Someone Who Isn't Me Danuta Kot (best books to read .TXT) 📖

picture of Leesha. The image caught the car in the background, the number plate clearly visible. Kay held it up to show the other woman. ‘I can prove you were here.’

She didn’t expect such a strong reaction, but Leesha snapped, ‘You bitch!’ and tried to slap the phone out of her hand. Kay shoved it firmly into her back pocket and stood her ground.

‘Give me the key, and go, and I’ll delete the picture.’

Leesha stepped forward, reaching for Kay’s phone. She might be thin, but she looked as though she had a wiry strength. Her lips were drawn back into something resembling a snarl. Kay had the door behind her – nowhere to retreat. She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t thought Leesha would attack her, not out here, in public.

Except the empty street wasn’t public at all.

And then a phone rang. Leesha swore, grabbed her phone out of her bag and glanced at the screen. She looked at Kay. ‘Do it then.’

Kay had taken the opportunity to slide away from the door and had space behind her to get away. Watching Leesha closely, she got out her phone and opened her picture album. ‘You give me the key first.’

Leesha threw a key down onto the pavement. While she was distracted, Kay uploaded the image to WhatsApp and sent it to herself. Then she turned the phone so Leesha could see it, and, crouching down to pick up the key, she pressed ‘delete’.

Leesha was already getting into her car. The engine started and Kay had to jump out of the way as Leesha drove straight at her before pulling away. As the sound of the engine faded, Kay realised she was shaking. It must have been something urgent that had made Leesha leave so abruptly – she’d been lucky.

Forcing herself to breathe more steadily, Kay turned the key and pushed the door open.

It was the smell that hit her first; foul, organic, fishy and sweet. It was like the incontinence smell in her house at Sunk Island, like the smell Milo had got on his fur.

‘Poppy?’ she called. ‘It’s Kay. From Tania’s House. I’m here to help.’

Nothing.

The bulb in the hallway wasn’t working. Kay moved carefully through to the kitchen, feeling the rubbish under her feet. She turned on the kitchen light and left the door open to get some illumination into the hall. The kitchen was more or less as she remembered it. The smell was worse in here, and the floor was sticky as if something had been spilt.

No sign of Poppy.

Slowly, reluctantly, she made her way upstairs. There were two bedrooms, and each one was a wreck. Kay would have thought they’d been burgled if she hadn’t already seen the chaos Poppy and her housemates lived in.

Kay checked each room, but again, there was no sign of Poppy.

Where was she?

She made her way downstairs and was about to call Dev to let him know what she was doing, when she heard a scuffling noise.

It came from a cupboard she hadn’t noticed before, under the stairs.

She pulled it open, and at first, all she could see was a pile of junk – coats, shoes, old boxes, rubbish – just stuffed into the space. Some of the jumble slid off the top of the pile, landing at her feet. As she watched, it heaved and a hand reached out and tried to pull the coats in closer.

Poppy was there in the darkness of the cupboard, huddled under the stairs, buried under the junk.

Kay touched the reaching hand. ‘It’s OK, Poppy. I’m here. You’re safe.’

The pile exploded. Poppy leaped up, her eyes staring, her mouth wide in a soundless scream, her hands reaching for Kay’s throat. Kay went down under the sheer force of Poppy’s momentum, feeling Poppy’s hands like iron bands round her neck, far stronger than her fragile appearance would have suggested. She was making sounds now, a kind of ‘Ah, ah,’ with each exhalation, then she screamed and fell over sideways, curling up on the floor. She was saying something now, words that Kay could barely decipher, they were so garbled. ‘I didn’t know,’ Poppy seemed to be saying. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘You didn’t know what? Poppy, it’s all right. You’re safe now.’ Kay could barely get the words out, her throat hurt so much. She was still on the ground where Poppy had thrown her, struggling to get up.

Poppy was writhing on the floor, then she crawled away in an odd crouch, and scrabbled at the cupboard door which had swung closed. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. Kay struggled to her feet, grabbed her phone and pressed the emergency button.

Ambulance and police. She had no idea what Poppy had taken, but it looked really bad. The girl was overheating, the sweat pouring off her, and her agitated movements were only going to make things worse. Already, it was affecting her breathing and probably her heart.

The damage to Kay’s throat made it hard to speak. ‘Ambulance,’ she said. They’d bring police support once they heard what Kay had to say. As she gave her story, having to repeat it a frustrating number of times as her voice gave out, she watched Poppy cowering in the corner formed by the staircase and the wall, trying to pull the scattered coats over her. If Poppy attacked again, Kay didn’t have anything left to fight her off. She’d heard about the extraordinary strength some of the new synthetics gave to users. Poppy was drawing on resources she didn’t have, and Kay’s resources were starting to run out.

Kay was still speaking rapidly into the phone, explaining Poppy’s symptoms, when there was a terrible scream. Poppy staggered to her feet, pushed Kay hard against the wall and ran into the kitchen. She froze for a moment, looking round wildly, then threw herself at the back door, which shattered in an explosion of glass.

Chapter 37

Bridlington

Moving fast, Becca shoved her purse and her keys into her bag, and her phone