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

wearing dark lipstick. He was gone she leaned over me and I smelled
her perfume, flowery, sweet. I realized that I was screaming; I tried
to stop, tried to suck in breath, but the air caught in my throat and I
couldn't get it into my lungs and it hurt from the effort and I had to
be able to breathe, I needed air.

"It's okay," the woman said. "Shh, shh, it's okay."

She was holding a roll of kitchen towel against my head, and there was
blood spattered on her lilac blouse. I was lying on the floor in her
shop,

in the narrow aisle between the shelves, and there was my blood on her
blouse. I tried to stand, tried to apologize, but I couldn't get
beyond sitting up, and she was holding me down, one hand anchoring my
shoulder, repeating, "Shh, it's okay."

My skirt was rucked up over my knees. There was a big hole in my
tights, and slight grazes on my knees, and one of my shoes was lying
near the door, just out of my reach.

The woman bending over me said, "What happened?"

I tried to think back, but then I couldn't breathe, the air caught in
my throat again, and I couldn't swallow it down. "He hit me," I
managed to say, and then I was so surprised by my words that I didn't
know what else to say.

There were other people in the shop. An older Asian man with a heavy
moustache coming round from behind the counter, a young black woman in
a yellow sweatshirt framed in the open doorway with the sunlight so
bright behind her. The woman kneeling over me said, "We've called an
ambulance."

"No, no," I said, and tried to stand up again, but I seemed to be
attached magnetically to the floor. "I'll be fine. I've got to get
back to work, they're expecting me back."

The black woman in the doorway brought me my shoe and said, "Where do
you work?"

A dark hole in my mind where the automatic knowledge should have been.
I panicked for a moment, then remembered. "Social Services. Round the
corner."

She had knelt down to help me put the shoe back on. "I'll go and tell
them. What's your name?"

"Jo," I said. "Joanne Elliott."