I See You

by Clare Mackintosh

The life of a writer is frequently a solitary one.

Authors are a great bunch of people.

If it isn’t boy meets girl, it’s boy stalks girl. Boy kills girl.

I swore I’d never throw my lot in with a man again. Mind you, I swore I’d never fall in love again, and look what happened to that.

Katie was always in such a hurry to grow up—couldn’t wait to leave behind the Barbie dolls and the My Little Ponies—but men seem to stay boys for so much longer.

It isn’t the money that matters but the kindness. And this way I give a little kindness every day.

“He is writing,” I say, redressing the balance by leaping to Simon’s defense. “He’s had masses of research to do first, and it’s hard finding the time around a full-time job.”

Routine is comforting to you. It’s familiar, reassuring. Routine makes you feel safe. Routine will kill you.

I remember him meeting my polite smile with something far warmer.

But it was too late. He’d already caught up with her. Kelly thought of all the crime prevention initiatives she’d seen rolled out over her nine years in the job. Poster campaigns, leaflet drops, attack alarms, education programs . . . Yet it was far simpler than that; they just had to listen to victims. Believe them.

I want to write books.” “So do it.” “I will one day,” he told me, “when I have time.”

“It wasn’t the notebook,” he told me, more than a year later, when he had moved in and was halfway through the first draft of his book. “It was the fact you believed in me.”

I can’t put my finger on what I don’t like, but my senses are screaming at me.

“I was doing the right thing.” “No, you were doing what you thought was the right thing. It isn’t always the same, Kelly.”

If music be the food of love, play on.

“Is she dead?” I don’t want to leave this room until I know for sure. The paramedic looks up. “Yes.” “Thank God.”