The Radleys by Matt Haig

Author:Matt Haig
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Paranormal, Fiction
ISBN: 1451610335
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2010-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Monday

Confine your imagination. Do not lose yourself to dangerous daydreams. Do not sit and ponder and dwell on a life you are not living. Do something active. Exercise. Work harder. Answer your emails. Fill your diary with harmless social activities. By doing, we stop ourselves imagining. And imagining for us is a fast-moving car heading toward a cliff.

The Abstainer’s Handbook (second edition), p. 83

Mister Police Encyclopedia

York. The North Yorkshire Police Headquarters. Detective Chief Superintendent Geoff Hodge sits in his office wishing he’d had more for breakfast. Of course, he knows he could do with losing a couple of stone or so, and he knows Denise worries about his cholesterol levels and al that, but you can’t start a working week on a bowl of Fruit ’n Fibre with skimmed milk and a poxy little tangerine or whatever it was. She’d even banned him from having peanut butter now.

Peanut butter!

“Too salty and it’s got palm oil in it,” she’d told him.

Denise knew al about palm oil from her Weight Watchers class. You’d think palm oil was worse than crack cocaine the way Denise goes on.

And now, staring at these two useless uniforms, he’s wishing he’d ignored Denise altogether.

Although, of course, you can never ignore Denise.

“So, you’re saying that you interviewed Clara Radley but you didn’t write anything down?”

“We went round there and she . . . satisfied our inquiries,” says PC Langford.

They all speak like this nowadays, thinks Geoff. They all come out of training at Wildfell Hall speaking like little computers.

“Satisfied our inquiries?” Geoff snorts. “Chuffing hel , love, she was the most important person you had to talk to!”

The two PCs cower at his voice. Maybe, he thinks, if I’d had some bloody palm oil for my breakfast, I might be able to keep a lid on my temper. Oh well, a trio of cheese-and-onion pastries for lunch should do the trick.

“Wel ,” he says, turning to the other one. PC Henshaw—a useless, de-bollocked spaniel of a man, Geoff thinks to himself.

“Come on then, Tweedledee. Your turn.”

“It’s just nothing came up. And I suppose we didn’t press too hard because it was just a routine thing. You know, two people go missing every—”

“Al right, Mister Police Encyclopedia, I didn’t ask for statistics. And this is not looking quite so bloody routine now, I can tel you.”

“Why?” asks PC Langford. “What’s come up?”

“The lad’s body. That’s what’s come up. Washed up in fact, from the bloody North Sea. I’ve just had a cal from East Yorkshire. He was found on some rocks at Skipsea. It’s this lad, Stuart Harper. He’s been proper done.”

“Oh God,” both uniforms say, together.

“Yeah,” says Geoff. “Oh chuffing God.”

Control

Rowan spent most of the night writing the poem about Eve he has been struggling to get under way for weeks. “Eve, An Ode to the Miracles of Life and Beauty” turned into something of an epic verse, accommodating seventeen stanzas in total and using every last piece of paper in his notepad.

Stil , despite having no sleep whatsoever, Rowan is less tired than usual over breakfast.

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