"Littleford, Clare - Death Duty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Littleford Clare)

I shut off the bathwater and climbed in. I cupped my hands and started
to wash my knees, rinsing off the grime I had picked up from the shop
floor, washing away the little flecks of blood in the grazes. Lying
back, I felt the edge of the bath pressing against the stitches in my
scalp. I touched them and the pressure of my fingertips stung in the
cut, and I felt the bruise that had swollen around it, hardened by the
skull underneath. Then I ran my fingers through the rest of my hair,
and felt the softness of the other bruises. Touching them hurt but I
had to do it. Four in total. Did that mean he had hit me four times?
Did I hit my head on a shelf or on the floor as I went down? I
remembered the feel of the cord carpet against my face and the rebound
of my head, but I couldn't remember any more.

And that frightened me, more than when he had appeared beside me, more
than when I had realized that something was about to happen, more than
the blow that had knocked me down, and the X-ray, and the stitches, and
the police asking questions. I hadn't seen it coming. He had stood
over me, hitting me, and I hadn't known, there was nothing I could do
to protect myself. Whatever Alex said about statistics, whatever I
knew about the likelihood of being attacked or robbed, it made no
difference; it had happened, and what was there to stop it happening
again? And what if he hadn't stopped, what if he'd had a knife, what
if he'd decided he was going to kill me?

I wanted to think that my scream had chased him off, but I didn't know;
I had the horrible feeling that I had only started to scream later,
after' he had gone, when the shopkeeper was already bending over me,
when I was already safe.

I closed my eyes and held my breath and dipped my head back until I was
under the surface of the bathwater. I pinched my nose between thumb
and forefinger and let the water rush right over my face, and I felt
myself floating free, weightless under the water, deafened. The water
was warm but my skin felt cold against it. I imagined coming up out of
the water, remembered that feeling of return as I came back from the
darkness; the return of sound and sensation. The floor had been cold
against my skin, too. I should have been safe; in a street, in a shop,
in the middle of the day. Nothing should have happened, and if I
hadn't been safe then ... I imagined someone bending over me, and it
was him I saw, my attacker, reaching his hands down towards me in the
bathwater.

I sat up quickly, too quickly, swallowing water, slopping water over
the side of the bath, opening my eyes, but there was nobody there. I
was alone, and I had locked the bathroom door. I heard muffled voices
and canned laughter from the TV downstairs.

I could picture the youth's face, the way he had looked at me, with a
slight smile that I had thought meant he knew me. He had smiled at me,