Bright Spark by Gavin Smith

Author:Gavin Smith [Smith, Gavin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Retail, Suspense, Thriller
Published: 2012-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

After the briefest of sleeps, he couldn’t be certain she’d been there at all. After Slowey had dropped him off and he’d managed to fumble the front door open with slightly less noise than a train crash. After he’d staggered up the stairs, sloughed off his ruined clothes and made a pitiful effort to wash his face and brush his teeth. After he’d fallen headfirst into bed, the sense of falling never ending, dropping him further and further into oblivion while his body hung inert somewhere behind him. After he’d heard the alarm on its sixth attempt to rouse him at something past six in the morning, a split second and a fleeting shadow having passed since he’d closed his eyes. After he’d slammed the alarm into the wall in a gentle bid to reset the wretched thing.

After he’d stared hard at the glimmering curtains trying desperately to understand which version of six o’clock this was and who had managed to set the alarm anyway. After he’d realised he’d had four hours of sleep at best and felt every bit as foggy and far less well than when he’d got into bed. After all of this, he understood that Hayley’s side of the bed was empty but had absolutely no idea whether she’d been there at all since yesterday.

Her phone was nowhere in sight, and he hadn’t checked his own phone since his last perfunctory text to her last night. Her side of the bed was rumpled and unmade; unusual for her not to have straightened it whenever she’d left it, but hardly conclusive either way. The business suit she’d worn yesterday – the severe, cinched-in affair that always made him vaguely lustful – was absent, as was her briefcase. Her car keys were missing from their hook – the fact that he hadn’t heard the garage door or the rumbling of an engine through breeze-block wasn’t that meaningful in his addled state.

While hurriedly shaving, he’d shouted a neutral voicemail message into his phone, hoping she was well, regretting he hadn’t had time to chat, suggesting she call back but only when and if it was convenient. While branding the shape of an iron onto his last but one tolerably smart shirt and sluicing toast and instant coffee around his mouth, he found no sign that the kitchen had been used at all for nearly 24 hours.

Unlocking the front door to leave, he saw the envelope pinned to its inner face, address to him in Hayley’s neat and almost fussy copperplate. She was safe and well, somewhere. He could go about his day having put her welfare to one side. He couldn’t read it now; couldn’t do it justice; knew what must be in it; and didn’t have room in his head for another matryoshka doll of shame and guilt and escalating obligation right now.

Leaving the letter in place, he locked the door behind him to find Slowey, obnoxiously bright-eyed and tidy, reviewing his notebook from behind the wheel of his scrapheap family runabout.

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