The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [76]
“Don’t go weak on me,” she warned, “because I’m not in the mood to play nursemaid. Supposing I’d been this bloke? Were you planning to cower in the corner and let him jump you all over again?”
I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. “You gave me a shock.”
“And you think this bastard won’t?” Her gaze shifted to the empty wine bottle beside the bed, her eyes narrowing in disapproval. “In your shoes, I’d have weapons stashed all over the house and a baseball bat to hand twenty-four hours a day. It’s not you who should end up on the floor, it’s him…preferably with his brains smashed out.”
I nodded to the carving knife on the bed. “I’ve been carrying that.”
“Then why didn’t you use it?”
“I recognized you.”
“No, you didn’t,” she answered bluntly. “You were backed into the corner before you knew who it was…and you never even thought about reaching for the knife.” She stepped into the room and picked it up. “It’s a useless weapon, anyway. He’ll have it off you as soon as you get close enough to stab him.” She balanced it on her palm. “It’s too light. You won’t be able to put enough weight behind it…assuming you have the balls to stick it in, which I doubt. You need something longer and heavier that you can swing”—she stared at me—“then it won’t matter if you’re drunk. You’ll still have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting him.”
I steadied myself against the wall. “I’ll get a baseball bat on Monday,” I said.
“You’ll have to be sober to do that.”
It was a good thing I wasn’t as drunk as she thought I was, otherwise I might have reacted more aggressively. I’d never met anyone who was quite so self-righteous. To a teetotaller like her, a tablespoon of wine represented ruin and perdition; to a hard-headed hack like me, it took several bottles to close me down completely. But in one way she was right. I might not have been paralytic, but I certainly wasn’t sober. The tranquillizing effects of alcohol were easier to come by than Valium or Prozac. As long as I paid by credit card to an anonymous call centre, it was delivered by the caseload to my door.
It didn’t stop me having a go at her. “You’re such a puritan, Jess,” I said tiredly. “If you had your way, we’d all be walking around with steel rods rammed up our back sides. There’s no joy in your world at all.”
“I don’t see much in yours either,” she said dismissively.
I shrugged. “There used to be, and when I’m feeling optimistic there still will be. Can you say that? Will you ever unbend enough to accept someone else with all their frailties?” I stared into her strange eyes. “I can’t see it myself.”
It was like water off a duck’s back. “I’m helping you, aren’t I?” she said impatiently. “I helped Lily. What more do you want?”
What more indeed? Approval? Encouragement? Sympathy? The very things I was rejecting from everyone else, but they seemed more desirable from Jess because they weren’t on offer. Perhaps there’s always a gap between what we want and what we know we can take for granted. “Nothing,” I told her. “This is as good as it gets.”
She studied me closely for a moment. “When did you last eat? You haven’t been out of the house all week, and your fridge was empty when I last put some eggs in it.”
For someone who didn’t want to play nursemaid, she was giving a good impression of one. I wondered how she knew I hadn’t been out. “Have you been watching me?”
“Just making sure you were still alive,” she said. “Your car’s growing moss on its wheels because it hasn’t moved, and you spend so much time checking your doors and windows that anyone can see you…particularly at night when you have all the lights blazing. There