a Spot Of Bother (2006) by Haddon Mark

Author:Haddon, Mark [Mark, Haddon,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-12-19T00:41:58.703000+00:00

Jamiexxx

He put it into the envelope, added one of the photocopied road maps, sealed it, addressed it care of Becky, stamped it and took it to the postbox before he could change his mind.

In other circumstances George might have committed suicide. For two nights running he had dreamed about the drowning in Peterborough and in his dream the river called to him the way a huge feather bed might call to him, and even in the dream it was scary how much he wanted to let go and sink into the cold and the dark and have everything canceled out for good. But there were now only six days to go before the wedding and it would be ungentlemanly to do something like that to his daughter.

So, for the moment he had to find a way of getting from day to day until a time when it would be acceptable to do something drastic without it souring the celebratory atmosphere. This would doubtless be sometime after Katie and Ray had returned from their honeymoon.

He assumed, after examining himself in the mirror, that he was going to suffer some kind of organ failure. It seemed inconceivable that the human body could survive the pressure created by that kind of sustained panic without something rupturing or ceasing to function. And at first this was one more fear to add to his other fears, of the cancer, of going irreparably insane, of collapsing in front of the wedding guests. But after twenty-four hours he was willing it to happen. Stroke. Heart attack. Anything. He really did not care whether he survived or not, so long as it rendered him unconscious and absolved him of responsibility.

He could not sleep. As soon as he lay down he could feel his skin mutating beneath his clothing. He lay motionless, waiting until Jean had fallen asleep, then got out of bed, took more codeine and poured himself a whiskey. He watched the strange programs that the television pumped out in the small hours. Open-university documentaries about glaciers. Black-and-white films from the forties. Farming news. He wept and walked in circles on the living-room carpet.

The following day he went out to the studio and invented pointless tasks to tire himself out and occupy his mind (two men were fitting the new carpet in the house). Sanding window frames. Sweeping the concrete floor. Moving all the spare bricks, one by one, to the other end of the studio. Making a variety of small constructions in the style of Stonehenge.

He was having a great deal of trouble eating. A couple of mouthfuls and he felt queasy, much as he did on ferries in bad weather. He forced down a little buttered toast to reassure Jean and had to go upstairs to be sick in the toilet.

He began to lose his mind halfway through the second day. He got up from the dining table at the end of lunch, leaving his dessert untouched, saying that he had to go somewhere. He was unsure, precisely, where it was that he had to go.

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