘Sally-Anne, I’m coming, cry again if you can hear me so I can reach you faster. I can’t see.’
‘I’m in here, hurry!’ she shouted.
I coughed in splutters as I concentrated the best I could. Damn candles, I thought as I reached the corner of the front room doorframe. I crawled as fast as possible towards the settee but was hit by the sound of licking flames from the fireplace, the crackling sound pounded my eardrums. I stayed low and found Sally’s feet. I grasped them with my hands and inched my way up her ankles and calves in short sharp grasps so as to not be inappropriate. ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, don’t panic.’ I pulled myself up and reached her hands, her wrists, her arms, her shoulders. I held her close, lifted her into my arms like a child, turned with my back to the window and plummeted onto the front lawn, through the window.
I threw her off me and turned over to tend to her, picking fragments of glass away from us. But, to my horror, she was not the same woman! Instead of almond-shaped petals, her eyes were sunken droopy rags over glassy black marbles. Her skin, once creamy and radiant, was saggy and wrinkled and covered in age spots. Her dress, not purple silk, but a shabby dirty nightdress, her hair, tufted, mangled and snowy. I gave her to the grass in terror and ran back into the flaming house to find Sally-Anne. I used my coat as a barricade as I went in but was trapped immediately by a barricade of screaming flames. I can remember no more.
‘Mr Beam, you have been very brave to have suffered this, we’re terribly sorry for your loss,’ the fireman said when I came to.
‘It was my fault, stupid candles. Have you seen my dog anywhere? I had a dog, Mozart, he was inside—’
‘Yes, Mr Beam, the dog was the cause of the fire, he was found in the fireplace with this.’ The fireman handed me the silver comb. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t believe it. Mozart is dead? Burnt? Dead? I can’t believe it. He was the…but what about Sally-Anne?’ I asked, on the brink of hysterics.
‘Mr Beam, you did say a woman was trapped inside the house with you, but no woman was found, I’m afraid,’ the fireman said. A line of ash under his left eye made him look like a warrior.
‘I’m sure I carried a woman out, an elderly one, not Sally-Anne but an older lady, I know I had her in my grasp. I threw her onto the lawn. She was wearing a nightdress and—’
‘Listen, Mr Beam, you are in a very bad state. Why don’t you wait until you are at the hospital to discuss this further. You should rest now. We are going to salvage as much of this house as possible and the Barretts are on their way home.’
‘No, you don’t understand. Sally-Anne, she was in my house, she was there, drinking wine, she wanted to give Mozart a gift. Please, let me have a look for myself, please.’
Later, I hung myself on a willow, on the evening of the hottest day of the year, crying as the rope could not hold my weight and I fell, slippery like a cut tongue to the floor, not because I had failed but because I was and always will be in the wretched grasp of the banshee, forever in her debt.
Isabella MocZareles Jezeballa Bumpington-Brown
TAN
Isabella Mozzarella Jezebella Bumpington-Brown was the youngest of seven sisters. Like Little Women they lived, except…err…they weren’t actually poor (in fact they were pretty rich), and except they weren’t properly artistic really (they weren’t fussed about nice old juicy books and dressing-up trunks and baking). They liked getting pedicures and sitting in Caffè Nero and scraping their way onto the London Fashion Week guest list and were really good at wearing expensive pash-minas, flipping their long blonde hair over from one side to the next and saying, ‘Wix’ (which I think means ‘wicked’).
Now, where you are about to be craned into the story something really HILARIOUS has just happened, although we aren’t really supposed to laugh, because it’s not funny. Well, it is, but it’s bad karma to giggle at other people’s misfortune. But when it’s a Bumpington-Brown, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment.
In two hours and three minutes’ time the Bumpington-Brown girls are supposed to be flying to St Lucia to visit their parents, who now live there. Except FUCKERADA! Isabella Mozzarella Jezebella has lost her passport.
‘I think you are an absolute selfish cow. You have cocked this up too many times in the past and you’re doing it again,’ Tillytubs grunted, her piggy nose quivering in frustration.
‘Mum is going to freak,’ Jemima snarled under her breath.
‘You are un-fucking-believable, Isabella,’ BeeBee shook her head in disgust, catting her eyes into dark little slits.
‘I can’t help but think you did this on purpose to spite me for snogging Damien. Look, he came on to me okay, it’s not my fault I’m prettier,’ Taramasalata sighed, folding her St Tropez arms into a bony square.
‘Well, if you’re not coming, let me get my hairdryer out of your bag.’ Frillyskirtbean began digging around into Isabella’s hand luggage.
‘Can I please have your Ray Bans if you’re not coming? Ooh and your sun oil? Ooh and your Ruby and Millie lip gloss? Ooh and your iPod?’ Haggis joined in on the squabble, texting at the same time.
So off they went, all six of them, UGG boots, Paul’s Boutique jackets and acrylic nails. Like a grouching, fake-tanned parade of pretty ducklings, they swanned off to check in. Isabella, stripped of her goods, went to find a quiet, un-embarrassing, un-cringifying space to call Add Lee.
‘WTF?!’ she texted her BFF. ‘This is a long trek all day to the airport to get shunned. Random. L’
To which her BFF replied, ‘WTF?! Bumped, you must be pissed. Ah well. Nero?’
And something happened to Isabella then, when she saw that dreaded word, ‘Nero’. There is something drastically disappointing about packing to go and enjoy two weeks in the Caribbean sunshine, to being deserted by your siblings, and then have to spend the afternoon bitching into a supermarket box of sushi and an espresso. So, as out of character as it was (so out of character it hurt), she replied, ‘Oh, random, they are letting me fly after all. Wix! See you in two weeks ;).’
To which BFF replied, ‘Lucky bitch. Have fun. xoxo’
The Add Lee driver texted to confirm his arrival. The car door shut.
‘Wandsworth Common, please.’
Isabella emptied her suitcase, re-packed it for Cornwall. The Bumpington-Browns had a cottage; she would go there, in hiding, for the fortnight.
After a tormenting train ride with normal, poor people, Isabella slogged her suitcase up that torturous hill in her Primarni ballet pumps (a richy always likes to get these simple footwear on the cheap–shoes were disposable, basically like foot-shaped teabags), pashmina and all. She eventually reached the cottage.
Then, СКАЧАТЬ