Shadows on the Nile Read Online Free Page B

dangled from her hand. Instead he rolled onto his back, wriggling allfour feet in the air, inviting her to admire his sleek black belly. But she wasn’t fooled. She stepped forward quickly and whisked the pillow from her bed.
    ‘Jabez! You are a
brute
.’
    On the spot where her pillow had lain curled the corpse of a squirrel, its mottled fur as dull and flat as its eyes. She prodded it with the sprat. The animal was already cold and stiff. It saddened Jessie. It takes so little for life to be snatched from your grasp: scampering around Putney Heath and leaping from branches one moment but dead as a butcher’s bone the next. She stroked the tiny creature with one finger, then picked it up and carried it out to the kitchen, ignoring Jabez’s cries of protest. She wrapped the squirrel in an old tea towel, rummaged round for the small trowel that lived under the sink and went downstairs, out into the rain, where she buried the corpse in the back garden under the forsythia bush.
    It was while she was standing invisible in the darkness, with hands all muddy and hair flattened by rain, that Jessie had an unsettling sense of doing this before. Burying something. But the memory wouldn’t quite come to her, what it was she’d buried or where. She stared up at the window of her flat and saw the curtains move and Jabez’s small face peer down at her with what she kidded herself was remorse. She had found him as a kitten shut in a Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin up on the heath on Christmas Eve, a tiny starving handful of fluff, and she had taken him with her, nursed him back to health and given him a home. Now he was family. No matter what his unseemly habits.
    To have abandoned one member of her family was bad enough. To lose another would be unbearable.
    The telephone jangled, startling Jessie. She let it ring unheeded. Jabez opened one eye, stretched out a paw from the stack of paper on top of which he was curled and sank his claws into the woolly sleeve of her jumper.
Don’t move. Stay here
. She trailed a finger between his ears, matching him stare for stare, and let the telephone ring.
    She was working. Spread aroundher on the table and littering the floor like discarded underwear, sheets of paper rustled against each other, creating that sound she loved. It meant that her drawing was going well. When the flow of ideas stopped, there was nothing but cold silence. It froze her, paralysed her pen. But this evening the designs were dancing into her fingers as she sketched images for a series of posters for a new soap product.
    The telephone rang again.
    With a sigh she walked over and picked it up. ‘Hello, Alistair.’
    ‘Hello, Jessie. How did you know it was me?’
    ‘I’m psychic.’
    He laughed, uncertain whether she was serious or not.
    ‘It’s a dismal night,’ he commented cheerfully.
    He was going to ask if he could come over.
    ‘Can I come over?’
    She released a convincing yawn. ‘It’s miserable out. How was your day?’
    But he sidestepped her delaying tactic. ‘I thought you might fancy some company?’
    ‘Sorry, Alistair. I’m working.’
    There was a brief, meaningful silence. Like drips of cold water in her ear.
    ‘You’re always working, Jessie.’
    ‘That’s not true.’
    ‘True enough.’
    She didn’t argue. She had been seeing Alistair on and off for a few months on a casual basis, and at the start she had enjoyed his company. He ran his father’s car-construction business which made delicious little open-topped two-seaters and had introduced her to the thrills of sports car racing at Brooklands. He was a considerate and amusing companion. So why did she do this? Push him away. It was always the same in every relationship she embarked on.
Don’t crowd me. Don’t come too close. Don’t reach in and squeeze my heart. If you do, I might
… She shook her head. Might what? Might explode? Might turn into a frog? Might commitmurder? She never stayed around long enough to find out.
    She