Mary's Prayer Read Free Page A

They had traded in their often unsavoury pasts for a cheap, pseudo-antiquity.
     Larkin didn’t think it was a change for the better.
    He walked along past The Red House and The Cooperage to find his hotel – another new building designed to look like an old
     one. Unfortunately it had failed to achieve the flat-roofed, red-brick warehouse style it strived for; it contained all the
     charm of a multi-storey car park.
    He entered the reception, an area suffused with a beige opulence that even extended to the lightbulbs, checked in, and went
     up to his room. It was clean and impersonal, just like any hotel room. Just like his flat. The most pleasant thing about it
     was the view of the bridges.
    He dumped his stuff, sat on the bed and flicked theremote through the TV channels. There was nothing to stimulate him, so he switched it off. He took out a book, flopped on
     the bed and started to read. Soon he realised he wasn’t taking in a word; he sighed, and put it down. It wasn’t working. He
     knew what he needed. Picking up his jacket, he headed out.
    The hotel bar was as welcoming and atmospheric as an airport departure lounge, so he struck out for the quayside where a suburban-smooth
     wine bar crowd flowed alongside him, their bankrupt smiles defying the recession even if it killed them. Larkin resisted the
     urge to push the smug bastards into the Tyne.
    He eventually managed to get served in the Baltic Tavèrn; thank God somewhere still had an atmosphere of sorts. Plushly seated,
     with brick walls, it was noisier than he remembered, but it remained a place where a comfortable drink could be had.
    Larkin took his beer and went to sit by the window. The last time he’d been in here, a row of old warehouses had faced the
     pub from the opposite side of the river; this had been razed and replaced by a steel, glass, concrete and brick monstrosity,
     seemingly designed by the creator of the Daleks. He looked closer: the new courthouse. He started to drink.
    Half past eleven. The pubs were shut and Larkin was drunk. He had started the night trying to remember all he could about
     Wayne Edgell, which wasn’t much; eventually he’d given up and let the alcohol take over. And it had done so with alacrity.
    Now he was slumped over the rail at the river’s edge, composing nasty little epithets for his Edgell piece about Newcastle’s
     decline, singing snatches of old Elvis Costello songs. He swivelled his head to look along the quay to a spot where he had
     once taken photos of an old girlfriend. His first love: a law student, nineteen, blonde and gorgeous. It had been a tempestuous
     affair; they’d begun it ready to die for each other, and ended it ready to kill each other. The relationship had come toits bitter conclusion shortly after they had traded punches on the Swing Bridge, when one of them had tried to throw the other
     off; he hadn’t seen her since. She was just one of the ghosts he carried around with him.
    He started to walk, after a fashion, stumbling up the road, telling himself, as all drunks do, that he was perfectly sober.
     As he went past the courthouse steps, a couple emerged through the main doors. They were well dressed, well heeled, and well
     pissed-off.
    ‘I wish you weren’t so forgetful,’ an angry female voice said. ‘Having to leave the party early! You know what that meeting
     with Sir James could mean to me. To
us
.’
    ‘To
you
. Anyway, it was you who forgot the papers, not me.’ The second, male voice gave a snort of derision. ‘Don’t worry – Sir James
     will still be there when we get back.’
    Something about the female voice gave Larkin a start. He’d heard it before. It was a voice that had once meant something to
     him … With an alcohol-fuelled sense of curiosity and effrontery, he ran to the bottom of the steps and jumped into the couple’s
     path.
    The three regarded each other in stunned, freeze-frame silence for a second or two, until the action resumed with