Burning Bright [antikvár]

One Last night Sukey came back. Her poor head was bleeding. You know how scalp wounds bleed, Enid told herself. The cut was only perhaps an inch long, but the blood welled and welled and would not clot. And Sukey looked at her and said, 'What a nuisance this is, darling. I can't seem to do anything about it,' while Enid wiped the blood off Sukey's forehead as it sprang sparkling on to her dress and arms. Sukey's arms were bare and brown. She turned them over, holding them out, exposing the white flesh with fine blue veins beating in it. Blood spray hazed against her dress, though she was upright, smiling. But in the back of Enid's dreaming mind there was a shadowy knowledge that all this blood could never have come from so small a wound. Even in her dream she knew what had really happened. Maybe if I'd seen her dead, thinks Enid for the thousandth time, turning over and brushing the Ught-switch. Sukey, cold and stiff as the inside of a trussed chicken. No more smell of her hair. No more secret door. Her hair all matted with blood and flies and bits of bone. You can't make murder pretty. Sukey's skull blue inside like chicken bones, and all in slivers. She's here with me now, in this room. Sukey's eyes, her breath, her long bright fleece of hair spread like a tent around us both. She never went away at all. Everything returns, thinks Enid. There wasn't an inch of Sukey's body I hadn't touched. More than touched: loved. Perhaps Caro was right, that's where it gets you, wanting everything. Where did it get you, my darling? Who would ever have dreamed it would get you there, sprawled out on the floor ¦ of that small closed room, your head askew on the fender? There was blood drying slowly from the outer rim of the stain on the dull red Turkey carpet. It dried inward, darkening. The ,j i'l-