(1998) Denial Read Online Free

vast drum. Then, shadows jumping around her, and newspaper headlines of dismembered torsos on her mind, she began to make her way up the five flights of steps. This was the one part of her journey home that she hated. But tonight she was distracted.
    Tonight she had a date!
    Her mind was on what she was going to wear, whether she should wash her hair (not enough time, so not an option). Shoes. Lipstick. Perfume.
    Handbag?
    Shit, I forgot to collect my shoes from the repairer!
Black suede. They would have gone perfectly with her outfit, and now she would have to do a fast rethink.
Damn. Damn. Damn
.
    Someone had pulled the day away from beneath her like it was some big rug. Happened most days, time just ran out on her, work piles got bigger, lists grew longer, more and more phone calls did not get returned. But tonight she wasgoing to forget all that. Tonight she almost wasn’t afraid of the echoes of her footsteps that taunted her up the stairwell. Tonight she was thinking about Tony
(the Hon. Anthony!)
Rennison. Hunk, serious intellectual, shy, funny.
    And he liked her.
    And she liked him, big-time.
    Suddenly Tina, who had always acted old for her years, was a kid again. Two weeks ago, before she’d met Tony, before he’d asked her out that first time, she had been thirty-two going on forty-two or maybe even fifty-two.
    Short, with boyish brown hair, she had a pleasant face, plain but not unattractive, but in the way she dressed and carried herself, she exuded an aura of confidence. It made people instinctively trust her, had seen her rise to head girl at school and now editorial director of Pelham House, one of London’s most aggressive publishers, where she had transformed the fiction list and was in the process of turning round the once-ailing non-fiction.
    But tonight she was a schoolgirl, with butterflies in her stomach that were fluttering harder with every step she took nearer her car, nearer home.
    Nearer her date.
    Her Golf GTI, exhaust broken, was in its bay in the far corner, rear end sticking out beneath the giant heating duct that in the darkness looked like some lurking prehensile beast. The Golf welcomed her arrival with a sharp beep, a wink of its lights and the sound of its locks thudding open. She was a little surprised when she opened her door and the interior light failed to come on.
    Inside, she clunked her seat-belt buckle home. Then, as she put her key in the ignition, the passenger door opened and a massively tall figure slid into the seat beside her.
    A male voice, laconic and confident, right next to her, inches from her face, said, ‘Remember me?’
    She froze.
    ‘Thomas Lamark.’ He sounded as if he was rolling an ice-cube around in his mouth. ‘Remember me?’
    Oh, Jesus, she thought, her brain cells colliding inside her head. The car reeked of cologne. Givenchy. It was thesame perfume her date wore. Was this him, playing some joke? Except the voice was different. This was a calm, deep, controlled voice. There was a cold beauty in it. Chilling. An almost poetic resonance. Her hand scrabbled for the door handle.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember you.’
    ‘You should remember my name.
Thomas Lamark
. You turned down my book.’
    There were no people around up here. It was nearly eight o’clock. The attendant was in his booth, five storeys below.
    ‘Your book?’ She couldn’t see his face: she was talking to a silhouette, a tall, lean silhouette.
    ‘You turned it down.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I – it – your name doesn’t ring a bell. Thomas Lamark?’
    ‘You wrote me a letter. I have it here.’
    She heard a rustle of paper. Then she heard him say, ‘“Dear Mr Lamark, Thank you for sending your manuscript,
The Authorised Biography of Gloria Lamark
, to us. After careful reading, we regret we are unable to consider this for publication on our lists. We hope you will be successful with it elsewhere. Yours sincerely, Tina Mackay, Editorial