Free In Guilty Night by Alison Taylor

creeping sense of inadequacy wrought by Elis’s riches and erudition, McKenna surveyed the faded paper upon the walls of his little parlour, the chesterfield clad in threadbare green velvet, the carpet threatening baldness where thousands of footsteps had worn pathways among leaves and scrolls and old-fashioned roses. In the small collection of CDs and albums, the chain-store hi-fi system, the books denoting no particular interest or learning, the old prints of which he had been so proud, what had he to show for his forty-four years? Lack of money had company in the heart of poverty, he realized. A dearth of spirit, a pernicious wasting of imagination, which condemned the children of Blodwel to repeating life-patterns already marked out by parents and grandparents, their existence a ricochet from crisis to crisis to disaster.
    The cat lay on her back before the fire, paws draped over her fat little belly. She looked at him upside down, and he wondered idly if she saw him inverted, or if those sleepy slitted eyes saw anything at all. She yawned, turned over, and tucked her paws under her shoulders, staring at the flames. When the doorbell pealed, her ears twitched.
    ‘Don’t mind me calling late, do you?’ Eifion Roberts stood on the step, Michelin Man inside a padded jacket. He waved a bottle wrapped in off-licence tissue paper. ‘Brought something to warm the innards. It’s bloody freezing again. Your lot are out on the A55 by Aber.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘A whopping great truck jack-knifed over the central barrier. Lucky the road was clear, else I’d have a few to cut up in the morning.’
    ‘What d’you do when there’s no body to autopsy, Eifion? How d’you fill your days?’
    ‘Well, I might tour the hospital wards turning off intravenous drips here and there, but it’s a lot more fun putting carbon monoxide in the odd oxygen cylinder.’ The pathologist baredhis teeth. ‘What the hell d’you think I do?’ He dropped the jacket on the floor and sat on the chesterfield, bringing a sigh from the springs.
    ‘How much do you weigh?’ McKenna asked.
    ‘Don’t know and don’t care. You’re beginning to look anorexic. D’you run to glasses in this place, or must we swig from the bottle like common folk?’ He bent down to stroke the cat, running his fingers over her haunches. ‘She’s coming on a treat, isn’t she? Must be all that affection you lavish on her.’
    McKenna put two tumblers on the floor, and uncapped the bottle of whiskey. ‘Owen Griffiths reckons Denise is making a scandal out of her affections, and it’ll rub off on me.’
    ‘Why?’ Roberts gulped his drink. ‘You’re not her keeper.’
    ‘I’m still her husband. Tarnished reputations and all that.’ He sighed. ‘She’s taken up with some bloke.’
    ‘You know, do you? Folk think you don’t, which is why they’re not knowing what to say and what not to say. Who told you?’
    ‘Denise.’ McKenna smiled wryly. ‘She couldn’t wait. He’s a well-heeled type from Cheshire with a boat at the marina.’
    ‘Let’s hope he’s giving her whatever you wouldn’t, then,’ Roberts observed caustically. ‘Married is he?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘And I hope you don’t care. Take no notice of Griffiths and his chapel mentality. Nobody gives a toss if Denise hops in and out of every bed between here and Manchester. How’s the shoulder?’
    ‘Very painful, like the rest of me.’
    ‘What else d’you expect? Coming off that horse, you hit the deck fast. Folk only get mangled in car crashes because when the car stops, they’re still going as fast as the car when it hit whatever it hit.’ Dr Roberts drained his glass, and poured more whiskey. ‘You wouldn’t credit some of the messes I’ve had on the table before seat belts came in.’
    ‘Are you planning to drive yourself home?’
    ‘Only if I can’t sprout wings and fly like a big fat bat. Stop being an old woman! What’s new with the boy?’
    ‘Not much.’