LITMIR.BIZ

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      For Fran and Jim

       Chapter 1

      I did the wrong thing. Just once. And there is a weary inevitability about what happens next; me in a stranger’s car, sunshine tricking, morning heat ticking, with a throwaway look before I leave. Truth is, I slipped off the picture months ago, way before the terror set in.

      Maybe it’s connected to the heat, the dog days of summer inducing a kind of craziness but, no matter how hard I try, I can’t catch a break. Can’t. And four fingers of vodka don’t change a thing.

      I stare at the lonely road ahead. There’s the odd worker bee but mostly traffic is quiet. Nobody to see or stop me. Checking the rear-view mirror, I take another sneaky swallow, not enough to dent my reactions, but enough to make me bold. Unaccustomed to the rip and burn of booze on an empty stomach, I love it –feels perfect in the circumstances.

      Perfect.

      And will Nate care? I don’t know. Do I blame him for the sick chain reaction of events? Maybe. Will he feel guilty? Probably.

      I’ll be honest, half of me is terrified to tear a hole in an unimaginably beautiful day, the other sad, but it’s the best I can do to keep those dirty little secrets shovelled back into the earth and buried deep. It’s why something so wrong will be so right. You’ll see.

      A glance at my watch confirms it’s time. Primed for speed, the four-by-four starts, its throaty engine snarling. Power thrills through my fingers, up my arms, and takes a spin around my brain. In that petrol-charged moment, I picture how it will play out after I’m gone. They will say I was drunk. They will say I was overworked and suffering from depression. Some will scream that I was mad and bad. Out of her mind, my mother will cry. Intoxicated maybe, but the rest is false. I could never feel more sorted. If someone threatens to topple the walls and bring them crashing down, you make damn sure they lie buried deep in the rubble beside you.

      Sunshine smashes through the windscreen and briefly blinds me. I take one final slug of booze. For courage. For luck. For endings. Then, stamping on the gas, I drive.

       Chapter 2

      “How many men have you slept with?”

      “What?”

      I was less concerned with Lenny’s intrusive question than with the fact I still stung from the furious argument I’d had with my sister three days ago. With bitter words and angry accusations, I’d blown my stack. And it hadn’t ended there. The rest was a blur of emotion right outside any normal spectrum. At that moment in time I’d hated my sister for making me feel so bloody inadequate and unloved by my own mother.

      “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

      “Lenny,” I puffed, almost skinning my knuckles on the wall. “It’s eight-thirty in the morning. It’s bloody hot and I’ve not long had breakfast.”

      Sweat poured off me due to the weight of the hefty set of mahogany drawers we were manhandling down a flight of stairs. You need to be strong in the house clearance business and, although short in stature, I was, but this piece of old tat was proving a right bastard. “We have a full day of humping—’

      She flashed a killer smile.

      “Shifting furniture,” I corrected, “and all you can think about is sex. What’s wrong with you?” In my experience men who banged on (no pun intended) about getting their leg over weren’t getting any. With Lenny, I simply didn’t know. Wind-up merchant, or genuine enthusiast?

      She bumped down another step with such force I thought my arms would pop out of their sockets.

      “Ouch. Watch my hand.” My biceps juddered and there was a faintly queasy sensation in my stomach. Motor-mouth didn’t pause for breath.

      “You haven’t forgotten to return Mr Noble’s call, have you? He needs us to clear his grandmother’s house.”

      “No.” I had forgotten actually. Mentally, I ran through my ‘to do’ list, which increased with each passing minute. The shop closed on Mondays, my time dedicated to admin and house clearance. I treated it as my weekly workout.

      “Only he called again yesterday. You were supposed to get back to him a week ago.”

      I didn’t dignify Lenny’s criticism with a reply. Too busy manoeuvring around a tight corner. A knob came perilously close to lodging itself between two spindles. With a superhuman effort, I altered the angle. Calamity averted.

      With only a minor diversion in her train of thought, Lenny got expansive. “I reckon I’ve slept with thirty-three guys, give or take.”

      “Bloody hell. What are you trying to do? Set some kind of record?”

      “It’s not a lot for a healthy thirty-nine-year-old.”

      When did you lose your virginity, I nearly said. In my head I furiously did the maths. I once, memorably, had sex in a store cupboard in an underground tube station on the Bakerloo line, and my last fling had been in a client’s home with Lenny’s predecessor, a guy who got clingy. In general, I was discreet about what I got up to in my down time, whether drinking more than was good for me or choosing unsuitable men to hook up with – often one inextricably led to the other. Scarlet, my goody-two-shoes sister, with her perfect husband, worthy career and perfect bloody life, would never stoop so low, and certainly not without her clothes on. I think I still loved her although I wished, in a complicated, sisterly way, that her halo would slip, trip her up and send her flying.

      “Would you sleep with a married man?”

      At this, I practically screeched. “As taboo as doing drugs.”

      “A bit of blow never hurt anyone,” Lenny chirruped.

      One stern look from me took the tweet right out of her twitter. Pink zinged across her milk-white cheeks

      “Sorry, Moll, I forgot about your brother.”

      “A bit of blow, as you put it, was what got Zach started.” After that he snorted cocaine that made him over-excited and unpredictable, and heroin that turned him into an octogenarian overnight with memory problems and a tendency to fall asleep any time, any place and anywhere.

      Lenny zipped it and, together, we flogged down the last two stairs, setting the drawers down with a mighty thump.

      “Pit stop?” she said, suitably chastened, a rarity for Lenny.

      About to answer, my phone rang.

      The caller display indicated it was Dad. Some of my friends disregarded calls from their parents when at work. My dad was different. A former senior police officer he’d taken early retirement and authority coursed through his DNA. Quietly spoken, quiet in every way, he was not an easy man to ignore, although my big brother, Zach, had managed it with ease for all his teenage years, most of his adult too.

      “Where are you?” Dad said.

      “Barnard’s Green. House clearance.”

      “Can you come home?”

      “Now?” I pulled a face at Lenny.

      “Scarlet’s been in an accident. An RTA.”

      I took a sharp intake of breath and translated the copper-speak; car crash.

      “Is-?”

      “It’s bad,” he said, a catch in his voice.

      I spiked with alarm, not so much because of what he said, but how he said it. My softly spoken father sounded at least ten decibels louder than normal. “Dad—”

      “I’m going to the hospital and I need you to

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