No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

also the skirt. Draughty or what?’

‘Now you know how it feels to be a real fashion victim.’

Bram indicated her glass. ‘Want another?’

‘Thanks.’

When he returned with a gin and tonic for Kirsty and a pint for himself, she asked him where he’d found all the components of his costume.

‘Charity shops. Jake and I – Jake’s also Mrs Doyle, although naturally an inferior version… he’s here somewhere – Jake and I went on a mission on Friday, combing the charity shops for suitable attire. There’s a surprisingly good selection, let me tell you, of size 9 court shoes.’

Kirsty spluttered. ‘I can just imagine the scene!’

‘Turns out I’m a size fourteen in tops, ten in a skirt.’

‘It’s the shoulders, I guess.’

He nodded happily. Wow, but this was great! She was talking to him normally, she was making eye contact – she was, unbelievably, bantering with him! Kirsty! The Weird Girl!

Although he mustn’t think of her like that.

She was just shy.

Was she?

Now he wasn’t so sure.

‘The elderly women staffing the shops were not altogether on board with the whole cross-dressing thing. Are Jake and I the first people ever to be banned from the Sue Ryder on Tottenham Court Road for trying on a lilac Laura Ashley blouse and a lemon-yellow British Home Stores twinset?’

‘I wish I’d been there!’

So do I.

Oh. Where had that come from?

Kirsty sipped her drink. ‘I hope Zoë appreciates the traumas involved in these costumes.’ She pulled the mask down over her face, and gestured at herself. She really was so adorable in that costume. ‘There was Chris the Sheep, minding his own business, trotting along the pavement trying to find the Bull and Bell, when this urban fox appears from an alleyway round the side of a shop. Couldn’t believe his luck! A defenceless sheep wandering the streets of Fitzrovia… And the mad thing was that just for a millisecond I did find myself thinking Oh-oh – a predator of sheep!’

Bram chuckled. ‘You’ve inhabited the role.’

‘I am Chris the Sheep!’ she gurgled happily, striking a pose.

The party rocked. Both Bram and Kirsty were much in demand for photographs, and Bram lost track of her for five minutes when Zoë insisted on getting together the ‘best’ Father Ted, Father Jack, Father Dougal and Mrs Doyle for a group photoshoot. As Father Jack leant in for a snog and Bram took evasive action, he noticed a commotion going on across the room. Nothing unusual about that, when you combined students and alcohol, but then he saw Chris the Sheep stumbling backwards away from Mrs Doyle, aka Jake, and shouting:

‘Get away from me!’

And then Bram was across the room, putting himself between them. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded of Jake.

‘Nothing! I never touched her!’

It was all Bram could do not to lay hands on him. He’d never felt anything like it, the surge of rage flooding his brain at the thought of anyone hurting Kirsty.

Bram turned to her. ‘What did he do?’

‘Nothing. He didn’t do anything. It’s–’ She looked past Bram at Jake with a little grimace of apology. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

And she turned and fled.

Bram ran after her, out of the pub, out onto the pavement, wincing as his feet, protected only by thin nylon tights, made contact with little stones and other debris he wasn’t normally conscious of. ‘Kirsty! I’m ripping my feet to shreds here!’

She slowed at that, and stopped, and turned. In the harsh light of the street lamps, her face was paler than ever, tear-streaked, stricken. Bram tiptoed up to her.

She wiped at her face. ‘Go back in. I’m fine.’

‘Oh yeah, you’re fine. I can see that. What did Jake do?’

She sighed, and looked off. ‘He really did nothing. He – actually, he asked me if I wanted to go for a pizza.’

‘Riiight…?’

‘He was – you know when someone gets that look, they’re bending over you like they want to kiss you?’

‘Not personally, no.’

‘I couldn’t deal with it. But it wasn’t his fault. He did nothing wrong.’

And the answer came to Bram, all at once. Oh God, poor Kirsty! And the rage was back. ‘You were – you were assaulted, weren’t you? You were sexually assaulted.’

She looked at him for a long moment, sweet little Chris the Sheep, tears drying on her face. ‘No.’

‘But something happened to you.’ Very gently, Bram touched her arm.

‘Something happened,’ she said. ‘But not to me.’

He said nothing. He just waited. But she didn’t say any more, and in the end Bram suggested they return to the halls of residence.

‘You’d better get your shoes,’ she said.

‘I think I’m better off without them. If we go slowly.’

Back at the halls, Bram expected Kirsty to scuttle into her room and close the door on him, but on the threshold she turned. ‘If there’s no one in the kitchen, do you fancy just – sitting in there a while? I don’t want to… I don’t want to…’ She gestured at her empty room, the bed, the prospect ahead of her, presumably, of the usual crying herself to sleep.

‘Sure. Just let me de-Doyle and I’ll meet you in there.’

Bram slung on joggers and a T-shirt and found Kirsty in the kitchen. She had changed into cosy pyjamas and slippers. He put the kettle on for hot chocolates and Kirsty sat at the table. As he spooned cocoa into mugs, she said:

‘My boyfriend… At home. My boyfriend Owen. He was murdered.’

Bram carefully put the spoon down and turned to look at her. ‘Oh no, Kirsty.’

‘And I can’t – I can’t even contemplate… the idea of being in another relationship, even going for a pizza with a boy – I can’t do it. It’s bad enough trying to hold it together at the best of times, it’s bad enough being around people and trying to act normal, when – when–’

‘I’m so sorry.’ He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to hug her, but she probably wouldn’t want that. So he just sat down next to her without making any sort of a move to touch her