The Best of Friends Alex Day (best short novels .TXT) 📖

point in setting up something similar now. Nobody goes to shops for presents anymore. Or at least, if they do it’s only to do research before they buy it cheaper online. And anything I find has to be something that can be done during school hours because if I have to pay for childcare it won’t be worth it, and it also needs to be local as I can barely afford to fill the car up these days. That doesn’t seem to leave many options.

A loud buzzing noise echoes out into the silence around me and I start. But it’s just my mobile; none of Justin’s creditors ever had that number, and anyway, it’s all over and done with now so I shouldn’t be letting it worry me anymore. I should be able to forget it.

I pick up the phone from the pile of debris on the table and read the message.

Tennis, 11am Sunday. And do contact Charlotte. She’ll be expecting to hear from you. Dan x

I read it carefully several times, a smile spreading slowly across my face, before putting the phone back down and continuing with the tidying up. At last I have something to look forward to.

Chapter 9

Charlotte

The black car is here. Again.

It cruises past me as I walk along the high street on my way back from the church, blacked-out windows making invisible ghosts of those inside, side lights shimmering eerily in the dusk. My pulse soars, my mouth is dry with fear, my clenched palms damp with sweat. The car pulls into the petrol station. Quickening my pace, I try to see out of the corner of my eye if it has emerged yet, and in which direction.

It is right behind me.

I suppress a scream. My breathing is laboured, and my legs feel weak. I can’t face this now; I can’t do it. I’ve done everything they’ve asked – nearly everything, anyway. Why are they chasing me, hunting me down? What else do they want from me?

The tone of the car’s engine changes as the driver moves up the gears. It purrs as it passes me, as sleek and smooth and quiet as a cat. It’s an expensive model, a top of the range BMW. It disappears around the bend at the end of the high street and soon I can’t hear it anymore. I’m just aware of the sounds of televisions issuing forth from the living rooms of the cottages that sit right on the road here, and of a blackbird singing on the telegraph wire above.

Perhaps it wasn’t them. How do I know? How can I tell? How can something so evil be stalking me in the quiet tranquillity of an idyllic English country village in the springtime? But the reality is that although they may be based on another continent, their reach is long, infinite. They can seek out whoever they are looking for with ease. They can definitely find me if they want to. This much I have always known.

I turn off the road and across the green where the wide, sympathetic front of my beautiful house awaits, calm and serene as always. I can’t wait to get inside, to shut the door behind me and hope that I am safe.

I used to dream, whilst living in a series of soulless modern apartments in foreign cities, of a house just like this. It was something I held onto, a lifeline that kept me going through the worst of times. That one day our peripatetic existence would end, and I would have a permanent base where Dan and I and the boys could grow and flourish. I let myself believe that when that time came, everything would be perfect.

That I would break my habit.

That Dan’s affairs would end.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That’s what I often ask myself. If Dan didn’t play away from home, would I have fallen prey to the predilection that has all but sucked the life-blood out of me? Did he play away because I was so preoccupied?

Was it his fault or mine?

I shiver and remember the heat, the steamy, enervating mugginess of the Far East that I associate most clearly with my folly. Even now, after so many years back in England, if I step into our sauna I will be immediately transported back there. Not to plush, high-security, over-air-conditioned suites, but to seedy, oven-like bunkers where condensation ran down the walls. Two different environments. Two different types of punter. Apart from me, who frequented both.

I don’t tend to use the sauna if I can avoid it.

The humidity was extreme, the boredom of day-to-day life intense. Moving to Singapore from Hong Kong at least brought a change of scene – and legal situation – and at first the city state’s cleanliness was a welcome relief from the crowded chaos of the enclave. After a while, though, the sterile atmosphere became as cloying as Hong Kong’s had been febrile. At least there, if you could summon the energy to brave the heat, you could wander the vibrant streets and there would always be something new and strange to see, from the jade merchants’ stalls in the market, to whole pigs roasting on spits, to the gentle offerings of neon-bright flowers, flickering candles, or burning incense sticks outside Buddhist temples. In Singapore, the main entertainment was the luxurious shopping malls with their opulent window displays and immaculate customers, seemingly untouched by the sweat and tears of the real world’s travails.

My dabblings alleviated the tedium of it all. But they turned into obsession and obsession leads only in one direction. When we left the east and headed west, to America, that continental shift should have been the opportunity to start again. In San Francisco, I swore that would be the end of it. And for a while, it was. My relationship with Dan got back on track. In fact, if anything it was better than before. It was so much easier to live in San