The Judas Scar Read Online Free Page A

brush through her hair and gave her neck and wrists a spray of perfume.
    ‘All yours,’ she said, as she came out. As they passed each other their shoulders lightly brushed.
    ‘Will you wait for me?’
    ‘Sorry?’ she said, turning back.
    ‘Will you wait for me?’ His eyes drilled into hers and her heartbeat quickened. ‘I’d like to talk to you.You’re the first interesting person I’ve met tonight and I’ve been here for over an hour.’
    ‘Oh,’ Harmony said. ‘Yes … okay.’
    He nodded and went into the cloakroom. She stood for a minute or two then laughed under her breath. What was she doing? Waiting for a stranger to finish in the loo because he asked her to? If he wants to talk to me he can find me again, she thought. She began to head back to the party, but a raucous screech of laughter from the living room stopped her in her tracks beside the console table. She hesitated and glanced back at the cloakroom and as she did so, the door opened.
    ‘You waited.’
    Harmony blushed and cast her eyes down at the table, pretending she’d been looking at the photographs. ‘No. I was admiring the pictures in the quiet actually. I’m not in the mood for a party.’
    ‘Well, I’m glad you stayed. Everybody else here is very dull.’
    ‘Everybody? That seems a bit of a generalisation and incredibly dismissive.’ Harmony glanced back at him and lifted her eyebrows.
    ‘Some of those people are my friends, you know.’
    ‘I’m sure the ones that are your friends are fascinating.’ She smiled, pleased she no longer felt girlish and silly.
    They surveyed the pictures, side by side in silence. She was aware of him next to her, it was as if he had a force field around him that crackled the nearer he was to her. After a moment or two he leaned in close to her. ‘So what do you think?’
    ‘Of the pictures?’ He nodded.
    ‘I think they’re beautiful.’
    He shook his head. ‘They’re not beautiful. They’re staged and smug with a hint of narcissism that makes them unbearable. They reek of self-promotion.’
    A small laugh escaped Harmony’s lips. Immediately, she clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late, her disloyalty hung in the air around her and she felt a twinge of guilt. ‘You can’t say that,’ she said. ‘They are a lovely family and very good friends of mine.’
    ‘Not dull then,’ he said with a glint in his eye. She smiled.
    ‘The one with you in it is good though. Exactly how a photograph should be. A perfect moment, suspended in time. You look beautiful.’
    She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m young in it and youth is beautiful.’
    ‘Yes, perhaps,’ he said, though there was an edge to his voice, a reticence, as if he didn’t believe her.
    She held her hand out. ‘I’m Harmony.’
    He shook her hand, his grip firm, holding on for a fraction too long. ‘An unusual name.’
    ‘My father chose it,’ she said. ‘I was lucky. According to my mum the choice was between Harmony and Sunrise.’ She laughed lightly. ‘He was a Bohemian artist type, a bit of a hippie, apparently.’
    ‘Apparently?’
    ‘He left when I was three.’ Like a fart in a storm, as her grandmother always grumbled. ‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ Harmony said.
    ‘Would you like a drink?’
    ‘No, I have one thanks.’ She lifted her almost empty glass.
    ‘Aren’t you going to tell me who you are?’ She was intrigued by the way he looked at her; his eyes didn’t waver but stayed locked on hers.
    ‘Why do you need to know?’
    The mocking in his voice suddenly grated and the hold he had on her was broken long enough for her to consider walking away from him. ‘I don’t need to know,’ she said. ‘But it’s fairly normal behaviour in our society; I tell you my name, you tell me yours, we talk a bit, we run out of things to say, we move on.’
    He laughed. ‘And by society you mean the masses? The herd?’
    ‘So damning of society? Let me guess, society exists merely as a concept