Time's Echo Read Online Free

were so weak I had to lean back against the sink and make myself take some deep
breaths.
    Enough, I thought. I was overwrought and overtired. All I needed was some sleep.
    I left the broken glass in the sink and found another one. My hands were still shaking slightly as I filled it with water, but when I turned to take it back to bed with me, my eye snagged on an
apple sitting on the worktop. Its skin was yellow and wrinkling, just like the one I’d thrown away earlier.
    Puzzled, I put down my glass and picked up the apple instead, grimacing a little at the saggy feel of it between my fingers. I couldn’t understand how I had missed seeing it before, but I
was half-asleep still and, frankly, spooked by the apparition in the window, so I tossed it in the bin with the other apple and thought no more about it.
    ‘I don’t know
where
I’m going to be, all right? Somewhere you aren’t!’
    I was standing on the doorstep, fumbling with the unfamiliar key, when Drew Dyer’s front door was wrenched open and a girl stomped out. She was fourteen or so, perhaps a bit older, and
ungainly, with intense, sullen features half-hidden by a tangle of chestnut hair.
    Hoisting a heavy bag onto her shoulder, she slammed the door behind her with such force that Lucy’s door trembled too. It was only when she turned for the gate that she saw me.
    ‘Oh.’ She stopped dead and eyed me warily from beneath her fringe.
    ‘Hi.’ My head was pounding after my broken night, and tiredness throbbed behind my eyes, but I was feeling much more myself. In the daylight I was embarrassed to remember how rattled
I had been by my nightmare.
    I’d found the broken glass in the sink, but when I wrapped it in newspaper and threw it in the bin, there had been no trace of the apple I thought I’d seen the night before. I must
have imagined it, I decided, along with that ghostly figure in the glass.
    I smiled at Drew’s daughter. ‘I’m Grace, Lucy’s god-daughter,’ I said. ‘You must be Sophie.’
    Sophie nodded. ‘She talked about you.’
    ‘Really?’ I was surprised. ‘I haven’t seen her for years. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d forgotten all about me.’
    ‘No, she liked you. She showed me the cards you sent her from all round the world. She said you were a free spirit,’ said Sophie with a touch of envy.
    I was touched, and also rather ashamed. A postcard every now and then hadn’t required much effort. ‘If I’d known she liked them so much, I’d have sent her a card more
often.’
    I finally managed to lock the door and dropped the key into the battered leather bag I’d slung over my shoulder. I’d bought it in a market in Jaipur years before and it went
everywhere with me. It was the perfect size, just big enough for a passport, a purse and a pair of sunglasses – everything I needed to jump on a plane.
    ‘I didn’t think Lucy was particularly interested in travel,’ I excused myself.
    ‘She used to say that she was a spiritual traveller,’ said Sophie.
    That sounded like Lucy.
    ‘You were so lucky to have Lucy as a godmother,’ she added wistfully.
    In truth, Lucy had always been an odd choice – Christianity being one of the very few spiritual paths that my godmother hadn’t tried. But she and my mother had been old school
friends, and Mum apparently thought Lucy would be more ‘interesting’ than more conventional friends and family. ‘It’s only a symbolic role anyway,’ Mum had argued when
my father pointed out that Lucy wasn’t exactly a churchgoer. ‘Lucy can broaden Grace’s horizons.’
    I pulled open the gate and joined Sophie on the pavement. ‘You had her as a friend,’ I reminded her. ‘You knew her much better than I did.’
    ‘She was great.’ Sophie shifted her bag of books from one shoulder to another and looked sad. ‘I’m really going to miss her,’ she said. ‘She was the only
person I’ve ever met who actually
talked
to you and listened to what you had to