Ghosts in the Morning Read Free Page B

worry, I’m not a kid anymore.’
    ‘I know that, Simon, I’m just checking everything’s okay, that’s all.’
    ‘ Look, Mum, I’d better go, the lads wil l be round soon , I’ll speak to you soon, yeah .’
    ‘Okay, Simon, just be sensib – ’. The dial tone buzzed. I put the phone down on the table and sighed. It rang.
    ‘Simon?’
    ‘No, it’s me.’ Graham sounded tense, impatient , but I could detect a hint of hesitancy mixed in with the gruffness . I knew Graham well enough to know t hat meant a lie was coming, he was never very good at lying. ‘Listen, don’t worry about dinner for me tonight, I’m going to be a bit late. ’
    ‘Do you want me to do something and leave it for you? You can microwave it lat – ’
    ‘No, no, no, I’ll just grab something from the vending machine at work, I’m not too hungry anyway.’ That meant he was going out for dinner with Nikki. Or she was cooking for him...maybe not, she was too young, too precious to cook, young people didn’t seem to cook so much these days; it was all supermarket convenience meals, with fancy boxes and posh-sounding descriptions trying to disguise the fact that they consisted of cheap factory-processed meats. So, a takeaway maybe, he would find that safer, eliminate the risk of being spotted in a restaurant by someone he knew, Jersey was so small after all. . .he would keep the takeaway plain – no Indian food – he wouldn’t want to risk the smell of curry on his clothes, on his breath.
    ‘Okay, well –’ I said, but he’d rung off.
    I stood in the centre of the kitchen and looked at the potatoes shivering in a pan of water on the hob . It had taken me over half an hour to peel them.  I had thought that Graham and Daniel would be home for tea, but I should have known better than to make that presumption . Daniel was often out these days – with friends , g irlfriends, it was hard to know. He didn’t communicate much with me these days, sometimes just an occasional grunt - and Graham was rapidly becoming just as unreliable .
    I hadn’t minded peeling the potatoes. I never did. I found it therapeutic, slicing into th e thick, leathery skin, shucking off the earthy blemishes that looked to me like liver spots on an old man’s hands. Another pan stood on the hob; carrots and peas floating on a sea of salted water. I had planned to do a home-made chicken kiev, to go with the vegetables and the potatoes . I had been trying to decide how to do the potatoes – roast ed whole, or cut into chunky wedges, or maybe even lightly sautéed . I had cut into the cold knobbled skin of the chicken breasts, folding it back and stuffing in the herbed garlic butter. Extra garlic, it was a touch of vindictiveness on my part , to send Graham to the office, stinking of garlic, I had hoped he would breath e it all over that bitch.
    I could feel c hives under my fin g ernails...I stared at the raw chicken breasts and reached for a knife. I slowly pierced the greasy skin and watched as the butter seeped from the hole like a suppurating wound, and I thought again of the blood dripping down the man’s face.
    Then I carefully picked up the chicken breasts , squeezed them hard, and threw them in the bin.
     
    ***
     
    The local e vening news did not mention the man’s death. The presenter did talk about a finance company that had closed, with the loss of eighty-four jobs, so perhaps that was more important. They still had time for the weather, though , they always had time for that . The weather forecaster said that tomorrow would see a lot of rain, indeed a heavy storm was ‘ very likely ’ but they weren’t usually very accurate, so... it wasn’t the usual weather forecaster, instead it was a man called Colin Flood, which I thought was a good example of “nominative determinism”. I had heard about nominative determinism on a game show – one of those erudite BBC2 ones – whereby your name can have an effect on the job that you end up choosing.