Читать книгу Who Killed Ruby? онлайн | страница 32

She wakes to darkness, her head slow and foggy from the pill, to feel fingers gripping her shoulder and she jerks away in alarm.

‘Mum, wake up! Wake up, Mum, it’s OK, it’s only me.’

Sitting up, Viv gazes around her in confusion. ‘Cleo? What’s the matter?’

‘You were shouting in your sleep again.’

‘Oh, God, love, I’m sorry.’ She leans over and switches on the bedside light to find her daughter crouching by her bed, blinking in the sudden brightness.

‘It’s OK. You were really screaming. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I’m sorry, darling. I’m OK.’

Cleo straightens and yawns, her face swollen with sleep. ‘Sounded like a bad one this time.’

‘It was. Thanks for waking me, I’m so sorry I disturbed you. Go back to bed. I’m fine.’

When Cleo leaves, Viv waits for her heart to cease its frantic hammering. The nightmare had begun the way it always did. She’s a child again, sitting in the living room while Ruby and Jack argue in the room above. A slow dread creeps through her. She knows that her sister is about to die but she’s unable to move a muscle, to do anything at all to stop it. What happens next always varies; occasionally she’ll go to Ruby’s bedroom to see a dark faceless figure standing over her sister’s body, sometimes she’ll run from the house knowing that her sister’s killer is on her heels, his hand reaching out to grab her.

In tonight’s dream though, just as she’d heard her sister’s scream she’d looked up to find their old neighbour, Declan Fairbanks staring in at her through the living room window. For a moment she’d held his pale blue gaze before being hit by the overwhelming rush of fear that had caused her to scream out so loudly that she’d woken Cleo – and probably half the street too.

It was not the first time she’d dreamt of Declan; he often appeared in her nightmares, always with an accompanying feeling of disquiet. Sometimes she’ll dream that Morris Dryden is there too, his happy grin and rosy cheeks incongruous with her terror.

This, of course, is not surprising, tied as Morris and Declan are to that day, their witness statements playing a key role in Jack’s conviction. But she’s noticed lately that her unease when she dreams of Declan is laced with something else – a queasy kind of revulsion. She remembers little about him: a rather severe-looking man in his fifties, dark hair peppered with grey, very striking pale blue eyes. She has a dim recollection of him shouting at her once for kicking a ball at his window. Perhaps that’s where her aversion springs from, the childish memory of being chastised mixed with the general horror of Ruby’s death. Perhaps that was all it was.