Outside (31 page)

Once he was safely through, he shrugged his jacket back on and found himself surrounded by fruit trees and manicured shrubs and bushes. He yanked a small golden apple from a low bough and put it into his other pocket. Then he picked a tiny under ripe plum and took a bite, spitting it out in disgust at the sour taste.

He was obviously in someone’s garden, some rich person’s garden by the look of it. He saw a large white timber summerhouse in front of him. It was octagonal in shape and he crept closer to investigate. The summerhouse, or poolhouse sat about twenty feet away from an Olympic-sized swimming pool and its underwater lights cast a dancing glow over the area. He could see the main house the garden belonged to. It was more mansion than house and looked miles away from where Jamie stood, staring. No lights were on.

He turned back to view the poolhouse. It had round blue glass windows, set into each of the eight sides, like portholes. The door had a white wooden frame with a large stained glass window depicting scenes of picture-book sailing boats on
stylised
waves under a blue sky. A generator hummed and Jamie deliberated over whether or not to break the beautiful stained glass, to gain entry. But he hesitated, worried about alerting the guards and strangely reluctant to destroy this tranquil scene.

It stirred a distant memory of his childhood that made him feel oddly nostalgic. He rolled his eyes at his own sentimentality and half-heartedly tried the wooden door knob, before preparing to smash his elbow through the door. But to his surprise, he turned the knob and the door opened.

Jamie smiled in disbelief and gave a low whistle. ‘Yeah, I could cope with a bit of this,’ he said out loud.

It was a poolhouse, but most people would have been proud to have it as their main residence. The door opened onto a lounge with comfy looking furniture. Next to the lounge, was a luxury shower room, sauna and a small kitchenette. Jamie did a little dance over to the fridge, forgetting the pain in his leg for a moment and, oh my God, ice cold beers.

He was sure now he had died when the AV hit him and he had now arrived in a heaven invented just for him. He pinched himself hard. It wasn’t even cheap home-brewed beer, it was the almost-extinct foreign stuff.

He popped the cap, using his fist and the hardwood coffee table, then he downed half the bottle in one greedy slurp. Nectar, ambrosia, liquid paradise. His head fizzed and his body relaxed. He lay on one of the striped sofas, sighing as he took the weight off his injured leg. Draining the bottle, he opened a second and began tucking into a party-sized packet of crisps that lay on the table. He hadn’t eaten crisps for half a lifetime. He tasted artificial
flavourings
, combined with excessive salt and his taste buds went crazy.

Sod the berry bar, he thought, beer and crisps are the way to go. I’ll just finish these and then I’m going to try out the shower, get some hot water on my poor neglected skin. He smiled to himself and wriggled comfortably into the sofa. Before long, he was asleep.

*

Skye was most definitely upset. Luc had as good as rejected her and she felt stupid and humiliated. He had unconvincingly faked tiredness and gone back to bed, but she could tell he wasn’t really tired, tired of her more like. She allowed a few tears to fall and kicked her legs half-heartedly against the side of the pool. She knew she should probably go back to bed, but a small spark of hope within her thought maybe Luc would change his mind and come back out to her.

She sat there for ages, dangling her legs in the water, until she realised she was shivering. She was freezing cold in fact. She swung her legs out of the pool and stood up stiffly, deciding to warm herself up with a hot shower in the poolhouse.

She’d have to pretend tonight hadn’t happened. She couldn’t have borne it if she and Luc were no longer friends and so she decided she’d have to wait a while before she made a move on him. It was probably her age putting him off. Once she hit sixteen, he would declare his undying love for her, she was sure of it.

Skye opened the poolhouse door and walked through the darkened lounge, to the large, tiled shower room. A strange, stale smell permeated the air, but she only noticed it on the edge of her consciousness, she was too preoccupied with her thoughts. She pulled the shower room light switch, stripped off her bikini and stepped into the large glass octagonal shower unit. The hot water felt amazing on her cold, clammy, prune-like skin and she stood there for ages, letting the water heal her tender heart and her bruised ego.

Reluctantly, she turned off the jets and reached for a towel, feeling suddenly exhausted and longing for her bed. Then she froze. What was that? She heard a thud, like something falling on the floor, followed by … a snore?

‘Hello?’ she tentatively called out. Who would be sleeping in the poolhouse?

She tiptoed into the main room in her bare feet. It was dark, but the light shone into the lounge from the shower room. She made out the form of someone unfamiliar lying on one of the sofas. Before she could stop herself, she gave a scream, instantly waking the person from their illegal slumber. It was a man, an outsider, judging by the state of him. He was wild-looking, filthy, with matted hair and now she had unwittingly woken him up.

*

Jamie must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, he was awoken by a high-pitched scream. He jumped up, quickly realising where he was. Years of travelling around strange, inhospitable places, had meant his mind was always finely tuned to his surroundings, whether awake or asleep.

