as hushed as I had ever known it. Then, little by little, sounds filtered through – the humming of the fridge, the rumbling whoosh of distant traffic, the faint but constant white noise of the city. Hadn’t I read somewhere that the infinitesimal background hiss we hear in even the quietest of environments is the ceaseless, ever-expanding echo of the big bang rolling on into infinity? Was that a scientific theory or just an old wives’ tale? With my eyes closed I lifted my sandwich to my mouth and took a bite. Chewing the bread and meat slowly into a pulp and gulping it down was a bigger effort than I’d been expecting.
Next thing I knew I was jerking awake, shocked and disorientated, as if from a nightmare. Salmon-pink light streaked with purple bruises was seeping in through the French windows. I gaped blearily at the still-full mug on the colouring book, the coffee now scummy and cold. I clearly hadn’t moved because the plate containing my ham sandwich, the bread now a little curled and dry at the edges, was still on my lap. I shifted and groaned. My back was aching like a bastard and my hands were numb with cold.
What time was it?
I pushed the plate aside and stretched out my legs so I could extricate my phone from my jeans pocket. Even after trying to massage some life into my hands, my fingers were like dead meat, and I was reminded of those three-pronged claws in amusement arcades which you have to manipulate with levers to pluck a prize from a glass booth. At last, however, I managed to prise out my phone and gaped at the display screen. It was 6.25 a.m. I’d slept for over seven hours.
In thirty-five minutes it would be time to get Kate up and ready for school. Great. But at least, unlike yesterday, I had half an hour’s grace before the whirlwind hit. Last night, once I’d realised I was going to be back too late to put my daughter to bed, I’d rung Paula and arranged for Kate to stay the night over there.
Moving like an old man I pushed myself to my feet and shuffled through to the bathroom. I didn’t have a hangover this morning – or not much of one at any rate – but my sleeping position and the chill that had seeped into my limbs during the night made me feel almost as wretched. I cranked up the temperature in the shower and luxuriated in the sensation of hot water battering my skin, unknotting my clenched and aching muscles. As I soaped my body and washed my hair, I thought about my meeting with Benny, and Clover’s offer, and wondered whether I’d made the right decision, and how the hell I was going to help Candice.
She’d be wanting answers and I didn’t have any. Not yet anyway. Having closed the door of opportunity that had been opened for me made it doubly imperative that I come up with a solution to Candice’s problem. Maybe the thing to do was to bring Michelle and Glenn in on this, get everything out in the open, work as a family to clear up the mess. Candice would hate it, of course, but perhaps if we all pooled together we’d raise enough to pay off this Mitch guy. There’d be repercussions, bitterness, accusations – I could see Glenn using the incident to insist that Candice get a job to pay off her debt, for a start – but we could deal with all that once the bigger threat was out of the way.
Or maybe we should just tell the police and have done with it. Despite the threats that Mitch had made, it wasn’t really in his interests to inflict physical damage on his accusers, was it? Not over what to him must be a paltry sum; and not when it would mean the finger of suspicion being firmly pointed in his direction.
By the time I stepped out of the shower my flesh was tingling and I felt… if not exactly raring to go, then at least reasonably human again. From where I was standing, towelling myself dry, I could see my reflection staring back at me from the mirror screwed to the wall above the sink. It looked pissed off, accusatory, its short, dark hair sticking up in
Next thing I knew I was jerking awake, shocked and disorientated, as if from a nightmare. Salmon-pink light streaked with purple bruises was seeping in through the French windows. I gaped blearily at the still-full mug on the colouring book, the coffee now scummy and cold. I clearly hadn’t moved because the plate containing my ham sandwich, the bread now a little curled and dry at the edges, was still on my lap. I shifted and groaned. My back was aching like a bastard and my hands were numb with cold.
What time was it?
I pushed the plate aside and stretched out my legs so I could extricate my phone from my jeans pocket. Even after trying to massage some life into my hands, my fingers were like dead meat, and I was reminded of those three-pronged claws in amusement arcades which you have to manipulate with levers to pluck a prize from a glass booth. At last, however, I managed to prise out my phone and gaped at the display screen. It was 6.25 a.m. I’d slept for over seven hours.
In thirty-five minutes it would be time to get Kate up and ready for school. Great. But at least, unlike yesterday, I had half an hour’s grace before the whirlwind hit. Last night, once I’d realised I was going to be back too late to put my daughter to bed, I’d rung Paula and arranged for Kate to stay the night over there.
Moving like an old man I pushed myself to my feet and shuffled through to the bathroom. I didn’t have a hangover this morning – or not much of one at any rate – but my sleeping position and the chill that had seeped into my limbs during the night made me feel almost as wretched. I cranked up the temperature in the shower and luxuriated in the sensation of hot water battering my skin, unknotting my clenched and aching muscles. As I soaped my body and washed my hair, I thought about my meeting with Benny, and Clover’s offer, and wondered whether I’d made the right decision, and how the hell I was going to help Candice.
She’d be wanting answers and I didn’t have any. Not yet anyway. Having closed the door of opportunity that had been opened for me made it doubly imperative that I come up with a solution to Candice’s problem. Maybe the thing to do was to bring Michelle and Glenn in on this, get everything out in the open, work as a family to clear up the mess. Candice would hate it, of course, but perhaps if we all pooled together we’d raise enough to pay off this Mitch guy. There’d be repercussions, bitterness, accusations – I could see Glenn using the incident to insist that Candice get a job to pay off her debt, for a start – but we could deal with all that once the bigger threat was out of the way.
Or maybe we should just tell the police and have done with it. Despite the threats that Mitch had made, it wasn’t really in his interests to inflict physical damage on his accusers, was it? Not over what to him must be a paltry sum; and not when it would mean the finger of suspicion being firmly pointed in his direction.
By the time I stepped out of the shower my flesh was tingling and I felt… if not exactly raring to go, then at least reasonably human again. From where I was standing, towelling myself dry, I could see my reflection staring back at me from the mirror screwed to the wall above the sink. It looked pissed off, accusatory, its short, dark hair sticking up in
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