"Tim Lebbon - The Origin Of Truth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lebbon Tim)

"I'm sorry, Doug," she said quickly, and she squeezed his leg. He liked that,
he always had. A touch could speak volumes.

In the back, Gemma worked her way down between the seats. Soon the acrid smell
of urine filled the car.

Doug wanted to close his eyes, cry refreshing tears. There was a hot knot in
his stomach: fear for his family; love for his daughter; a hopeless
embarrassment at what she had been forced to do.

"Urine is sometimes used to treat the effects of jellyfish stings," Gemma said
suddenly, "especially in the tropics. Sometimes they can't get normal
medicines quickly enough, so they pee on the victims."

He glanced over his shoulder at his daughter, crushed between the seats,
knickers around her knees. What a strange thing to say. …

She stared back at him, wide-eyed.

He looked at Lucy-Anne, who appeared not to have heard, then decided to say
nothing. There had been something in Gemma's young eyes—an uncomfortable sense
of loss in a day full of terror—and he did not want to scare her any more.

An hour later they left the motorway. Doug turned north, and Lucy-Anne did not
object. Her silent acquiescence depressed him more than he could have
imagined.




·····


Within half an hour of leaving the M4 the traffic had thinned out
considerably. People could leave the city, but it was not so easy for most of
them to relinquish the motorways, as if the main roads could lead them
somewhere safer.
It was almost midday.

Doug turned on the radio and scanned the channels. Mindless pop, classical
tunes linked end to end without a presenter, a conversation on football which
he recognized as being about a match played a year ago. A semblance of
normality, but underpinned with the terrible hidden truth: that things had
gone bad, and might never be good again. He slipped a tape into the player and
REM started to piss him off.

Lucy-Anne twiddled her thumbs and only occasionally looked through the
windscreen. Doug touched her leg now and then to reassure her, and also to
comfort himself. He wished she would do the same back, but he had always been
the more tactile one, the one who needed a touch as well as a smile to make