Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel

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Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel Page 33

by Angela Clarke


  A voice sounds out of nowhere. My thoughts are sluggish, as if I’m running under water. I try and try but I’m not getting anywhere.

  ‘Not stable. Eighty over sixty. And falling.’

  Oh God, I’m still alive.

  I move my legs, they respond, barely, but they respond. Light prowls its way into my eyes. I hear dogs barking, high pitched. They pant, their tags clatter.

  ‘You’ve been in a car accident.’

  My face is numb, my thoughts vague, like dusty boxes in obscure and dark attic spaces. I know immediately something is amiss.

  ‘Oh my God, look at her head.’

  A siren sounds, it stutters for a second, then turns into a steady torment.

  I want to tell them…I open my mouth, my lips begin to form the words, but the burning sensation in my head becomes unbearable. My chest is on fire, and ringing in my left ear numbs the entire side of my face.

  Let me die, I want to tell them. But the only sound I hear is of crude hands tearing fragile fabric.

  ‘Step back. Clear.’

  My body explodes, jerks upward.

  This isn’t part of the plan.

  When I come to, my vision is blurred and hazy. I make out a woman in baby-blue scrubs, a nurse, slipping a plastic tube over my head and immediately two prongs hiss cold air into my nostrils.

  She pumps a lever and the bed yanks upward, then another lever triggers a motor raising the headboard until my upper body is resting almost vertically.

  My world becomes clearer. The nurse’s hair is in a ponytail and the pockets of her cardigan sag. I watch her dispose of tubing and wrappers and the closing of the trashcan’s metal lid sounds final, evoking a feeling I can’t quite place, a vague sense of loss, like a pickpocket making off with my loose change, disappearing into the crowd that is my strange memory.

  A male voice sounds out of nowhere.

  ‘I need to place a central line.’

  The overly gentle voice belongs to a man in a white coat. He talks to me as if I’m a child in need of comfort.

  ‘Just relax, you won’t feel a thing.’

  Relax and I won’t feel a thing? Easy for him to say. I feel lost somehow, as if I’m in the middle of a blizzard, unable to decide which direction to turn. I lift my arms and pain shoots from my shoulder into my neck. I tell myself not to do that again anytime soon.

  The white coat wipes the back of my hand with an alcohol wipe. It leaves an icy trail and pulls me further from my lulled state. I watch the doctor insert a long needle into my vein. A forgotten cotton wipe rests in the folds of the cotton waffle weave blanket, in its center a bright red bloody mark, like a scarlet letter.

  There’s a spark of memory, it ignites but then fizzles, like a wet match. I refuse to be pulled away, I follow the crimson, attach myself to the memory that started out like a creak on the stairs, but then the monsters appear.

  First I remember the darkness.

  Then I remember the blood.

  My baby. Oh God, Mia.

  The blood lingers. There’s flashes of crimson exploding like lightning in the sky, one moment they’re illuminating everything around me, the next they are gone, bathing my world in darkness. Then the bloody images fade and vanish, leaving a black jittering line on the screen.

  Squeaking rubber soles on linoleum circle me and I feel a pat on my shoulder.

  This isn’t real. A random vision, just a vision. It doesn’t mean anything.

  A nurse gently squeezes my shoulder and I open my eyes.

  ‘Mrs Paradise,’ the nurse’s voice is soft, almost apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, but I have orders to wake you every couple of hours.’

  ‘Blood,’ I say, and squint my eyes, attempting to force the image to return to me. ‘I don’t understand where all this blood’s coming from.’ Was that my voice? It can’t be mine, it sounds nothing like me.

  ‘Blood? What blood?’ The nurse looks at my immaculately taped central line. ‘Are you bleeding?’

  I turn towards the window. It’s dark outside. The entire room appears in the window’s reflection, like an imprint, a not-quite true copy of reality.

  ‘Oh God,’ I say and my high-pitched voice sounds like a screeching microphone. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  She just cocks her head and then busies herself straightening the blanket. ‘Let me get the doctor for you,’ she says and leaves the room.

