Too often he awoke to misery. Alone. Tired. Depressed. Pained.
If there was one thing to learn from late-night drinking, it was that life the next day always got worse. And here was living proof. Not only was his mind in a mess, his body was too. He knew it: a run was beckoning, with its rosy glow, clearer head, the very physicality of life. Turning over, he weighed.
*
She held his hand with a firmness that betrayed her emotions. She needed him. Like the air, the sunshine, the blood in her veins. Without him she would be lost, like the walking dead. She enjoyed all of these metaphors – all the like a and like the's. If a cloud raced across the sun, it would be a momentary occlusion of his radiance. If the bus was late, she was waiting for his words.
But inside was a voice. It was her very self-worth. It was trapped under a mountain of heart – her fatty deposits of cloying devotion that threatened to overwhelm her entire system. She ignored the little words, the denial being part of a deeper love on the long-term path. But her arm involuntarily flexed, making her hand flinch.
*
On a motorway overpass she stood for the briefest of seconds, then jumped. It was a peculiar sensation, this free-falling: wind, weightlessness under her feet, exhilaration – a novelty.
How many times she had gone through the motions she could not imagine. She would leave the house, still not sure about a note, and walk the three hundred yards up the slipway towards the M6 proper, turn right and walk the same distance back to be above the roundabout. Then, clambering over the crash barrier and railing, would leap to her death. And if anyone found her she would be able to call out his name: "Jack! Jack! Oh, I'm sorry, Jack!" Except of course, by then, in her crushed body, blood oozing from her mouth and nose, arms and legs and back broken, it would be too late.
*
It was only another two hundred metres, perhaps less. The sun was about to touch the horizon and beneath them they could see the shadow of the mountains on the other side of the col rise up the snow fields towards them as an incessant demonic presence – inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot.
If they had stopped and turned down a mere hour previously, they could have made for the tents on the ridge by darkness. An early start could have meant sunrise at the peak, or at least near their present location. But no, they had all agreed to press on regardless, determined to reach their goal early. And now, with perhaps another fifty or sixty steps ahead of them, the oncoming cloud of chilled sunlessness consumed them. Conversation desiccated, and taking immense laboured breaths, they switched on their helmet lights one-by-one, but the sapping effects of fatigue and oxygen privation added to their disorientation. Unwittingly, they had all ground to a halt, the frozen air scouring their lungs to remove even more heat. Above them the peak's golden wick of heavenly light finally snuffed, with a wind-whipped flurry. In the wide-open indigo above, wicked white starlight pierced them with pinioned night lances – anchored, they could not progress, nor return.
*
If he liked to get away with it, he also liked to tell. The final accounts filed, he had been careful to lay no trail, to put each step within different press releases so that only those with access to his very soul would be able to trace his direction. Information asymmetry, they called it, but only if it was exposed. Careful attention to the logistical psychology of an investigative mind, the sort he had witnessed when under investigation as a younger partner a full ten years before, meant that he was now as fore-armed as any general or commander in the field. He knew what to move where, and the effects each would have on the company's positive image, its various share prices in the forthcoming weeks, and then, when he had skilfully withdrawn all indicators towards him, the right time to resign and sell.
The final devilish act of the final devilish plan was to set the dates on the future meetings. Suspicions would be magnificently diverted. Picking up his jacket from his leather chair, he'd be out and be home before his beloved cleaning lady had finished emptying the bins. Ah, dear Sharon; she'd be able to find another job. Surely.
*
They'd walk him towards the pier. It was his expressed wish to see the town again from the end. The cliffs, ruddy and rude, had always seemed fragile – as if one night a winter's wave would remove it and leave a gaping hole in the landscape. Then the caravan sites and little boxy bungalows led down towards the town proper, the big fat hotels along the prom. On the other side the coast stretched away in a languishing flatness and fields ready for development. His town.
And here he was: dying. His achievements? A lovely suburban house, forty-five years at the bank, a will that accounted for everyone, a loving family, memories of happiness and holidays. Surely he should die happy. The doubt, his one and only, was the meaning of it all; for it had none.
*
Down, the foot went through the skull of his opponent. Not a pretty sight. But it could not be helped. He was to go, and go he went.
His twenty-third cigarette, he realised he had to come to final terms with this thing. For if his life was to provide any comfort then it must not be entered into lightly. It would kill him. It was killing him. And that was it! The last cigarette, the last one ever, the last. He exhaled and stubbed, coughed and spat. Holding up the pack containing the remainders, he crushed it. Into the gutter it went, and he felt... strangely exhilarated. Yes! Putting his rough hands in his jacket pocket, his fingertips fell onto the cheap plastic lighter. He pulled it out: this cheap, plastic lighter, half-empty, holding only one function. It should also go, but after one second's stare he replaced it. For next time.
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