Pierre. Primula Bond
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PIERRE
Primula Bond
Mischief
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
An eBook Original 2015
Copyright © Primula Bond
Cover images: iStock
Primula Bond asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008173524
Version: 2015-12-21
For the boys in my life
They know who they are
‘Can the Cushite change his skin, or a leopard his spots? If so, you might be able to do what is good, you who are instructed in evil.’
Holman Christian Standard Bible
‘A person is “hors de combat” if:
(a) he is in the power of an adverse party;
(b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or
(c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself;
provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.’
The Geneva Convention
Contents
More from Mischief
He has amazing eyelashes. Long, thick, and black. They fan out over his hollow cheeks when he’s asleep, which is most of the time. They’re like spider’s legs. And I mean that in a good way. I like spiders.
We’re forbidden to go into his room, which is precisely why I can’t resist. I mean, what’s a NO ENTRY sign and two muscle-bound bouncers barring a closed door if not a blatant invitation? That’s pure temptation. That’s an order just begging to be disobeyed. At least, it is to me.
The drugged stillness in there at first was absolute. And the whiteness. The white sheets. The pallor of his bruised, sleeping face. His arms are white, streaked with dried blood. The muscles are slack. In the first week or so his left leg was up in traction to treat the fractured femur, his bed crowded with pulleys and weights.
I wonder, when the poor guy occasionally wakes to a room with no colour in it except the redness of his own blood, if he thinks he’s dead?
I doubt he’s been aware of my little visits. He’s heavily sedated. He wouldn’t be able to flick away a fly if it landed on him. But poco a poco he’s swimming to the surface. Little by little, reluctantly or otherwise, that instinct for survival is kicking in.
After they removed the traction I sneaked in the back way as usual, through the open door from the garden to avoid his minders, and went to stand at the end of his bed. And his eyes opened. Those spidery eyelashes bristled, became a thorny protective hedge.
At first they seemed blank and unseeing, yet something was stirring beneath the surface.
They dropped shut again, but I know what I saw.
I’m not like Dr Venska, stalking the corridors in her tight pencil skirts and teetering stilettos, clutching her clipboard against her high, pointed breasts. She’s some sort of therapist. The others joke that it