  Further reading

  A baby goes missing. But does her mother want her back?

  Get ready for the next must-have on your reading list. Gone Girl meets The Girl on the Train in this stunning psychological thriller.

  Click here to buy now.

  MEET PC DONAL LYNCH

  Irish Runaway. Insomniac. Functioning alcoholic.

  Chilling, brutal, addictive – if you like Tim Weaver and James Oswald, you will LOVE James Nally.

  Click here to buy now.

  YOUR FAMILY OR YOUR LIFE?

  Chris returns from his morning run to find his wife and children missing and a stranger in his kitchen. He’s told to run.

  If he’s caught and killed, his family go free. If he escapes, they die.

  Click here to buy now.

  Angela Clarke

  Angela Clarke is an author, columnist and playwright. She read English and European Literature at Essex University and Advances in Scriptwriting at RADA. Her journalist contributions include: The Guardian, Independent Magazine, the Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and Writing magazine. Her memoir Confessions of a Fashionista (Ebury) is an Amazon Fashion Chart bestseller. The short film Drift, based on her screenplay, is due for release in 2015. Her debut play The Legacy received rave reviews after its first run at The Hope Theatre, Islington, in June 2015. Now magazine described her as a ‘glitzy outsider’. She volunteers for The WoMentoring Project which provides mentors for marginalised female writers. In 2015 she won the Young Stationers Prize for achievement and promise in writing. Angela is addicted to social media and chocolate biscuits.

  You can follow Angela @TheAngelaClarke

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London, SE1 9GF, UK

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  195 Broadway

  New York, NY 10007

  http://www.harpercollins.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Praise for FOLLOW ME by Angela Clarke

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 FML – Fuck My Life

  Chapter 2 YOLO – You Only Live Once

  Chapter 3 #FF – Follow Friday

  Chapter 4 BFF – Best Friends Forever

  Chapter 5 OMG – Oh My God

  Chapter 6 DTF – Down to Fuck?

  Chapter 7 IDK – I Don’t Know

  Chapter 8 FFS – For Fuck’s Sake

  Chapter 9 STBY – Sucks To Be You

  Chapter 10 FWIW – For What It’s Worth

  Chapter 11 FWP – First World Problems

  Chapter 12 BTW – By The Way

  Chapter 13 SMH – Shake My Head

  Chapter 14 NSFW – Not Safe For Work

  Chapter 15 ICYMI – In Case You Missed It

  Chapter 16 RTFM – Read T
he Fucking Manual

  Chapter 17 IKR – I Know, Right?

  Chapter 18 EOT – End Of Thread

  Chapter 19 SITD – Still In The Dark

  Chapter 20 FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out

  Chapter 21 L8R – Later

  Chapter 22 IRL – In Real Life

  Chapter 23 GR8 – Great

  Chapter 24 RT – Retweet

  Chapter 25 ISO – In Search Of

  Chapter 26 VBD – Very Bad Date

  Chapter 27 BTDT – Been There Done That

  Chapter 28 MT – Modified Tweet

  Chapter 29 C&B – Crash and Burn

  Chapter 30 TBC – To Be Continued

  Chapter 31 JK – Just Kidding

  Chapter 32 TMI – Too Much Information

  Chapter 33 B/C – Because Eight years earlier

  Chapter 34 WUBU2 – What You Been Up To?

  Chapter 35 CU – See You

  Chapter 36 TBA – To Be Announced

  Chapter 37 AKA – Also Known As

  Chapter 38 WTF – What The Fuck?

  Chapter 39 DIY – Do It Yourself

  Chapter 40 PDA – Public Display of Affection

  Chapter 41 WTAF – What The Actual Fuck?

  Chapter 42 BRB – Be Right Back

  Acknowledgements

  Author Q&A

  Are You Awake

  Little Girl Gone

  Further reading

  Angela Clarke

  About the Publisher

 

 

 


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