Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) Read Online Free Page A

must always, always be the same.
    That’s what he’d taught us, what he kept teaching us. I hated how slowly he was moving. The candles sucked at his shadow, pulling it on to the table. I moved my hands out of its reach.
    Christie was helping Harm, holding two plates in each hand like a waitress. She was tall and solid, more real than the rest of us. Blonde hair down her back, the way he liked it. A cotton dress that stopped at her knees, showing off her calves. She had some serious muscles. Next to Harm, though, she was nothing. She glanced at me, nodding her approval. I’d been allowed downstairs and I’d come without a fuss. Good girl. Good dog. I pulled out a chair and sat next to May, who sneaked her hand into mine under the table. Her hand was warm, or mine was cold. My room never got warm, not properly. That underfloor heating was a lie, like everything else.
    Ashleigh scuffed her feet on the floor, then stopped, sitting quietly.
    Three of us in our white blouses, black skirts and tights, faces washed with soap and water, hair brushed neat. Mouths like butter wouldn’t melt, not that butter was on offer.
    Christie brought the plates to the table. Harm was a good cook, she said. As if you needed a Michelin star to cook the crap we lived off, food so full of preservatives it could serve itself. May tried to plant vegetables once, but he wouldn’t let her. Everything had to be long-life. Slimy slices of reconstituted aubergine like the tongue from someone’s boot died on the side of my plate.
    We ate in silence, the only sound the squawking of forks on tin plates. We drank water from tin cups. Nothing at our table was breakable, unless you counted the high-strung silence of teenage girls in the thrall of a handsome and bountiful middle-aged man. I really, really wanted to puke.
    ‘We are what we are,’ Christie always said.
    I’d seen a horror film with that title, but I kept it to myself.
    We are what we are.
    If you’d looked through the window, what would you have seen? A father and his youngish wife sitting with their family of photo-booth-ready dolls, smooth hair down to their waists, new tits under neat shirts. And me – the odd-looking one at the end, with a flat chest and short black hair that was wasted on his fat silver hairbrush.
    It was all lies. Christie wasn’t his wife. We weren’t his daughters, not even sisters. Of course you couldn’t have seen through the window. There were blackout blinds for one thing.
    Harm refilled my cup with water, a pinch of concern on his face. ‘Don’t dehydrate.’
    Ashleigh risked an eye roll, turning it into a blink before Harm could catch her.
    The water tasted of coins, the way my hands used to smell at the end of a good day’s begging on the streets. ‘Thank you.’ My voice cracked on the last word.
    Ashleigh was the first to clear her plate. ‘That was yummy.’ She licked her lips, shooting a white smile across at Harm, eyes as shiny bright as her teeth. She’d put something on her lids.
    Fuck …
    She’d smeared Vaseline on her eyelids, and her mouth. No make-up in the house. One of his rules. The Vaseline made her mouth wet. She didn’t look like a schoolgirl. She looked grown-up, and slutty. Stupid, stupid cow …
    Harm hated grown-up. He hated slutty more than anything. We were meant to be his perfect dolls, sexless, chaste. She knew this. Ashleigh knew. She was sitting too far forward, her hands pulling at the hem of her shirt, skin-tight at the front. He was going to notice. She’d been trying to get his attention for weeks. Fuck. How could he not notice her tits when she sat like that?
    Christie put back her chair. ‘Ashleigh, it’s your turn to help clear the table.’
    Ashleigh stood, hips rolling like a slinky toy coming down the stairs. I felt the slap in Christie’s stare as hard as if she’d hit me.
    The air got tight, the way it does in a storm. I could taste the buzz of static on my tongue. At my side, May was taut with