A Parting Gift by Alex Walters

Author:Alex Walters [Walters, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ginny Horton woke at first light with an awful sense of dread. It was the kind of dread you associate with the morning after the night before, she thought. When you know you’ve done something awful but your brain hasn’t yet managed to drag together sufficient memory to tell you what it is.

Still not yet fully awake, she rolled over in the bed, disconcerted to find that she was lying here alone, the other half of the bed cold to her touch.

It took her a few more seconds to make sense of where she was. And a few more seconds to recall what had happened, what had prompted that waking sense of dread.

She wasn’t at home. She wasn’t waking, as she generally did, with Isla sleeping peacefully beside her. She was in a hotel in some small town in the Borders, and she was alone. That, in turn, prompted the memories of the previous night to flood back into her brain.

She lay for a few more moments trying to sort her recollections into some coherent order. She’d done nothing wrong. It was important she kept reminding herself of that. She’d done nothing wrong. In fact, she’d done exactly the right things. It was just that Brian Nightingale might not share her view.

It had started with that moment at the dinner table when he’d reached for her hand. She’d been startled by the suddenness of his movements and had pulled her own hand away more sharply than she’d intended. Nightingale had reached further to try to prevent her and had knocked over her largely untouched glass of wine, spilling a red pool over the white tablecloth.

The waiter had been oversolicitous, fussing about the table, mopping up the wine and replacing the cloth as if the fault had been his. Despite her objections, he’d insisted on presenting them with a complimentary bottle of wine. The last thing she’d wanted was another bottle of wine at the table, given that Nightingale had largely polished off the contents of the first two by himself.

Eventually, everything was sorted. Nightingale had apologised for his clumsiness, although not, she noticed, for trying to grab her hand in the first place. As she’d expected, he made a show of filling her glass and then promptly refilled his own. By now, the effects of the alcohol were beginning to show in him. A casual observer might have thought he was sober enough, but she could see his movements were becoming less well co-ordinated, his speech less coherent. Her guess was that he was a habitual drinker, skilled at concealing its effects. Even so, several pints and two bottles of wine in, it was beginning to show.

She turned down his suggestion of desserts or coffee, but eventually agreed to join him in the adjacent lounge while they finished off the complimentary wine. She reasoned this was unlikely to take long, given that Nightingale had already polished off half the bottle.

She followed him out into the lounge, wondering if he could be trusted with both the bottle and his own glass.

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