Dying for Christmas Read Online Free Page B

months I dreamed of something similar happening to me. Not being abducted or ravaged, but just having people worry about me, and say lovely things about me. I’d imagine my two brothers on the telly, shoulders shaking with emotion, talking about me and how much they missed me. I imagined how contrite they’d feel about how they’d treated me over the years. How everyone would suddenly realize what a jewel they’d lost.
    And now it was happening to me.
    And I realized what a tit my fourteen-year-old self had been.
    Dominic and I were back sitting on that charcoal sofa, facing the odious painting. I found myself looking at Natalie’s face in a different light now, examining her green eyes for clues. Did she look frightened? Was she trying to say something? How had she got away?
    I tried to summon her up in my mind, fashioning her into a rope that I could wind around my thoughts. But she was too slippery. Sliding away through the gaps in my mind.
    Dominic had positioned himself on the other arm of the L-shaped sofa. The intensity of his stare was unnerving. His eyes ran over me as if he was inventorying me.
    When I first started seeing Sonia Rubenstein I’d been suffering from panic attacks – once I was carried out of Leicester Square Tube on a stretcher, hyperventilating with a tightness across the chest like cheese wire – and she’d tried to teach me techniques to corral my thoughts if they were getting out of control. Like I was to put one hand on my stomach and one on my chest, and breathe in and out from my belly, keeping my chest still. Or I could repeat over and over, ‘My heart will stop racing. I’m not going to die.’ ‘You control your fear,’ she said to me. ‘It doesn’t control you.’
    I forced myself to breathe from my stomach, and repeated in my head, ‘I’m not going to die.’ But there was only one person listening, and she didn’t believe it.

Chapter Six
    Kim was wrapping presents. All around her was a sea of plastic bags that she was slowly working her way through, trying to remember what she’d bought for whom, and feeling the usual creeping desolation, knowing that despite the mountains of stuff and the hundreds of pounds she’d spent, none of it was enough. Give it a few hours and someone would be crying because they didn’t get what they really wanted, and someone else would have decided that the thing they thought they really wanted wasn’t what they wanted after all, and everyone would be reaching that danger point where you could feel Christmas slipping away, together with all the hopes and expectations you’d pinned on to it over the year.
    Downstairs, the television was on full blast. She could hear the sound of that film they seemed to show every Christmas. That grown man dressed up as a Christmas elf. Every now and then there was a shriek of laughter from Rory, followed by an echoing giggle from Katy who, at three years younger, couldn’t really understand the joke and took her cue entirely from her brother.
    Listening to them, Kim’s heart contracted with love.
    And guilt.
    The bedroom door creaked open.
    ‘Don’t come in …’
    Sean stood in the doorway, his arms folded, surveying the devastation.
    ‘God, how much did this lot cost then?’
    She shrugged. ‘It’s Christmas.’
    ‘Oh, nice of you to remember.’
    She turned back to her wrapping.
    Sean remained in the doorway. His presence was like a black hole sucking all the joy from the room.
    ‘I do mean it, you know, Kim? I’m not just saying it.’
    Kim folded paper around a plastic toy that had cost over ten pounds. And what did you get for it? Another thing to break after a few days, leaving behind a pile of oddly shaped plastic bits that lurked in corners and under sofa cushions. The gift wrap ripped over a sharp edge and Kim cursed herself for getting the cheap stuff.
    ‘We’ve been through this,’ she said, trying to sellotape over the tear. ‘I have to work. It’s my job. You knew that when