People Die by Kevin Wignall Page B

years.”
    She smiled back and mouthed the words, “Me too,” no sound coming out. The smile grew broader then and she said, “Why don’t we open a bottle of Chilean red and we can sit and look through all my old photos and be really sad oldies?”
    He nodded, smiling too, and saying as an afterthought, “Can you drink?”
    “Glass or two now and again. Starting his or her education early.”
    “You don’t know what it is?”
    She shook her head in response and shrugged, like it was incidental knowledge.
    They sat in the living room for an hour, drinking wine, looking through photos, JJ playing catch-up on various faces, Jools finding little to say about most of them, only that they were in some management job or other, that they were married, single, still with the same partner from college. They talked mainly about the past, the brief window of their student years, as though at graduation they’d stopped doing things worth committing to memory.
    It was a good way to wallow out the evening, but as they talked JJ could feel a sense slowly building inside him that maybe he’d come too far, even if some of the others hadn’t. Maybe those friendships were only that, boxes of old photos, and there he was in some of them, but they were like pictures of a doppelgänger, someone who looked like him but had a different past, a different outlook, different DNA.
    And as much as he enjoyed being with Jools again, as natural as it felt after just a couple of hours, what would there be beyond that? Even if he found some way of being in contact with her on a regular basis, what would there be to talk about except the child that would soon be her focal point?
    Perhaps he would keep in touch in his own way now, dropping in once a year or so, out of the blue as he had that evening, so they could measure the progress of each other’s lives for a couple of hours before parting again. And at some point perhaps she’d notice that it had been more than a year, two years, three, and that would be the mark of his passing in the world he’d once inhabited.
    That was the most they’d be able to reclaim, never more than that, never even as much as the friendship they’d had before, all their conversations inevitably trapped in amber. He’d never be there for her, present tense, like other people would, and she’d only ever serve to remind him that all his potential for being someone else was locked into the past.
    Later, as if she too sensed that this was a one-time thing, and wanting at least to prolong it for now, she said to him, “Do you want to stay over?”
    “I can’t, I’ve got an early flight out in the morning.”
    “Where to?” But she responded almost immediately to his expression, answering herself, “Oh. You can’t say”
    “Best not to.” He looked at her then, sleep already wrapping itself around her like a blanket, seeing in her eyes though that she still wanted the company. “I can stay for a few hours if you want.”
    She even smiled sleepily. “That’d be nice. It’s funny, but it’s when I miss having someone.”
    It hadn’t occurred to him that, as content as she seemed, she might still be lonely too, that his being there had perhaps taken the cold edge off her evening as much as it had his.
    So they lay together in her bed, JJ helping her to prop pillows, making her comfortable, and he lay on his side with one arm draped over her and they talked to each other sparingly in the darkness, the words becoming fewer and fewer, the pauses longer.
    When Jools fell asleep he eased onto his back, staring up at the ghost of the ceiling, thinking of nothing, then sinking unawares into the Bostridge hit, a stepped remembrance, descending into it till it was more real than the dark room around him. There was Bostridge slumped in blood, the girl captivating him, and that package, and that gaze as he stood in the elevator.
    He was flicking through the wallet then, looking at the picture of Bostridge’s family,