The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,45
the journey away. A woman at one end of the carriage was eating a Big Mac, the gherkin and meat stink filling the train. There was a man with an acoustic guitar at the other end of the carriage, and Kirsty was worried that he would start playing at any moment, bashing out some tuneless rendition of a Beatles standard before lurching along the carriage with his hand out, demanding his reward.
God, she hated the Tube. If the man with the guitar did turn out to be a busker he wouldn’t get anything out of her. She had already given away the last of her spare change to a woman sitting outside the station. Kirsty passed dozens of homeless people every day, and simply couldn’t afford to hand money over very often, but this woman (this girl – she couldn’t have been older than sixteen) had been holding a baby. The sight had chilled Kirsty, and she had reached into her bag and taken out her purse, emptying the coins into her palm and handing them to the girl. This certainly wasn’t the first homeless girl with a baby she had come across, but it was the first since she had found out.
She rested her hands on her stomach, feeling the need to be protective, wishing she wasn’t down here, in the unnatural heat, God-knows-how-many diseases drifting around. She should have got the bus, or taken a taxi. But there had been a part of her that had wanted to play the martyr, so that when she got home she could say to Jamie, ‘I had to go on the Tube because of you.’
She wondered how he would react when she told him – not that she had been on the Tube, but that she was pregnant. OK, she didn’t know for certain. She hadn’t taken a test yet. But her period was four days late, which was unheard of for her, Miss Regular As Clockwork. And she had known anyway. She had felt it at the moment of conception, and she had a feeling Jamie had known too. She was sure he would be delighted – she knew he really wanted children – but was this the right time?
Yes. Yes it was. Despite everything that had been going on. Or maybe even because of it.
She had been thinking about telling him tonight. She knew he wouldn’t be keeping track of her period (he was always surprised when it arrived – ‘What, already? Surely it hasn’t been a month?’), and he had been preoccupied lately anyway, so she knew she wouldn’t be telling him something he already knew, even if he had felt the same sensation as her when it had happened. But she was pissed off with him now. He’d been supposed to pick her up from work, she had waited out the front of the hospital for half-an-hour and he hadn’t turned up. She’ gone back inside to ask if there had been any phone calls. There hadn’t so, in a huff, she had stomped off towards the Tube station. He had forgotten about her. How could he?
To her horror, the man with the guitar pulled it to his stomach and began to play a tune. He did the first verse and chorus of ‘She Loves You’ then stopped and asked everyone in the carriage for cash. I should have been a fortune teller, Kirsty thought. She put her head down and made certain she didn’t catch the busker’s eye. Thankfully, the train pulled into a station before he reached her, and he got off.
She still couldn’t believe Jamie had forgotten about her. It was very unlike him. What if he hadn’t forgotten? What if something had happened to him? She hadn’t been able to get hold of him on his mobile. She had a sudden image of him crashing the car, his head going through the windscreen, shards of glass spraying passers-by as Jamie bounced back in his seat, his lifeless body slumping. She quickly shook away the image. It was replaced by an image of him being attacked in the street, a mugger stabbing him in the chest and grabbing his wallet, Jamie falling to the pavement, soaked in his own blood, grabbing his chest as his life ebbed away.
What was wrong with her? Why did she have to think of such things? She felt beads of cool sweat stand out on her forehead. She looked at her watch. Ten more minutes before this awful journey