Read The Dark Part of Me for Free Online Page B

cookies gurgle and melt inside me. My legs are heavy, my fingers thick and fat, as I bound down the
hall. And still Hollie is screaming, but Danny doesn’t scream. He doesn’t do anything, but stands frozen in the doorway as I hang back in the hall, not wanting to see what they are
seeing. But something pulls me inside and I’m staring at Mrs Bailey’s waterbed and the blood and the gun and Mrs Bailey’s head all blown up into little red bits on the white,
satiny pillows and on the lovely, purple walls.

    Hollie blamed it all on her father. Over the years, she’d convinced herself that he’d been having an affair even though there was no hint of it in the suicide note.
When Mr Bailey was at home, Hollie rarely spoke to him and if she did it was only to call him a liar or a traitor or a spineless, philandering cheat. It was no wonder he kept such a low profile
around the place. He spent most of his spare time locked away in his home cinema watching Westerns or in the cellar tending to his prized collection of Bordeaux.
    Sometimes, I wondered what Hollie and Danny would be like if it hadn’t happened, whether they’d be a bit more normal. Every year, just before Christmas, Hollie hosted a kind of do in
memory of her mother, who used to love throwing fancy-dress parties. She wanted to be just like her mum. Often, I’d find her in Mrs Bailey’s boudoir, flopped on the bed reading poetry
or dressed up in her dead mum’s outfits. The room was spacious and high-ceilinged, done out in sumptuous Hollywood glam circa 1986: the carpet white shag-pile; the curtains plush, gold
velvet. One side of the room was fitted with floor-to-ceiling mirrored doors behind which Mrs Bailey’s designer outfits and theatre costumes were stored. Centre-stage was the giant circular
waterbed, piled with fluffy, pink cushions and covered in a glitzy white satin bedspread (the blood dry-cleaned out). On either side of the bed were two black lacquer bedside tables, which gleamed
from Hollie polishing them every morning. On one table there was a steel-stemmed lamp. The other was scattered with Mrs Bailey’s things as she’d left them: a slim volume of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning’s poems; a red silk scarf; a scotch glass with a few sips still left in it; a solid gold zippo; a framed black and white photo of Mr and Mrs Bailey on their wedding day. The
way Hollie used to keep it like a shrine gave me the heebie-jeebies.
    I turned the cut-crystal doorknob and pushed inside. The air-con hummed full-blast and it was cold, icy. The curtains were drawn back, but the room was cast in deep shadow. Rubbing warmth into
my arms, I stood, blinking. I looked over at the waterbed. Hollie was sleeping on her side, facing away from me. The tiniest breath quivered up and down her slip of a body. Her boy-hips barely
dented the chintz. She was wearing one of her costumes: a long white muslin dress with a high collar and a row of pearl buttons up the back. Her dainty feet, small as a child’s, poked out
from the hem of her skirt and her thick, black hair cascaded down the side of the bed.
    I tiptoed towards her, then stopped. There was someone with her. A man. Hollie had a man in bed with her. She was pressed up against him, one arm flung about his middle. Sweat broke out from
each root of my hair, instantly cooled by the air-con draught. I darted to the end of the bed to take a closer look. The man slept, lying flat on his back with his arms pinned to his sides.
    Danny.
    Danny. Fuck. It was eight years since I’d seen him.
    With all the buzz of Scott phoning, I’d clean forgotten he was getting out. Not that Hollie hadn’t told me a million times. She’d spent the past month getting ready for his
homecoming; spring-cleaning the house, buying him designer clothes to wear, planning an elaborate dinner party for his first night home. She’d even bought him the latest PlayStation as a
welcome home present, charging it to the family Amex which Mr