Hi and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Yesterday, by Felicia Yap! Today I bring you an extract from the book, so read on to get a taste of this futuristic thriller...
A
village near Cambridge two years before the murder
Let me tell you a couple of horrible
secrets. I’ll start by showing you a photograph.
This is me, a
long time ago. I had a flat chest and protruding ears. If you look closely, you
can see that I once had hope in my eyes and fire in my soul. Today, both the
hope and the fire are gone. Wiped out by years of institutionalisation.
Here’s a second photograph. Oh, I see you
flinching. That’s understandable. It is, after all, a photograph of you. Your own mug shot, taken recently.
You don’t look too bad here. Blonde hair cascading down your shoulders,
impressive tits. Guess what? I’m going to transform myself so I’ll look exactly like you. I’m going to bleach my
hair and get boobs like yours.
Is that a frown I see on your forehead? You don’t
get it, do you? You’re wondering: why would I want to look like you?
Let me explain. I remember everything. Really, I do. I’m the only person in this world who remembers her past. All of it. Mostly
in vivid detail. I’m not kidding. And that makes me pretty damned special.
You don’t believe me, do you?
That’s
understandable, too. Like the five billion Monos around us, you only remember
what happened yesterday. You wake up each morning with facts in your head. Carefully curated information about yourself
and other people. You stagger from your bed to the iDiary on your gleaming
kitchen counter. To that electronic device of yours, your meagre lifeline to
the past. Desperate to learn the few pitiful details you wrote down the night
before. Eager to add them to your memories of what happened yesterday – and to
the other cold, sterile facts you’ve learnt about yourself.
Pretty rubbish, isn’t it?
And you’re even used to this, aren’t you? Because
you’ve been doing it since the age of eighteen, after your hapless little brain
switched itself off. No wonder you’re envious of the Duos, whose shortterm
memories are slightly better than yours. But you are all the same.
Equally pathetic.
Let me add a simple truth, since you’re getting
to know the real me.
When you remember
everything, you recall what other people have done to you (even if they don’t).
Down to the smallest, most gruesome detail. Which causes you to desire
vengeance if they’ve hurt you badly. Like really, really badly. Like, say, if
they caused you to end up in a mental asylum for seventeen years. It makes you
yearn, during the darkest hours of the night when the moon’s smile has faded
and the owls have fallen silent, to set matters straight.
When you remember everything, you will also get
away with everything. Like revenge, for instance.
Fucking convenient, isn’t it?
This is precisely why I, Sophia Alyssa Ayling,
will get away with it.
Vengeance would be nice. Especially in view of
what you’ve done to me. All the terrible little things you’ve been guilty of,
over the years. I recall each and every one of them. It’s the sum total of remembered grievances that
makes hatred potent. Oh, yes. The act of revenge will be easy.
Because
no one will remember what I’m going to do to you.
Except for me.
Yesterday is out now in paperback (available here)
Read my review here
[Huge thanks to Jenni at Headline for sending me a copy of the book ]
