The Calling Read Free Page A

the kettle boiled. He hadn’t even noticed the fresh sheets.
     
    Andy Burrows sat inside his old Ford Escort, watching the rain slide down the car’s windows.
    He’d genuinely planned to attend his mother’s birthday dinner tonight, right up to the moment when he’d parked outside the house and spotted them all through the partially open curtains.
    They would have assumed that looked inviting: a family dining happily together, with one space left for him. But to him it reeked of pity.
    He could see his mother at the head of the table, wearing a mauve cardigan. She was probably propped up with a cushion and wearing slightly lopsided lipstick that was the wrong shade. It didn’t matter to him. His mother hadn’t had a favourite child though, all through their childhood, Margaret had succeeded where he had failed – and she had never been disappointed.
    His mother’s present lay wrapped up on the passenger seat, with her birthday card attached. He’d bought her a book on houseplants. Stupid really, since she only had two Busy Lizzies and a spider plant. Margaret would know straight away that it had come from the discount bookshop, but then she could afford something better. Margaret had it all: a nice house, a good family, a steady job. All the trappings of security that he’d never had, and which he guessed he never would. He was younger than her, and had always lagged behind.
    Don’t be so hard on yourself, he’d told himself at twenty, but now, at forty-six, he had spent too many years believing himself inept to even think of having ambitions. Ambitions and achievements had been the inheritance of his sister.
    He could see Margaret herself fussing around the table, waiting on her family, keeping everything under control, Mike and Steve lapping up her attention. And Michelle and Carl, who were probably going to make her a grandmother one day soon. And Kaye.
    She wasn’t there.
    He watched the window for a few more minutes. No one looked out at him. Perhaps no one missed either of them?
    But they’d miss Kaye, wouldn’t they, for she was special, kind . He wanted to be kind too, but it always backfired.
    Today had been typical, since he’d meant to help. But he felt he was cursed with a kind of reverse-Midas touch. Everything he touched turned to shit.
    He’d be caught out, of course, as he always was. Until then, what? Pretend nothing was wrong or simply avoid them all?
    He decided to go home. He didn’t belong in there.

CHAPTER 2
SUNDAY, 27 MARCH 2011
    Gary Goodhew had seen dead bodies. And plenty of them.
    Early on, there were a few that had made his stomach tighten and threatened him with queasiness.
    There had been moments when he’d wished the clock could have stopped for the extra second needed for that cyclist to clear the path of the lorry, or that child to reach the pavement … Goodhew had a particular hatred of dealing with victims of road accidents; and thus normality ripped apart, often without warning. Sometimes the futility of those deaths felt close to overwhelming.
    He’d been the first to arrive after several calls when ordinary people had collapsed in the street. He’d heard words from the lips of the dying, messages that had been too quiet to distinguish, and felt guilty when he couldn’t pass them on.
    And then there were the murder victims. Sometimes maimed or posthumously humiliated, sometimes with shock or betrayal frozen on to their face.
    He could remember two instances when he’d looked away; and two more when he’d cried.
    Just a single body remained nameless, and none of the others affected him in the way that that one did.
    It always visited in the night, and avoiding it was the main thing that kept him awake at night. But most other dreams gave him space to think since he realized he was sleeping and could direct them, rewind and replay them at will. His grandmother had used the term ‘lucid dreams’, but that was all he knew.
    They reminded him of beachcombing: