Wintour's Fate (eBook)
304 Seiten
Little Tiger Press (Verlag)
9781788956741 (ISBN)
Dublin, Brían splits his time between his family, his day job in film and television and his passion for writing. As a camera assistant, Brían has worked on television projects as varied as Game Of Thrones, Line of Duty, Derry Girls and Black Mirror. Now turning to novel-writing, Brían aims to be the latest in a long and distinguished line of published authors from his home town of Skerries, where he lives with his long-suffering wife, three daughters and their rescue dog, Ronnie.
Alex couldn’t be sure if she’d blacked out for a second. All she knew was that when she came to, she was laughing.
“I’m sorry, luv,” she guffawed, “but I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
But Christine gripped her shoulders again, bringing their faces close, those piercing blue eyes boring into Alex’s, desperately trying to communicate how serious she was and instantly extinguishing Alex’s mirth.
“They took you,” she said, near frantic. “Five years ago, on your ninth birthday, you vanished. I lost you … I … just for a second … I…”
Alex watched, dumbstruck, as Christine crumpled right there in front of her. Her vice-like grip loosened as her shoulders sagged, bringing her face with it. Alex could only watch as the woman was engulfed by a silent wave of grief that seemed to suck the life force right out of her and she went limp, a marionette with its strings cut, her body convulsing with chugging sobs.
Unused to displays of unbridled emotion, Alex didn’t know where to look. The suddenness and ferocity of Christine’s breakdown coming hot on the heels of every word she’d uttered since Alex had awoken had ambushed her, and now she was in fight-or-flight mode with nowhere to go and nothing to defend herself with.
Her eyes sought out something in the blank room, anything to distract her from the emotional earthquake epicentred in her lap, and alighted on the flowers, the vase, then the photo propped at its base. It was Christine all right. Fuller, brighter eyes; wide, beautiful and free of the hollowed-out sunkenness that bound them now. She looked straight at the camera with an expression the exact opposite of the one she was currently wearing somewhere behind the cascade of hair that was masking her face.
The girl in the photo was too busy blowing out candles to look up. A purple cap covered her hair, but it spilled out the back in a dark sheet, and Alex found her hand reaching towards the back of her neck. In profile, and at an angle, Alex caught a whiff of the familiar in the girl’s pale skin and high, rounded cheekbones. And with just a hint of a short, sharp nose visible as she leant towards the cake, Alex had to admit that, given five years and a whole lot of puberty, there was a resemblance.
But perhaps she was reaching. Perhaps part of her wanted it to be true.
She’d just decided to summon her strength and heave the sobbing stranger off her lap when she noticed a detail that she’d missed and her breath caught in her throat.
In her light summer dress, the birthday girl’s shoulders were exposed to the camera, a dark patch the size of a postage stamp clearly visible beneath one of the straps.
Alex didn’t need to reach for her left shoulder to know what she would find there. She’d been self-consciously covering the birthmark for as long as she could remember, which, she was starting to realise, maybe wasn’t very long.
Her life before her time with Roz Enright was a cave that she dared not enter: dark, dank and deep. But she suddenly recalled the riot of recollection that had come along with Tana’s final act, the rush of memories that had hit her when he gifted her the discipline of Mesmerism, whether she wanted it or not. In the middle of all that chaos, the fire and the sting of his betrayal, she hadn’t had a chance to think about what it meant and, in fact, at the time it had felt less like a bestowal and more like an assault. But looking at this photograph from what seemed to be someone else’s life, she had to wonder: had that cave even been open to her before that moment?
Though standing on the edge of a discovery so life-altering, so huge that it could only be viewed from a distance, Alex was wary of rolling away the stone and entering that cave now. The very idea was so unexpected and overwhelming that she found herself paralysed by the enormity of it.
Too weak to flee and tied to the machines by her bedside, she wasn’t going anywhere, so perhaps she should hear the woman out, if she could pull herself together for long enough, and see when or if their paths converged.
Christine was still slouched in front of her, struggling to catch her breath, and reaching out gently, Alex placed a tentative, reassuring hand on her shoulder. Christine tensed at the shock of Alex’s touch, but it had the desired effect. Gradually her sobbing subsided, she got her breathing under control and over a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, she lifted her head.
