What I Tell You In the Dark by John Samuel Page B

…’ The sentence is left hanging while she scans through her email folders.
    â€˜Here it is.’ She reads, ‘ InviraCorp is part of the solution in the global fight against HIV, not a part of the problem … Okay, that bit I used but this: InviraCorp is a politically and religiously neutral organisation . I didn’t bother with it. It wasn’t relevant, or at least, it didn’t seem relevant at the time. Now, though, it makes perfect sense why they would want to drop in a phrase like that.’
    It has Alex’s fingerprints all over it.
    â€˜Cheap spin,’ I tell her, ‘will not be enough to get them out of this mess. Not once you have the evidence to dish the full dirt. Besides, InviraCorp is not the real target here. They’re the small fry. We’re hunting for the big prize.’
    I have in my mind a spear held aloft in the leaf-filtered light, silent footfalls taking us deeper into the wood. The beast sulking at the mouth of its cave, surrounded by bones and scattered trophies of shields and helmets.
    She, meanwhile, is still busy on her computer. I can hear her typing again, the sound a modern hunter makes.
    She’s forwarding to me a few bits that I might find useful, she tells me. She then starts again to address her nagging feeling that I may be biting off more than I can chew – if only she knew (am I doing it subconsciously, I wonder, this rhyming thing?). She’s worried about me, just like my little Mary Magpie alwayswas (with good reason it turned out, but this is not the same thing at all). I tell her, for the last time, that I’m absolutely fine. That I’ll be in touch in a day or two. Then we hang up.
    I decide that what I need to do now is go and look at myself in the mirror. The physicality of this body has become much more centre stage with me since I got dropped by the Big Man. I kept noticing, for example, during that conversation with Natalie how different parts of it would light up and react to things she was saying, to changes of temperature in the room even – it’s non-stop. But whereas before all of that was just stuff I noticed, as you might come to grow familiar with a car you are driving, say (maybe a little more than that, but you see the point I’m making – there’s a separateness), now it’s actually a part of my intellectual landscape. My thoughts, my feelings, all of it, have become attuned not only to this body but also to the atmosphere around it.
    Strange though, because the face that confronts me in the mirror shows no sign of the self-possession and calm that I feel inside. Its appearance is agitated and gaunt. Older too, I fancy, from when I last looked, just after my bath. Vital minutes, a matter of hours even, have been confiscated from me since then.
    â€˜Need to shave this stubble off,’ I mutter as I start looking round for the things to do that with.
    It’s not something I’ve ever tried before – as you may recall, JC had a big glossy beard, not to mention lovely thick hair and dreamy brown eyes (you can see how he got on the shortlist for possible frontmen) – and, I have to admit, it’s not quite as easy as it looks. But bit by bit I get the hang of it and pretty soon I’m enjoying the rasp of the razor (particularly during the parts near to the bottom of each ear, when the rasp becomes richer, more of a rolling something heavy across gravel sound). It’s hugely rewarding to see the bristle-flecked globs dropping into the sink and being washed away by the running tap.
    The mirror itself forms the front of a cabinet and when I’m finished shaving I open it to reveal an inner pharmacopeia. I have a closer look at a packet of pills I find stuffed towards the back of the top shelf, dated October 2010, exactly two years ago – Olanzapine, atypical, prescription only, one tablet three times daily . This must be what that HR woman had been referring to