Catch Me When I Fall Read Online Free

side. A garish picture was tipped sideways on
    the wall, and there was a red smear daubed beside it. There was also a strangely neat circle of what looked like brown rice on the floor. With a stab of memory, I looked up and saw the budgerigar's cage hanging above the spilled seed. The bird was asleep.
     I picked up my skirt from behind the sofa and found my shirt, crumpled in the comer. Only one button remained and it was ripped along the armpit. One shoe was under the table, its heel wobbly. After nervous fumbling I found the other in the corridor outside the bathroom. Holding my breath, I edged my way back into the bedroom and collected my bra from the exercise bike. It reeked of alcohol -schnapps, maybe. There was something sticky under the ball of my foot and when I looked down I was standing on a used condom. I peeled if off and dropped it on to the floor.
     I couldn't find my knickers. I knelt down and peered under the bed, then retraced my steps along the corridor without success. I'd have to go without them. I needed to get out before the man or the person in the other room -or the bird, for that matter -woke and found me. Skirt, bra, flimsy torn shirt, whose hem I knotted round my waist. Sore feet into wobbly shoes. Jacket over the top over everything, but it was one of those stupid affairs with a single decorative button and scarcely concealed the mess underneath. I longed to be in a pair of flannel pyjamas under clean sheets, minty breath, clean limbs ... Bag, where was my bag? It was near the front door, its contents slopping out in a heap. I shovelled everything back in, opened the door and closed it softly behind me, scuttled down the stairs and out into the grey street, where weariness hit me. For a moment I had to
bend over to catch my breath.
Where was I?
     I made my way to the end of the street and read the name Northingley Avenue, SE7. Where was that? Which way did I go to get anywhere else? My watch -still miraculously on my wrist
    -told me it was 5 am. I looked up and down the deserted street, as if a taxi would suddenly appear and scoop me up, then took a deep breath and set off in a random direction. It took so long to cover any distance; nothing seemed to get any closer. It was cold before the sun came up properly and I was crawling like a mucky slug along the road of unlit houses.
     At last I came to a road where there were shops and one, a newsagent's, was just opening. I ducked under its half-lifted grid and approached the man behind the counter. He looked up from the papers he was stacking and his eyes widened. 'What... ?' he stuttered. "Have you been mug?'
     "Can you tell me the way to the nearest Underground station, please?'
     His gaze hardened into something like disgust. I put up a hand
to pull my jacket closer together and tried to look nonchalant. "Straight that way for about half a mile."
     I bought a bottle of water and a little pack of tissues, then fished in the bottom of my bag for change.
     'Thanks,' I said, but he just stared at me. I tried to smile, but my face wouldn't obey me. My mouth seemed too tight to move.
     Strange people travel on the Underground at dawn. People stumbling home at the end of the previous day overlap with people at the beginning of the next, still bleary from their beds.
     A man with gorgeous long dreadlocks came and sat beside me at the station while I was waiting for the first train out and played his mouth organ. I tried to give him some change but he said he wasn't a beggar, he was a wandering minstrel and I was clearly a damsel in distress. So I gave him my packet of cigarettes instead and he kissed my hand. My knuckles were grazed, my nails dirty.
     When I was on the train I poured water on to a wad of tissues and dabbed at my face. Mascara, blood. I tried to see what I looked like in the window, but I was just a pale blur. I dragged
    a brush through my hair, and changed for the Northern Line and Archway.
     I arrived at my dark green front door at ten