“Yes.”

She watched him walk away from her. Then Bella turned, her cold hands in her pockets. She began the slow walk back to the train station, dodging other pedestrians, trying to keep her shoes out of the puddles of water on the pavements. Ahead of her, a dark gap in the row of shops loomed – the entrance to Goodge Street underground station. Bella felt the familiar sickness surge up, her pulse rate begin to quicken. She clenched her hands into fists.

The bus that would take her to Waterloo was just up ahead. She put her head down and began to walk towards it, looking at her feet on the pavement, the toes of her boots flashing in and out of her vision. Nearly there, now. The entrance to the Underground was there, on her left, and she was walking past it, level with it, nearly past it.

Her footsteps slowed. She came to a halt in front of the entrance. A young couple pushed past her, speaking in Spanish. Bella looked fearfully into the entrance. More people came out, stepping round her as she stood as if turned to stone on the tiles of the entrance hall.

Bella took a deep breath. She took a measured step towards the entrance, another, another. She paused on the tiled floor of inner hall, breathing quickly. She remembered Jake, his face above her as they lay in bed, smiling down at her, his hair falling into his eyes. For a second, she hesitated. Then she walked towards the ticket machines, trying to breath properly, fumbling for coins, saying Jake’s name under her breath, like a talisman. Bella walked through the gates that snapped sharply back to admit her. She walked toward the escalator; shaking, her breath coming in short gasps, her legs weak – but still moving forward, walking toward the trains that rattled and hummed beneath her hesitant feet.

THE END

Enjoyed this story? Read more from Celina Grace at her blog on writing and self-publishing http://www.celinagrace.com

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NEW! Celina’s new psychological thriller, Lost Girls is now available from Amazon:

Twenty three years ago, Maudie Sampson’s childhood friend Jessica disappeared on a family holiday in Cornwall. She was never seen again.

In the present day, Maudie is struggling to come to terms with the death of her wealthy father, her increasingly fragile mental health and a marriage that’s under strain. Slowly, she becomes aware that there is someone following her: a blonde woman in a long black coat with an intense gaze. As the woman begins to infiltrate her life, Maudie realises no one else appears to be able to see her.

Is Maudie losing her mind? Is the woman a figment of her imagination or does she actually exist? Have the sins of the past caught up with Maudie’s present... or is there something even more sinister going on?

Lost Girls is the new novel from the author of The House on Fever Street: a dark and convoluted tale which proves that nothing can be taken for granted and no-one is as they seem.

Read the first chapter below...

LOST GIRLS

Celina Grace

Prologue

In the dream, it is always the same. Up ahead, I can see the holed stone outlined against the sky; drawn in shadow, a monochromatic sketch in my mind’s eye. The moon is so bright, it’s almost like daylight. I can see the glint of Jessica’s eyes as she comes and crouches down beside me, as I wait by the hedgerow. Behind us, the stream runs over the rocks and flows through the weed that grows like thick green hair in the water.

“Come on, stupid,” Jessica whispers and then she’s gone, creeping forward towards the rocks that are just a few steps away from the hedgerow. They are huge. Monolithic, they rise up and up and up, outlined against the harvest moon; a craggy jumble of stone, all sharp edges and depthless shadows in the moonlight. The Men-an-Tol is enormous, far bigger than in real life – a great stretching circle of stone, the hole in the middle of the rock gigantic, filled with a darkness that ripples like moonlit water. Jessica’s blonde hair shines in this weird, bleaching light, the same colour as the cornfields that grow all about the farm. She creeps away from me, her long, thin legs in their red shorts flashing pale in this strange landscape that is at once a memory and a fantasy. I watch as she draws near the rocks. I can’t move from this spot, I can’t throw off the weight that presses me to the ground. It’s as if unseen hands are holding me to the grass and earth beneath my feet.

I manage to move my head. I look down and I am dressed in the clothes that I wore that summer, my favourite outfit of nineteen eighty-nine; blue-spotted shorts and a yellow t-shirt, but it’s all wrong because my body is the body I have now, the body of an adult. Jessica has reached the rocks, her blonde hair a puff of corn silk blown by the midnight breeze. She stands in front of the Men-an-Tol and puts her ten-year-old hands on the rock and somehow I can feel the chill of the stone under my own palms. And at last I can move, can get up and run forward, released from whatever bondage held me to the ground. But it’s too late, I look up, and Jessica looks up, and I see her mouth fall open as, emerging from the blackness of the hole in the centre of the stone, is a creeping arm, a bulbous leg, as if the blackness itself is coalescing into a hideous form.

Jessica turns to run. I see her mouth wide open, the gleam of moonlight off her teeth as behind her the black figure shakes itself free and rears up against the moon, monstrously big, moonlight glinting off fangs and claws and its dead black eyes. It swoops on Jessica and smothers her blonde hair in blackness; she disappears as if an inky curtain has been drawn across her.

I stand there in the moonlight and scream, and scream, and scream.

Always, in my real life, I wake up then, my heart thrumming. Kicking and flailing, I run from the dream into wakefulness and I lie there in the dark. I remember that I am an adult, no longer ten years old, and the realisation hits me once again; I am grown but Jessica is not. Almost a quarter of a century later, she is eternally ten years old; lost back there with the rocks and the cornfields and the dead white moonlight.

PART ONE

C hapter One

The day of the funeral dawned cold and bright, sunlight filtering weakly through the curtains. The fine weather didn’t last. As I dressed shivering, after my bath, I could see dark grey clouds massing over the distant mountains and a thin white mist beginning to rise from the valley. By the time we went down to breakfast, the sunlight was gone; the sky sagging with imminent rain.

By the time I finished dressing, Matt had already left the room. He’d rested his hand on my shoulder before he left, had given me a reassuring squeeze, but he hadn’t said anything. What was there to say? I sat at the dressing table and drew a thick, black line over each eyelid. My hand was almost steady and it only took two attempts. My skin looked too white, dull and lifeless. I pinched each cheek.

Caernaven was as cold as it always had been. Despite the clanking radiators in every room, I could almost see my breath as I walked down the corridor, my heels muffled by the carpet runner. I hesitated outside Angus’s room. They’d found him here, just by the door which was now firmly shut, thank God. I looked at the floor, as if there would be some mark, some stain. Nothing, of course. I felt a sudden rush of nausea and swallowed it down. It must be hunger - I hadn’t eaten much lately.