No Escape: The most addictive, gripping thriller with a shocking twist. Lucy Clarke

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Lana paces through her apartment, her fingers buried deep in the pockets of her dress. The painting she was working on is drying, unfinished. On a normal day, she would be getting ready for work by this time. But she can’t even think about going into the gallery and making coffees for customers. She can’t think of anything but The Blue.

      She knows that the Maritime Rescue Centre, which will be dealing with the rescue of the crew, is only 30 kilometres away – she passes the sign for it each month when she goes to the art supplies wholesaler for her boss. She grabs her mobile and searches the Internet for the number.

      When she finds it, she sits on the edge of her bed and makes the call. It takes several minutes to be connected to anyone associated with the rescue of The Blue. Eventually she is transferred to Paul Carter, the Operations Coordinator, who has a broad New Zealand accent and tells her that they are not at liberty to give out any details.

      ‘Look,’ she says, banging the heel of her hand against the wooden bed frame, making a dull thud. ‘Just tell me if Kitty Berry was on board. She’s British. She’s got no family out here. I can get in touch with them.’

      Lana doesn’t know where the authority in her tone has sprung from, but she knows she will not be ending this call until she has an answer.

      After a moment she hears the sigh of someone acquiescing. ‘Okay, give me a minute.’

      As she waits, she bites the edge of her thumbnail, her skin tasting faintly of turpentine. She finds herself thinking of the first time she met Kitty. They were eleven years old and the summer term had just begun. Lana was grateful for the warmer weather because it meant that at lunchtimes she could sit alone in a sunny corner of the playing fields, and didn’t need to stand around in the courtyard trying to make herself look invisible. She’d take out her exercise book and fill the back pages with wild shapes – swirls of smoke, twisting currents of water, clouds that billowed and bloomed from the pages.

      She had seen Kitty around – they lived in the same street and took the same bus to school – but they’d never spoken. Kitty styled her glossy dark hair in a high ponytail, pulling thin wisps of it loose around her temples. She was often followed around by a loud group of boys who wore their backpacks so low that they bounced against their bony arses.

      Lana had been sitting cross-legged, watching a feathery seed from a dandelion drifting towards her on a whisper of breeze. She was mesmerized as it turned through the air, daylight catching in its white softness. She wondered what it would feel like to be that weightless. She reached a hand up into the air and caught it gently in the palm of her hand, imagining its tickle against her skin. Then she closed her eyes and made a wish. She wasn’t sure that you were meant to wish on dandelions, but she’d done it anyway.

      When she opened her eyes, she carefully unfurled her fingers and – for a moment – it rested right there on the centre of her palm, as if she had tamed it. A few seconds later it lifted off, carried upwards on a current of air.

      ‘What you doing?’ Kitty was standing nearby, her school bag hanging off one shoulder.

      ‘Making a wish,’ she said. She felt her cheeks flush, cross that she’d not thought of something better than the truth.

      ‘What did you wish?’

      ‘You can’t tell people, otherwise they don’t come true.’

      Kitty shrugged. Then she bent down and plucked a dandelion from the long grass near the fence line and held it up to her lips. ‘You can tell the time by blowing a dandelion. Watch.’ She blew with short puffs of air, making the seeds whirl. By her sixth puff there was only one seed remaining. Kitty adjusted her puffs so they became gentle, until her twelfth one – when she blew with all her might, sending the remaining seed dancing into the sky.

      ‘That was twelve.’ She pushed her wrist in front of Lana to reveal her purple watch. ‘Twelve o’clock. See?’

      Lana СКАЧАТЬ