Read The Date: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist for Free Online Page B

rustling. It could be the wind. It could be something else. Someone else. Dumping the flowers in the almost overflowing bin – it was Chrissy’s turn to put themout last week, but she forgot – I scurry back inside. My heart pounding, my hands trembling as I slam the door, turning the key. Checking it’s locked, again and again.
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    After I’ve showered, I trust in my favourite red-check fleecy pyjamas to relax me, but they don’t. Although I’m sleep-deprived and painkiller hazy I still feel edgy. A quick supper and then I’ll fall into bed. In thekitchen I ignore the lingering scent of roses and switch on the radio. A blast of the 80s music Chrissy loves fills the kitchen – A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’. Twiddling the knobs I adjust the volume and retune it to Classic FM. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons drifts from the speaker. Rummaging through the cupboards, I pull out a tin.
    Heinz tomato soup spins in the microwave. Branwell’s wicker basket sitslonely by the back door, red blanket crumpled and sprinkled with sand from our last beach walk. His favourite monkey chew toy spreadeagled on the floor. The house seems so empty, silent, without his claws clip-clopping against the kitchen tiles, his low growl as foxes sneak into our garden. It’s beetle-black outside. The spotlights in the kitchen have turned the glass to a mirror. A shudder runsthrough me as I stare outside into the depths of the wasteland behind our fence, wondering again who delivered the flowers. Cold kisses the back of my neck.
    Tugging the cord, the blind drops until it brushes the taps on the sink. The sunflower fabric has never been long enough to cover the glass, but it didn’t seem important before. Chrissy liked the print, ‘a little bit of sunshine nomatter how dull the weather’, she had said but now, with the two-inch gap at the bottom, a gap deep enough for a pair of eyes, I feel horribly exposed. For the umpteenth time I rattle the handle of the back door, before doing the same with the front door and again meticulously check each window is latched.
    The ping from the microwave shatters the silence. The bowl is scalding. Quickly,I lift it with my fingertips onto a tray, and then twist open the loaf of bread, checking the crusts for mould, before taking my supper and hurrying into the lounge, where the curtains are tightly closed.
    Despite my sense of disquiet, it’s good to be home, I think, as I sink onto the sofa. The pastel pink wallpaper patterned with dove grey birds automatically soothes me. Chrissy and I arepolar opposites. This is such a contrast to my minimalist home but, tonight, I’m grateful for the shelves crammed with the weird angels without faces, ornaments Chrissy loves, wings spread, protecting an invisible flock. The candles. The books. For once it feels homely rather than oppressive.
    Another yawn escapes me. I hadn’t slept much in the hospital. The rattle of trolleys, the hum ofthe night lights, the low murmur of nurses was constant, but that wasn’t what kept me awake. As soon as I stepped through the doors, into A & E, and inhaled that hospital smell, it all came rushing back. Hospitals may help, may heal, but even now I equate them with loss, and the nurses’ uniforms, much the same as police uniforms, send my heart spiralling like blackened smoke. Despite the years thathave passed, I have never got over what happened. Not really.
    Slurping soup, I aim the remote at the TV, intent on finding something mindless to distract me. I’m behind with the soaps, so I open iPlayer and as the Eastenders theme begins I feel my shoulders start to relax. We had a ritual, Mum and I, we’d always be in our pyjamas, snuggled on the sofa, and whatever the weather we’d eachhave a mug of hot chocolate, an open packet of custard creams between us. We’d dip our biscuits into the malty liquid. There was a knack to getting the timing right. Too long and the biscuits would turn to mush at the bottom of the mug. Ben would always be