Hotel Midnight Read Free Page A

can?’
     
    Three-quarters of an hour later I was at one with my conveyor belt. The machine hummed. The mail flowed as fast as a mountain stream beneath my eyes. The sorting office was in full swing. For my contracted four hours I threw parcels into the concertinaed holds. If Nirvana is the attainment of bliss through the annihilation of self then I was very blissful indeed. Concentrating on sorting the fast-flowing mail excluded any other thoughts from my head, whether it was the new crack in the wall – or that bounced script – or the beer I’d drink that night. For those four hours I ceased to be aware of myself. I was merely an unthinking cog in the great British postal machine.
    Driving home that night, my body tingling pleasantly after my paid workout on the conveyor belt, I switched on the car radio. Straight away a news report relieved me of my ignorance. A minor earthquake had struck the town that afternoon. So that explained the noise like rubble being dumped into steel containers , as well as the cause of the crack in the kitchen wall. The report, if anything, was light-hearted. The town certainly didn’t lie in an earthquake zone. England just doesn’t suffer from earthquakes full stop. Damage was slight to trivial. A few vases. Maybe the odd busted picture frame. Those would be the sole entries on the casualty list. Pretty small beer when all’s said and done.
    I arrived home at 9.40. Parked the car, then laid the dust of the sorting office with a glass of cold water before pulling a beer from the fridge. Kathy appeared in the kitchen. Her eyes, as always, were tired; but she’d spent time on her hair and she looked nice. I kissed her. And the brown eyes did manage a twinkle.
    ‘Good day?’
    ‘Busy,’ she replied, with that slow-breaking smile of hers that was like the sun slowly peeking over the horizon. ‘How was yours?’
    ‘Cryer at DTV bounced the script. Just as I thought he would.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry, John.’ Then she scowled. ‘The little bastard; he was the one who asked you for it in the first place, wasn’t he?’
    ‘It was. That’s the curse of modern television. They’ll ask twenty writers to supply scripts on spec with no money up front; then they cherry pick the ones that suit their schedules. Beer?’
    ‘Please. But he as good as promised you a contract. He was already talking about budgets. Even who’d star in the thing.’
    ‘Well, he speaks perfect TV bullshit-ese. There you go. Where’s Paula?’
    ‘At Kirsten’s.’
    ‘Jake?’
    ‘Upstairs.’ Kathy didn’t want to be deflected from the great script fiasco. ‘So, what happens to it now?’
    ‘I’ll try it with another one of the independents. It’s still warm out. Do you fancy sitting in the garden?’ I tried to sound light-hearted . ‘Then I can serenade you under the stars.’
    Kathy nodded. Her brown eyes said it all. She was disappointed for me. Three months of work were in danger of evaporating under our very noses. Even though a contract for the script had been a longish shot, we’d already let ourselves do the foolish thing of ring-fencing the fee for the future. A chunk would offer a worry free Christmas. Presents for all. Plenty of Christmas cheer in the pantry. Now it looked like extra shifts at the Royal Mail sorting office.
    Kathy sighed. ‘Why can life be so bloody difficult, John?’
    Hell. Is there an answer to that one? I put my arm around her and hugged her. Then, before I followed her out into the garden, I looked back. The doors had swung shut behind us. Something they’d never done before. And I wondered if the earthquake (that ever-so minor earthquake, the radio assured) had tipped the house a little off kilter. Outside was warm. As if maybe the door of some great furnace had been opened far away. A slight scorching smell tainted the air, too. The sun had not long since quit the sky; it had left behind a blood-red stain on the horizon. The first stars glinted. A bat, nothing more