The Last Time We Spoke Read Online Free Page A

up and down her windpipe, searching for a way out. Her lips were burning where the masking tape had strained and stripped off slivers of skin.
    Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four … All she could do was count out the thumping beats of her heart, her mind jammed like a frozen computer screen.
    ‘Where’s the cash, you motherfucker? The money! The fuckin’ money!’ The voice crashed around Carla – a young voice made bold by a bandanna. Someone had pressed the fast-forward button. Carla couldn’t keep up, couldn’t process the words.
    The eyes behind the voice were bloodshot, hyped, wild. ‘Maybe I gotta take payment from someplace else.’
    ‘No! Leave her alone,’ Kevin cried, fumbling in his pockets. ‘We don’t keep much money at home, you must believe me. You can have anything. Everything! Just don’t hurt my wife. Please—’
    Carla could scarcely recognise Kevin’s voice.
    Ooof! The pipe wrench swung, forcing wind from his mouth and backside simultaneously. She started to count heartbeats again.
    ‘Want another hidin’? Now where’s the money, mister? You got a safe?’
    Objects rained down around Carla and ricocheted off the floor – her lipstick, her Liberty diary, a packet of tissues, passport photo of Jack …
    Jack! He would have been in the garage when the thugs burst in. Hopefully he’d gone for help. Please God! Carla lifted her head, trying to intercept Kevin’s bloodied gaze and caution him not to allude to their son. But Kevin wasn’t looking her way. He was cowering in the corner.
    She’d only ever known Kevin to cry twice. After their daughter Gabby died, he’d sobbed softly behind a locked bathroom door. And when Pasha his favourite sheepdog was crushed under the tractor he’d let slip a few tears before putting her out of her misery.
    ‘Hey, bro, nothin’ more here,’ the other voice shouted. ‘Let’s take the electronics and beat it before the pigs come.’
    Carla held her breath, the Lord’s Prayer scrolling through her mind.
    ‘Nah. I’m hungry for some pussy.’
    ‘Forget it, TT. Let’s get outta here.’
    ‘Fuck off, Ben.’
    A hand grabbed Carla’s bottom. She screamed, but as in a dream, no sound escaped.
    ‘No!’ Kevin’s voice resounded through the laughter that filled the endless moment.
    ‘Settle, boy, we jus’ gonna service the missus. You gotta learn to share. Ain’t that right, bro?’
     
    The cold woke Carla. The terracotta tiles had driven an aching chill through the fibres of the kilim rug into her skin, her muscles, her marrow. Her brain registered only this most basic sensation – cold – otherwise, it was blank, as if a thousand volts of electricity had passed through, deleting neural pathways and wiping all trace of thought and fragment of memory. She tried to cough. Her throat felt stuffed full of autumn leaves.
    Squinting downwards, she saw the shadow of her swollen, cracked lips. With her tongue she traced their bloated outline. Dried mucus and crusted blood stopped the fine vermillion creases and filled her nostrils with an alien stench.
    One of her eyes agreed to open; the other remained shut.
    Something off to the right caught her attention. She turned her head – the action delayed a few seconds behind the intent. The early morning sunshine had transformed a piece of broken glass into a prism and a rainbow of light now arched over the room.
    A small clay pot came into view, then receded. Carla screwed up her obedient eye and pulled the pot back in focus. A lopsided sphere of clay engraved with stick figures – a lion, an elephant, a monkey. It was almost familiar … Synapses fought to connect, her mind desperate for an anchor. Then the relief of recognition! It was the pottery bowl Jack had made when he was eight, his first attempt at throwing clay. The bowl had been presiding over the entrance hall for the past decade.
    Grasping this recollection served to bridge a chasm, providing thought with a route back into Carla’s