Please Don't Leave Me Here Read Online Free Page A

towel. He leans closer to her. She takes a step back. ‘You stink. You’ve been smoking again.’ With him .
    In the living room, Aidan is sitting at the table, admiring one of Phoebe’s drawings, while Finn drives a car across the back of his chair and Kitty rubs against his calf.
    â€˜Go wash your hands, guys. Dinner won’t be long.’ Brigitte stands in the doorway.
    â€˜Aidan’s going to read us a story,’ Phoebe says.
    â€˜No, he’s not.’ Brigitte puts her hands on her hips.
    â€˜Yes.’ Phoebe copies her mother’s gesture.
    â€˜Bathroom. Now.’
    Aidan shrugs, and smiles his one-sided smile.
    â€˜Sam tells me you’re a writer,’ Aidan says over dinner.
    â€˜He tells me you’re in the Cold Case Unit.’ Brigitte doesn’t lift her gaze from her bowl.
    Sam returns from the kitchen with a pepper mill and two beers.
    â€˜Thanks.’ Brigitte holds up her empty wine glass.
    â€˜What do you write?’ Aidan says as he grinds pepper onto his pasta. ‘Murder mysteries?’
    Sam laughs.
    â€˜Because you’d have a bit of an insight into how the criminal-justice system—’
    â€˜Parenting articles.’
    Aidan smiles at the twins, and cracks open his beer. ‘Thanks for letting me stay.’
    Brigitte pushes her bowl aside; she’s had enough.
    Phoebe asks Aidan to pass the pepper.
    Aidan reaches for the mill.
    â€˜You don’t need pepper,’ Brigitte says.
    Aidan takes his hand off it.
    â€˜Yes.’ Phoebe leans across the table and knocks over her glass of water.
    â€˜Jesus, Phoebe!’ Sam stands up and pushes back his chair with so much force it topples over.
    Phoebe starts crying. Brigitte glares at Sam, and he goes to find a cloth.
    â€˜Don’t worry, it was an accident,’ Aidan says.
    ***
    In a dream, he’s on top of her, moving slowly, rhythmically. He’s wearing a brown sweater; it comes off easily over his head. His body feels warm, hard. She claws, with long fingernails, at the serpent tattoo on his back. Desperate wanting, needing. Just about to come. Aidan? No, not Aidan. His hair hides his face. A flash of blue. Almost. Almost. But it’s gone …
    She opens her eyes. It’s Sam moving over her in the ashen lamplight. He squeezes her nipples too hard, pushes her legs back too far.
    â€˜That hurts.’
    He doesn’t stop.
    â€˜Stop, Sam. You’re hurting my back, my knee.’
    He still doesn’t stop.
    â€˜I said stop .’
    He stops, and she rolls from underneath him, curls up at the edge of the bed.
    â€˜Sorry. I thought you wanted …’ He touches her shoulder. ‘You were scratching my back really hard.’
    She doesn’t respond, and he turns his back. When his breathing becomes slow, sleep-regular, she rolls over and sees the scratch marks, and some blood. She flicks off the lamp and waits for sleep. It doesn’t come, and that desperate dream-feeling of wanting, needing, continues to ache inside her. She gets up, walks to the kitchen, and looks out the window at the bungalow while she drinks a glass of water over the sink.
    She takes the heater to the lounge room, sits on the couch with a blanket and her laptop on her knees, and starts writing her monthly article for Parenting Today . Toddler-taming featured in the last issue, so maybe she should focus on craft this month. Papier-maché balloons? She sighs, unable to concentrate, puts the laptop aside, closes her eyes, and slides a hand down under the blanket.

5
    â€˜What’s been the best part of your birthday so far?’ Ryan asks the twins as Brigitte clears the table of food.
    â€˜Red bums,’ Phoebe says.
    â€˜What?’ Ryan chokes on his wine.
    â€˜Red-bum monkeys,’ Finn says. ‘At the zoo.’
    â€˜Oh, the baboons.’
    â€˜Can we have cake now?’ Georgia crawls over Ryan’s legs and under the table.
    â€˜Good