Kind of Cruel Read Online Free Page B

No death, no tragedy, only a never-to-be-solved mystery. I open my mouth, then remember that Ginny told me not to pick something good. Little Orchard is too showy and attention-seeking. She won’t believe it genuinely ‘came up’, and she’ll be right. It’s permanently ‘up’ in my mind; I wonder about it constantly, even now, after so many years. It gives me something to do, when I’m lying awake at night and I’ve already worried about every aspect of my life that can be worried about.
    ‘What are you remembering?’ Ginny asks. ‘Right now.’
    Oh, God, this is a nightmare. What should I say? Anything, anything.
    ‘Kind. Cruel. Kind of Cruel.’
    What does that mean?
    ‘Can you repeat that?’ says Ginny.
    This is really strange. What just happened? Ginny said something odd, but why would she ask me to repeat it? I wasn’t paying attention; my mind must have drifted off for a second, back to Little Orchard, or to Sharon . . .
    ‘Can you repeat those words?’
    ‘Kind. Cruel. Kind of Cruel,’ I say, not sure I’ve got it right. ‘What does it mean?’ Is it a magic spell, designed to drag recalcitrant memories to the surface?
    ‘You tell me,’ says Ginny.
    ‘How can I? You were the one who said it.’
    ‘No, I didn’t. You said it.’
    There’s a long pause. Why am I still horizontal, with my eyes closed? I ought to sit up and insist that this stranger stops lying about me.
    ‘You said it,’ I snap, annoyed that I should have to convince her when she must know the truth as well as I do. ‘And then you asked me to repeat it.’
    ‘All right, Amber, I’m going to count to five to bring you out of hypnosis. When I reach five, I want you to open your eyes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.’
    It’s strange to see the room again. I pull the lever under the arm of my chair and it tilts me upright. Ginny is staring at me, not smiling. She looks worried.
    ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I tell her. ‘You said it.’
     

     
    In my haste to escape, I nearly run into the woman with the red lipstick. ‘All better?’ she says. The sight of her shocks me; at first I can’t work out why. How could I have erased her from my mind so completely? I ought to have known I might open the door and find her here, waiting. My brain is not operating at its usual speed; I’m not sure if it’s tiredness or the after-effects of hypnosis.
    Her notebook. You forgot that you saw her writing in her notebook. What was she writing?
    I struggle to pretend nothing has changed: my customary reaction when I’m ambushed by the unexpected.
    It doesn’t work.
    Why would Ginny Saxon pretend I’d said something I hadn’t? Before today she didn’t know me; she has nothing to gain from lying about me. Why is this only occurring to me now?
    I should say something. Red Lipstick Woman asked me a question. All better? In the hour since I last saw her, her bitterness has transmuted into good-humoured resignation: she doesn’t believe that Ginny is capable of curing either of us, but we must participate in the charade all the same. I stare at the clouds of breath in the air between us and imagine they are a barrier through which words and understanding cannot pass. I can’t speak. Day is already turning into night; the fields look like flat dark cloths spread out beside the empty road. They make me think of the magician we hired for Nonie’s seventh birthday party, the black satin throw he draped over his small table.
    What’s wrong with me? How long have I let this silence last? My thoughts are either moving too fast or unbearably slowly; I can’t tell the difference.
    Her hands mottled from the cold, black woolly gloves on the passenger seat beside her, a notebook open on her lap, words on the page . . .
    I resist the urge to run back to the warmth of Ginny’s wooden den and beg for her mercy. I went to her for help – help I still need. How did I end up calling her a liar, refusing to pay and storming out in a rage?
    Kind,