In the Dark Read Free Page A

belly, like the kid was going to drop out if she sobbed too hard or something. Like all this was his fault.
    He knew what she was thinking, secretly. What she’d been telling her soppy sister on the phone every night. ‘He’ll come round when he sees the baby.’ Right, of course, everything would be fine and dandy when the sodding baby came.
    Baby make it better.
    The sat-nav woman told him to go left and he ignored her, slammed his hands against the wheel in time with the music and bit the ulcer on the inside of his bottom lip.
    Christ, he hoped so. He hoped it would all be fine more than anything, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to tell Helen. He wanted so much to look down at that baby and love it without thinking, and know it was his. Then they could just get on with it. That was what people did , wasn’t it, ordinary idiots like them, even when it seemed as if they had no chance at all?
    Those looks, though; and that stupid pleading tone in her voice. It was killing off the hope a bit at a time.
    The voice from the sat-nav told him to take the first exit off the upcoming roundabout. He bit down harder on the ulcer and took the third. Kennington was programmed in as the destination, same as always. It didn’t matter that he knew the route backwards, because it wasn’t where he was going anyway.
    â€˜Please turn around at the first possible opportunity.’
    He enjoyed these trips, listening to the snotty cow’s instructions and ignoring them. Sticking his fingers up. It got him where he was going in the right frame of mind.
    â€˜Please turn around.’
    He reached across, took a packet of tissues from the glove compartment and spat out the blood from the ulcer.
    He hadn’t been doing what people expected of him for quite a while.

TWO
    â€˜Fore!’
    â€˜Fuck was that?’
    â€˜You’re supposed to shout, man. I sliced the thing over onto the wrong hole.’
    â€˜So shout .’ He raised his hands up to his mouth and bellowed. ‘Fore mother- fuckers .’ Nodding, pleased with himself. ‘Got to do these things proper, T.’
    Theo laughed at his friend, at the looks from the older couple on an adjacent green. They hoisted up their clubs and trudged off down the fairway. There was no point taking the shot again; he’d drop one near the green. They’d lost half a dozen balls between them already.
    â€˜Why you need all that, anyway?’
    â€˜What?’
    Theo jabbed a finger into the bag slung over his friend’s shoulder: soft leather with loads of zips and pockets; dark blue with PING emblazoned on the side and along the shaft of each of the brand-new clubs inside. Big, furry covers for the woods. ‘It’s a pitch and putt , man. Nine holes.’
    His friend was a foot shorter than he was, but solid. He shrugged. ‘Got to look good, whatever.’ Which he did, same as always. Diamonds in both ears and a tracksuit to match the bag, with light blue trim and co-ordinating trainers. The plain white cap he always wore; no logo, same as everything else. ‘I don’t need to wear no tick,’ he’d say whenever he had the chance, ‘to tell me I look right .’
    Ezra Dennison, sometimes known as ‘EZ’, but most of the time just ‘Easy’.
    Theo sauntered along next to him in jeans and a light grey zip-up jacket. He glanced over to see that the older couple were walking in the same direction on a parallel fairway. He gave a small nod, watched the man turn away quickly, pretending to look for his ball.
    â€˜This is nice,’ Easy said.
    â€˜Yeah.’
    The shorter boy threw a few waves to an imaginary crowd, messing around. ‘Easy and The O, coming up the eighteenth, like Tiger Woods and . . . some other geezer, don’t matter.’
    Theo couldn’t think of another golfer either.
    Theo Shirley, or ‘The O’, or just ‘T’. One letter or another.