Free Another Night, Another Day by Sarah Rayner

the last. They met at a party; Abby was attracted to Glenn at once. He looked almost piratical, yet when she got to know him he proved solid,
sensible. He had a job he liked, was ambitious. She remembers he seemed to combine the two things she wanted most: sexual attraction and security. ‘Move in with me,’ he’d said, so
she’d upped sticks and come to Brighton. And they’d been happy, blissfully so. She wasn’t wrong about that, was she?
    No, she thinks, I wasn’t. We made love in the open air on the downs, we laughed at the foibles of other people, we were in sync about politics and the planet and what we wanted from life.
We didn’t simply love one another, we
liked
one another. It’s just all this was before Callum.
    She can hear their son thumping his legs against the end of his bed next door. Any second he’ll be up, raring to go.
    And if Glenn was a cross between her first two boyfriends, then Callum is a cross between the two of us, she observes, not for the first time. The way he pings from a high-energy Zebedee to an
obsessive, like a trainspotter; that’s me mixed with Glenn, for sure. Perhaps if we’d had a different child we’d have been OK, but I can’t undo that and wouldn’t want
to. Still, who could have foreseen that finding the man to balance me would produce the child who pushed us apart?
    * * *
    Karen is lying in bed, but memories are flooding in so thick and fast she’s barely slept at all.
    The train to Victoria had left Burgess Hill. She and Simon had been in adjacent seats, facing forwards. Simon had brought a book to read, but they’d been chatting since leaving
Brighton.
    ‘My boss has moved my desk,’ she’d been saying. ‘He didn’t even ask me.’
    ‘Poor baby,’ Simon had replied, and he’d been stroking her hand, when, suddenly, in a single moment, everything changed.
    Simon had muttered something, clutched his chest, and with a thud he’d landed face down on the table. He was still, so eerily still . . . She’d been confused – shocked –
frantic; it all happened so fast.
    Within seconds she’d got to her feet and shouted his name. According to Lou, who’d been across the aisle, she’d been amazingly level-headed, though Karen has thought since that
Lou might have skewed events in the retelling to help ease her sorrow and guilt.
    It was a heart attack. A coronary so severe that Simon had probably died in seconds, or that’s what they said after the post-mortem.
    I shouldn’t have ordered him that coffee, thinks Karen for the thousandth time. I should have listened when he said he had indigestion. We should have sat down on a bench in the concourse
and waited for it to pass. We should never have boarded the train. I shouldn’t have worried him by moaning. And when he collapsed, I should have tried to revive him, given him the kiss of
life . . .
    She’s been over this again and again. Yet no matter how hard she beats herself up, no matter how many months have elapsed since that fateful morning, it seems she can never be absolved of
her sense of wrongdoing.
    She rolls over and checks the radio alarm. It’s 06.45 on 12 February. Two days before Valentine’s, and two years to the day since Simon’s passing.

10
    What a difficult start to the day, thinks Abby.
    Callum’s had his pants on, then off. His sweatshirt inside out, outside in and inside out again. His tracksuit bottoms were rejected as itchy, even though the label – as with all
Callum’s clothes – was cut out months ago. Then an identical pair – inexplicably – was accepted. Next came the rituals of touching and moving things round the bedroom.
Persuading Callum to eat breakfast was impossible.
    At 8.30 the carer arrives, but they don’t get him into his coat until ten to nine. Abby is hurrying Eva and Callum out of the front door when the squeak of the garden gate heralds the
arrival of visitors.
    ‘We’ve . . . er . . . come to see the house?’ A man about Glenn’s age