Red-rimmed, crystalline eyes peered at Alex through the thick, tumbled tresses of her chestnut hair, and slowly and unsteadily she sat upright.
Alex could see hope dawning in her open expression and a spark of something fired in her own chest. But she stamped it out firmly, refusing to be drawn into what could be just another charade so soon after the last.
She’d listen to what Christine had to say. But that would be it for now.
“Tell me what happened,” Alex said, her voice cracking unexpectedly. She cleared her throat in a vain attempt at covering it up but they could both feel it; the atmosphere in the room had become brittle, twanging with the tension of a tripwire.
“It was the day of your ninth birthday,” Christine said slowly, glancing at the photo on the nightstand. “We had a party, friends and family, and then I was taking you to a show. Just us girls, having a night out. Everything was going great. After the party we went into town. We had dinner in Five Guys, your favourite, and then went to the theatre.”
She sighed distantly at the memory, before sniffing and pulling herself together again.
“The place was buzzing, the lobby was packed. We were making our way through, en route to the concession stand and, I don’t know what happened, your hand just slipped out of mine. It was a moment before I even noticed, but suddenly you were just … gone.”
The word hung between them, buzzing like a neon vacancy sign.
“I didn’t panic right away,” Christine picked up. “You’re a smart girl, you knew to stay where you were if we got separated. I thought that as soon as the crowd emptied into the theatre, there you’d be. Only you weren’t. Still, I didn’t panic. You couldn’t have gone far. I checked with the staff, I talked to the ushers, I looked everywhere. No one had seen you. I even went to our seats, even though I had the tickets, because somehow you were always one step ahead of me. But you weren’t there either. And that was when I started to panic.
“I left the theatre, but it was the West End on a Saturday night,” she explained. “There were a million people on the street. I had no idea what to do, so I left my number with the manager, a small man from Liverpool I think, and went home, hoping you’d be there. But of course, you weren’t.”
A leaden weight had begun to press on Alex as Christine told her tale. Of course she’d heard it a hundred times before, but never from this perspective. For Christine’s part, she was holding up remarkably well given the paroxysm of grief she’d been wrestling with only a moment before. In an inverse of Alex’s experience, she supposed, the rough edges of this story had long ago been worn off in the endless retelling of it.
“What was the name of the theatre?” Alex asked, struggling to keep the tremor out of her voice. She was certain she knew what Christine would say but found she still wanted to hear her say it. She needed something to cling to. Something she recognised. A familiar beacon in the raging swell.
“The Pantheon,” Christine replied with a rueful smile. “The Pantheon Theatre. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the worst place on earth I could have lost you. It’s not just a theatre, you see, it’s a pit of snakes. A woman called Rosalind Enright ran a criminal empire out of it, so getting anyone to talk to me was impossible.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Of course. But that was when things started to get really strange. At first, they were dismissive. Give it time, they said. She’s probably out with friends. What age did you say? Got one of my own, they come in all hours, that sort of thing. You were nine! And it wasn’t until I was sitting there on the phone that evening, getting angrier and angrier, that I noticed how the house had changed. It was so subtle that I hadn’t spotted it straight away, but then I realised what it was: any evidence you’d ever been there had been erased.”
The hairs on Alex’s neck prickled to attention.
“I wanted a photo of you to show the police,” Christine continued. “But I couldn’t find one. They should have been all over the house, but every...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 7.8.2025 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Spielen / Lernen ► Abenteuer / Spielgeschichten |
| Schlagworte | action • action packed • Adventure • Alex Rider • Artemis Fowl • books for 13 year olds • books for 14 year olds • books for 15 year olds • books for 16 year olds • books for 17 year olds • books for 18 year olds • books for boys • books for girls • books for teenagers • books for teens • Cult • exciting • Fantasy • Fortune Telling • Fun • Future • Heist • PAST • powered people • present • Science Fiction • Sci Fi • SciFi • secret society • special powers • Superhero • superheroes • Thriller • thrilling • Time • time manipulation • time stream • Timestream • Time Travel |
| ISBN-13 | 9781788956741 / 9781788956741 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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