Vacuum by Bill James Page A

said.
    â€˜Or what if Ilesy suddenly calls at 126, like, not expected one bit, the way he does?’ Jill said. ‘Even now when he’s not after Haze any longer and flashing his crimson scarf.’
    â€˜Creature,’ Hazel replied.
    â€˜So?’ Harpur said.
    â€˜You’re there with another woman in the house, not old. Older than Denise, but not old,’ Jill said. ‘Purple slingbacks. Boobs.’
    â€˜In the way of business,’ Harpur said.
    â€˜He’ll believe that?’ Jill said. ‘This is why I say unsuitable.’
    Harpur pulled in at the judo. ‘Pick you up here at the usual time,’ he said.
    â€˜Maybe I should come back with you now,’ Jill said. ‘Haze can stay. If Des Iles called in it would be all right then, because I’d be in the house as well, saying I had to miss judo because too much homework.’
    â€˜No, it will be fine,’ Harpur said. He put their sports bags out on the pavement.
    â€˜You seem in quite a hurry,’ Jill said.
    Of course it pissed him off now and then, this obsession of theirs with women he met, but he understood where their uneasiness came from and so didn’t show he resented it and felt monitored by it. If you were the single parent in a single parent family, you ought to try to avoid too much single-parent rattiness, otherwise the children would come to regard rattiness as natural to being a parent: they’d have no other current experience of parenthood for comparison. He drove back to the house and tidied up the place a bit.
    Although, these days, he liked the big sitting-room, it used to darken his soul and cause him shortness of breath when Megan was alive because she had her books on hardwood shelves, floor to ceiling, around all four walls. He thought the spine-names on some of these pitiless volumes would have depressed almost anyone, not just himself. He kept a few of the titles fully and accurately in his head so he could relish the fact they’d been carted away free on a strictly non-return basis by a dealer. It used to buck him up when he felt forlorn if he made his mind recall, one by fucking one, these gloriously gone works: Old Fortunatus , The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying , Edwin Drood , The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod , U And I . He’d had the shelves removed, and the room redecorated, a decent, respectful while after Megan’s death. It would have been crude and unfeeling to do an immediate chuck.
    Jill had wanted a couple of the collection for herself – one on boxing, The Sweet Science , and one the diary of a playwright called Orton – but the rest went. He would have hated for this woman, Karen Lister, to come into the house seeking help and get unnerved, even panicked, by sight of that smug, engulfing, interminable book depot.
    He drew the curtains after he led Karen in. She’d expect that. The sitting room had windows on to the street, and she wanted this visit discreet, not blatant under lights. It was usual to close the curtains on autumn and winter evenings, so the kids would not be able to kick up about crafty concealment for something sexual.
    Karen Lister said: ‘I’m trying to work out where you stand in all this.’
    â€˜All which?’
    â€˜The drugs tableau.’
    â€˜I’m a police officer.’
    â€˜So is the one called Iles mentioned by your daughter. Everyone knows he has his own views re drugs. He thinks decriminalize, doesn’t he, with more money for treatment? Like in Portugal.’
    â€˜Mr Iles is concerned with big-time strategy.’
    â€˜How about you?’
    â€˜I’m a police officer.’
    â€˜And then this new Chief,’ she replied. ‘A dawn raid on Ralphy Ember’s house. You were there, weren’t you, and Iles, although the operation was run by someone else. Symbolic, your and Iles’s presence? So, where are we?’
    â€˜Gossip gets