The Other Side of the Door by Nicci French (best novels to read for students .txt) 📕

can’t—’ I stopped, swallowed hard. ‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ I said. ‘I just had to have someone else here.’ My words came out in a gabble of sound and I couldn’t tell if Sonia could actually understand them.

Sonia still wasn’t looking at me properly. Her face was stretched into a sour kind of grimace, her mouth slightly open, and she was wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘Before you say anything else, Bonnie, let me say this just once. You should call the police. Whatever’s happened here—’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Fucking right I don’t. Fucking right.’ Sonia rarely swears; even now it sounded wrong, as if a stranger was speaking out of her.

‘I can’t explain,’ I said. I was trying to focus on her face but it kept blurring, as if I was very tired or very drunk.

‘This is a nightmare. Jesus.’

‘I know.’

‘Why am I here?’

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ I said wretchedly. ‘And I couldn’t be alone with—’ We looked towards the body, and away again. ‘With him.’

Sonia put her hand in front of her mouth as if to stop herself making a sound. She muttered something under her breath. Her face was pale and I could see beads of sweat on her forehead.

‘You were lovers?’

‘What?’ Even now I couldn’t say it.

‘I said: you were lovers?’

Blood pounded in my head. I could feel myself turning hot and red with such shame I felt I’d scorch and burn up with it. ‘None of that matters now.’

‘You stupid, stupid, stupid idiot. Oh, Bonnie! Why?’ She gestured blindly towards the body.

‘There’s nothing I can say.’

‘This is so, so . . .’ Sonia trailed off. Again, she put a hand over her mouth as if to stop unwanted words spilling out of her. ‘We’re standing here talking quite calmly,’ she said, ‘and all the time—this.’ She gestured with her hand, blindly. Her face wrinkled for a moment.

‘I know. I know.’ My words seemed to fill the room. I realized I was shouting and dropped my voice to a whisper. ‘I know.’

‘Know what? What do you know?’ She put a hand on my arm. Her fingers pressed painfully into my flesh.

‘Don’t.’

‘Why are you showing me this? What are you doing?’

‘I didn’t—’

‘Don’t say you didn’t know what to do again!’

‘Sorry.’

‘He’s dead. Dead. And you and he—Christ, Bonnie, what have you done?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What makes you think I won’t just call the police myself?’

I shrugged. A sudden weariness came over me, so heavy that I almost lay down under the sheer grey mass of it and closed my eyes. ‘You could,’ I said, ‘and I know you’re right. It’s probably the only sane thing to do.’

At last Sonia looked at me properly, with an intense, almost fierce gaze. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright. She seemed almost unreal. ‘I need to think,’ she said.

‘I shouldn’t have called you. It was wrong. Everything’s wrong. Oh, God, everything’s so wrong. How did it all turn out like this?’

‘Be quiet. Just don’t say anything.’

Suddenly I could no longer stand up. I sat down on the floor, my back to the body, wrapped my arms around my legs and pulled up my knees so they were pressing into my eye sockets. I tried to make myself as small as possible. Curled up into myself, I could hear my heart beat. I waited. My neck throbbed, my ribs throbbed and, around me, the room seemed to throb. At last I lifted my head on the wobbly stem of my neck. Sonia walked to the window and stood by the tiny strip of half-light between the closed curtains, looking out onto the shabby, silent little street. She was frowning, her eyes narrowed as if in intense thought; her lower lip was trapped between her teeth and I could see her chest rise and fall with her breathing. At last she turned back to the room and stared down at the body. Something in her appearance seemed to have changed. She stood straighter, and when she spoke, her voice was clearer. It was as if a fog had lifted.

‘OK,’ she said, as if she had come to a hard decision. ‘You turned to me for help.’

‘Yes,’ I said, in a whisper from the floor.

‘And you won’t call the police?’

‘I can’t.’

‘You say you trust me. That’s where we’re going to start from. Trust.’ She was speaking very slowly and clearly, enunciating her words with exaggerated precision as if she was talking to a small child or a foreigner with only the most basic grasp of the English language, but I knew that she was actually talking to herself, going through the jumble of thoughts in her head and trying to order them. ‘So, I trust you as well. You’re my friend. I’m not going to ask you what happened here, though it seems pretty bloody obvious. If you want to tell me about it, save it for later.’

I nodded. I would never want to tell anybody about it, not ever.

‘I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to regret this, but I won’t go to the police. That’s the first thing.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. But what I don’t understand is what I am supposed to be doing. Bonnie?’

‘It’s—I don’t know how to say it.’

‘You didn’t just get me to come over here to give you a hug?’

‘No.’

‘Why didn’t you run away?’

‘I thought—’ I stopped. I couldn’t really remember what I’d thought.

‘Bonnie.’ Sonia’s voice was sharp, calling me to attention. ‘Why am I here? What do you want me to do?’

It was my turn to pause for a long time.

‘I said I called you because I didn’t know what to do and I thought you’d somehow be able to tell me. But that’s not quite true. I do know what to do—or, at least, one thing I could do. You’re the only person I felt I could turn to, but by doing that I think I’ve done something terrible to you. So I just want to say