He saw a young, naked girl standing by the shower door; she was backing away from him, groping around for her towel, which lay on the floor. The light from the shower room made him blink and he tried to refocus. He felt oddly fuzzy and strange, realising he must be slightly drunk.

‘Listen!’ He tried to think how he could stop this girl from landing him in trouble. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ But his voice sounded gruff and hoarse, even to his own ears. The girl started to scream again. She wrapped the towel around her and tried to run past the sofa, where Jamie stood. He grabbed at her, to stop her from leaving.

‘Calm down,’ he said, catching hold of her wrists, so her towel dropped onto the floor again. His damaged shoulder burned with the effort of holding her. She had a great body, but he wished she’d shut up. He was thankful the main house was set so far back from here, but any of the guards could walk past at any moment and hear her screams. He finally managed to get a hand over her mouth which she promptly bit, pushing him away from her with her one free hand.

‘Jesus, you bitch,’ he gasped, as her teeth sank into his flesh and a searing pain flashed through his already throbbing shoulder. She ran towards the door, picking up his bundle of possessions to try to cover her nakedness. At least she’d stopped screaming for a second.

‘My stuff!’ he shouted and lunged towards her to try and grab his bundle back. She yelped and dropped the bundle. Whilst he was reaching down to retrieve it, the girl grabbed an empty beer bottle from the floor and smashed the bottom of it against the wall, holding it in front of her, like a weapon.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ she trembled, ‘or I’ll slash you.’

‘Look,’ said Jamie, raising his hands, but still holding onto his possessions. ‘I was just sleeping here, but I’ll go. I don’t want any trouble. Just let me go. I won’t hurt you.’

But the girl was backing towards the closed door and, if he didn’t stop her escaping, she’d alert the whole perimeter and then he’d be done for. He calculated the distance, dropped his bundle and lunged towards her, finding his hands around her slim, white throat. She slashed up at his chin and he felt a stinging pain as he saw his blood drip down onto the wooden floor. But he pushed her back at arm’s length, so she couldn’t reach his face with the bottle.

The problem was he was doing her some serious damage - she was choking. Finally she was forced to drop the bottle, to try and
prise
his hands from around her neck, and so at last he could release her, shoving her away from him. But the force of this push sent her flying backwards into the door, crashing through the stained glass window and clutching at her throat, her eyes bulging in her head.

The noise was terrific and Jamie expected half the Perimeter to come running at any moment. She sat there inside the empty doorframe, in shock, covered in splintered wood and
coloured
glass. They stared, dazed, at one another.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jamie said as he viewed the naked, gasping figure. She was bleeding all over from hundreds of tiny cuts and, with the fragments of stained glass, her white skin appeared encrusted with sparkling precious jewels.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay? Stupid question. I have to go. I can’t get caught here, they’ll kill me. You’ll be alright.’ He was panicking. She seemed okay to him, just a bit shocked and messed up.

He heard a small creaking sound and looked up at the top of the door frame. She followed his line of vision upwards, tipping her head back, just in time to see a large shard of blue glass sky fall out of the frame and drop, with deadly accuracy, into her throat.

Her eyes moved downwards and locked onto Jamie’s, they widened momentarily. She opened her mouth and tried to speak but, instead, warm blood frothed from her lips. She fell backwards and lay awkwardly across the doorframe, half in and half out of the poolhouse. The glass shard still protruded grotesquely from her throat and blood pumped from the wound, quickly pooling around her lifeless body.

‘No,’ he exhaled as he realised she was past saving and he had better get as far away from there as he could. He gathered up his blood-soaked bundle and the remaining contents of the fridge, scanning for anything else that may be of use to him.

He decided to break the habit of a lifetime and travel by night. He would aim to reach the Boscombe Compound as soon as he could, hopefully before dawn, although it would be tough going with his banged up leg. If anyone asked he would say he spent the night outside Boscombe’s walls.

Hopefully, the girl from the Poole Shanty would already be inside the Boscombe Compound and he’d charm her into accompanying him to London. He’d make something up - the promise of a great job once they got there, or something. He didn’t plan on ever coming back.

*

Now Available:

THE CLEARING (Outside Series, Book 2)

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Note from the author:

‘Thank you for reading my novel. I’m an independent author and rely on word-of-mouth recommendations. If you’ve enjoyed Outside, perhaps you’d tell your friends about it and consider posting a short review on Amazon or elsewhere online.

Thank you so much.’

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Other titles by Shalini Boland

The Clearing (Outside Series, Book 2)

Hidden (Marchwood Vampire Series, Book 1)

Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series, Book 2)

A Shirtful of Frogs – a ww2 timeslip adventure

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About The Author

Shalini Boland lives in Dorset, England with her husband and two noisy sons where she writes novels (in between doing the school runs and hanging out endless baskets of washing).

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Connect with Shalini Online:

Twitter

http://twitter.com/ShaliniBoland

Blog

http://www.shaliniboland.co.uk/

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/ShaliniBolandAuthor

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