Lola Dee
Synopsis
Excerpt
From Chapter 1:
"I had the dream again last night. The one where I’m chosing rings for her. Not a ring, if you get my meaning, but multiple rings, several for each finger. I’m at that weird little antique store that we went to once, the place that smelt of cat piss and old woman sweat, the one that was right tyhere on the waterfront. The place still stinks in my dream, but there are boxes and boxes of rings to chose from, dozens, maybe hundreds of the things, and she and I are laughing as she tries them and finds them all too big on her skinny fingers. The old paste gems and chipped gold leaf of these things falls onto her fingers, and that’s when I realise that her fingers are just bone, bone gone yellow with age, and I look into her face and it’s not there anymore, just a skeleton, grinning up at me. I watch as the grin turns to dust, and then I’m running, ojr trying to, anything to get out of there, free of the dream. And that is usually where I wake up, tangled in sheets and sweating; and that’s no different tonight, except I’ve screamed myself awake. There is a shape next to me in the bed, which now stirs, and brings last night back in a rush. She’s a girl I know from somewhere, but God help me if I can remember her name. Cassie or Katie or something like that. She rolls over and her arm flops out over side of the bed. All I can see of her apart from the arm above the blanket now is a tuft of dark brown hair, pushed against the pillow. It’s time to be up and around."
