In the Dark by Mark Billingham Page B

a minute, watching what traffic there was move past. There was a decent breeze blowing and Kelly struggled to light a cigarette. He stepped into a doorway, lifted his jacket to provide the necessary shelter and lit up.
    â€˜We going to find a cab then?’ Paul asked.
    â€˜You’ll be lucky.’ They watched a few more cars go by. ‘Might get a dodgy one up on the main road. Al Jazeera minicabs, whatever . . .’
    Paul felt as though he might throw up. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, waited for it to pass. ‘Shit . . .’
    â€˜We’ll have a good time back at mine,’ Kelly said.
    Paul puckered up. ‘You on the turn, mate?’
    â€˜In your dreams.’
    â€˜You sure Sue won’t mind?’
    â€˜Told you, she’s away,’ Kelly said. ‘We can sleep in, go over to my local caff for a fry up, whatever.’
    Paul thought it sounded good. Better than watching Helen tiptoe around him at any rate. ‘I said I’d call home,’ he said.
    â€˜Yeah, better had.’ Kelly tossed away his cigarette butt and started singing ‘Under My Thumb’ as Paul fished in his jacket for his mobile.
    Paul mouthed ‘fuck off ’ as he dialled, and waited. He got Helen’s voicemail and left a message.
    Kelly moved off along the pavement, his arms outstretched, still singing. Paul put his phone away and followed. He joined in with what words of the song he could remember, the pair of them slurring like Jagger on a very bad day as they walked towards the traffic lights.
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Sport - using the word in its broadest sense - had come to Helen’s rescue, with Graham adding a love of televised darts to his catalogue of freakishness and leaving the two women alone for most of the evening.
    They’d sat in the new dining-room extension and reminisced: about former teachers and almost-forgotten classmates; giggling and bitching like the thirteen-year-olds they’d once been. They usually ended up talking about schooldays, and Helen always relished the memories of a time when responsibility was negligible and worries were limited to maths tests and make-up.
    Tonight, it had seemed a very long way away.
    It was when Katie was talking about opening a second bottle of wine that Helen had glanced at her watch and been horrified to see how late it was. It had been almost quarter to two by the time she’d finally got out of there, and it would take at least an hour to get back from Seven Sisters, even at that time of night.
    Still a fair bit of traffic around as clubs and bars emptied out. Friday night/Saturday morning, there was no such thing as an easy run.
    She heard her phone ring as she drove past the Stamford Hill Estate. The handset was in her bag, and with nowhere handy to pull over she let her voicemail take the call. It could be nobody else but Paul at that hour. The tones sounded to signal that the caller had left a message. She could guess at its contents: ‘Just called to say goodnight. Hope Graham wasn’t too much of a wanker .’
    The swell of affection she felt was quickly sucked back by an undertow of guilt, and as she slowed for the lights she thought about something Katie had said in one of the evening’s less raucous moments: ‘You always knew what you wanted back then. You had it all mapped out. Kids, husband, career, the lot. It was like you never had any doubt, and the rest of us always knew you’d get it all, because at the end of the day you were always a jammy cow.’
    Helen started at the blare of a horn from the car behind her and realised that the lights had changed. She held up a hand in apology and pulled away, remembering her friend’s expression as she’d spoken and the song that had been playing in the background. How she’d nearly got into the wine herself right about then.
    She turned on the radio dropping down onto Stoke Newington High Street, wondering what time Paul would get back