thing. You might find this hard to believe once I’ve finished, but I like people. I do. I really do. And I didn’t mind Dave getting the manager position over me, even though he’d only been working there for a year, because he has a BTech in hotel management and I think for him it’s more of a career.
‘David King.’
Christ, I’d almost forgotten old Blue Eyes was there. My hand flies to my chest. I gasp. I must have been speaking out loud without realising.
‘Mr King is your manager, is that right?’
‘He was, yes.’
‘Why was?’
‘Because I don’t work there anymore, do I? I mean, I’m guessing I won’t be going to prison on a part-time basis. I’m guessing murder doesn’t look good on a CV.’
She scribbles on her notepad and looks up, tips her head forward ever so slightly. ‘And you say you weren’t angry at Dave?’
‘I don’t think so, no. Why? Is this to do with the next weird thing?’
‘No, not at all. It’s just interesting.’ She notes down something else, looks up. That smile/indigestion again. Which is it, Blue Eyes – are you pleased with the progress we’re making, or is it nothing a good belch won’t sort?
She doesn’t answer. I guess I didn’t say that last bit out loud.
‘I mean, Dave got on my nerves, but I wouldn’t say I was angry at him. I mean, I was angry all the time, but not with him specifically.’
She chews her cheek, presses her lips together to stop herself. After a moment she says, ‘Why don’t you talk us through the next weird thing?’
Oh, she’s good. She’s like that Kirsty Wark on Newsnight, leading me gently with that rope of hers until I’ve tied myself in knots. She doesn’t need to. I’m busy tying my own hangman’s hitch. As I said, it’s me that turned myself in, me that gave my statement to the ones in uniform… yesterday, was it? Day before? Last week? Whatever, I tell Blue Eyes about the next weird thing.
It will have been the Monday. Katie was still in her pit as per and Mark had said his usual two words as we went about our morning routines, dodging each other like bumper cars, scared that one jolt would wake both of us up to reality. You wouldn’t think we used to wake up and cuddle listening to the news on the radio alarm before we got out of bed. There was a time we couldn’t bear to leave the warmth of ourselves. Getting up used to feel like breaking myself in two, half of me going wherever he went. And when the kids were babies – we had Kieron and Katie so close together they were nearly twins – when he went to work I used to miss him so much I’d often walk all the way to ICI just to meet him for half an hour in his lunch break. Used to take him the Scotch eggs that he liked, and cheese and onion crisps, and we’d eat them, delighted as teenagers having a midnight feast, Kieron and Katie asleep in the double buggy, Kieron, a year older, looking like the twin that had drunk all the milk. Lately, we’d been more like grumpy old geezers than teenagers. I called goodbye to him from the front door, not loud enough that he could hear but just so that I’d be able to say I’d said it if he asked me why I hadn’t, which he would have done once upon a time, though he never would now.
I was on the early shift that day. I parked the car next to the arts centre by the canal. Mist rose from the brown water; there were a couple of brightly painted barges that hadn’t been there the week before, an arrow of ducks gliding up towards the bridge. I walked down the path that runs past the GPs’ surgery. It was a grey day, the air heavy. As I walked, I held my hands out in front of me and turned them this way and that. I touched my cheek, sort of patted it.
‘I am here, I am here,’ I muttered. ‘Definitely here. In the sagging flesh.’
There was a chap coming up the path towards me. Mid-forties, thereabouts, grey suit and white shirt with no tie, grey hair pushed back from his forehead. Clean-looking, if you know what I mean. Silver fox type. Past me he came, head down.