“And I am proud of you, too, Kathy.”
Kathy gave Suri another squish and then Suri pulled away and suddenly said, “You are just in time, Kathy.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Suri answered by pulling open her laptop. She clicked onto Skype and Brady’s familiar icon was flashing. When she clicked, the smiley face of the soldier filled the screen.
“Suri-Suri, tell me a story!” Brady beamed. She was sitting at a table in what looked like some kind of moss-covered gazebo with dessert in the background and a sign saying ‘Happy Birthday, Kid!’ in the foreground.
“I do not know the story!” Suri smiled back at her.
“That’s the spirit! Happy birthday!” Brady replied and Kathy couldn’t help wondering if all they ever did was talk rubbish to each other. She tried her hardest to stay out of range of the camera, but it was inevitable that Brady spotted her. Suri didn’t know that they hadn’t spoken much since that night and Kathy didn’t know how to explain it to her; she didn’t know how to explain it to herself. They hadn’t fallen out and there wasn’t bad feeling between them; maybe they just needed this—the freedom to exist without each other and even work on letting other people into their private worlds.
“Kathy! That you?” Brady pushed her face closer to the camera, mocking the sight for sore eyes. “Kill any more coppers lately?”
“He’s not dead,” Kathy answered and was instantly happy to see her old friend.
“His heart is. He really had a thing for you.”
“I’m sure he’ll survive,” Kathy smiled. She hadn’t thought of Chris Spinoza for a while. Last she heard he was getting married to a nurse and from what Kathy knew of the nurses in this town, there were definitely worse people for him to end up with.
“And Mrs. S!” Brady shouted, now spotting Kathy’s mum in the background. “How’s it going, babe? That your fella? You’re not going to shoot this one in the nuts are you?”
“Brady!” Kathy tried to stop her between gritted teeth.
“What? Surely you’ve told him that the last one was a –”
Before she could finish the sentence, Aisyah had moved behind her and slammed the lid shut. “Right, time to sing the Happy Birthday,” she said, assuming that Carol Smith would prefer to tell her new boyfriend herself how she had discovered her last boyfriend just before he had performed unspeakable acts on Heston Wellsey, shot him in the balls, and then gone after the bone sculptor. Marcus had sung like a canary to save his own skin. She had subsequently told Kathy that she didn’t know what came over her; she just knew that she had to go after him and she had to go straight away—perhaps the vigilante spirit ran in the blood.
The lights were dimmed and cheers erupted from the gathered relatives and college friends as Suri’s dad crept into the room holding a lit birthday cake shaped like a film reel. Just as they began to sing, however, the doorbell rang. Everyone looked around, but no one seemed willing to move.
“I’ll go,” Kathy mouthed to Aisyah, who was engrossed in the proceedings, and made her way down the hallway and back to the front door. When she opened it, she was greeted by a delivery man in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt.
“Package for Suri…” he said, mumbling the unpronounceable last name.
Kathy tried to answer, but she was hit by the force of the man’s smell. He absolutely reeked, and Kathy’s hand jumped to her nose to block it. She took the parcel with her other hand and tried to make her discomfort as invisible as possible as she had discussed with her counsellor.
“Charmin!” he huffed. “I showered this morning, you rude cow.”
“Thank you,” Kathy eventually said and quickly pulled herself back into the house, shut the door and leaned into it, catching her breath again after blocking him out. She could still hear the singing in the other room but didn’t return immediately. The smell was still with her and she needed a few minutes to herself, which she had also discussed with her counsellor. After she was happy that the air was stench-free, she propelled herself off the door to return to the celebrations—it was so nice to see Suri and her folks and spend some time with her mum and Brady, but her body seemed to have a mind of its own and walked her up the stairs to the landing window. Her phone was out of her pocket before she had reached the top and she was snapping away at the delivery man, making sure that she got a close up of his face and the number plate of his van.
Minutes later, she was back in the living room. “Did I miss anything?” she asked cheerily, taking a slice of cake from Mustapha and sinking her teeth into it, and then she draped her arm around Suri’s shoulder.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Approaching Zero Page 23