Jack’s demeanour was much more muted than Dr Sam Jackson’s,
his head pounding with a pain that caused his stomach to churn. Not that there
was a great deal left in his stomach to churn, suggested Karen
unsympathetically. She had been surprised to find Jack wasn’t home when she had
been dropped off by her father, and had considered asking him to take her back
to his house. However the kids were dead beat, so she had decided to stay. At
around midnight the sound of Jack falling through the front door aperture,
followed by rapid, exiting footsteps on the front path awoke her from a deep
sleep. Jack was fully in slumber within minutes of arriving ignominiously, the
children within a quarter of an hour. Karen had a full hour’s worth of cleaning
up before the luxury of returning to her sleep presented itself. If nature’s
response to excessive alcohol is to suppress memory, marriage’s counter is to
revive it with repetitive descriptive narrative and foul smelling examples
retrieved from the bin, thrust under the nose of the forgetter.
Alan was clearly a bigger drinker than Jack, and all of the
warning signs had been missed. Instead, Jack’s bravado had overwhelmed his
common sense, allowing him to try and match the pace of a man used to consuming
ten pints a night as a routine. Jack was in no doubt that the man that had half
carried him home before backtracking to his own residence would be as sprightly
as a ten year old this morning, possibly lamenting the slow pace of the night
before.
He would soon find out, he thought, as he remembered
agreeing to meet Alan at the office to review further the maintenance records,
to try and firm up the evidence against John. Both men agreed that the
notebook, damning in principle, was circumstantial in law; a curious document
that suggested prior knowledge but proved nothing. They would need to find out
more about the man before approaching ‘the authorities’, as Alan insisted on
saying, presumably meaning the police. Their conversation and reasoning had
faltered as the evening had progressed, and they had both ended up rambling
nonsense to each other by the time last orders had been imposed.
Pushing his barely touched breakfast away, Jack rose from
the table and rushed back upstairs to the bathroom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Ray Sullivan 2011
The characters, places and events described in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to persons, places or events, past or present, is coincidence. All rights reserved
I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here
Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to? Take a look at his website here
Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs? Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!
No comments:
Post a Comment