Free The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell Page A

the smile that's all the more of one for challenging him to prove it's there. "Be as bad as you like."
    Jake thinks moments like these are why they're still together. He's happy to linger in it while the exhaust fumes play with the fog that dances around the car, but Sean lifts his hand to the steering wheel. "I'll collect you at seven, then. Better be moving before your man in uniform comes and shouts."
    The new guard stands like a bouncer in the entrance, emitting smoky dragon breaths. Jake hopes Sean is feeling guilty only about his parking. He plants a hand on Sean's cheek, which is rough with obstinate stubble, and eases Sean's face into position for a kiss that tastes of sweetish pipe tobacco. Beyond him Jake sees the guard stick out his upper lip as if he's trying to catch a moustache to add to his disapproval. He's one reason why Jake pulls his partner closer, but Sean parts them before Jake has had enough. "Will you do something for me if you have the chance?"
    "Anything," Jake says, wishing the guard could hear.
    "Just see if you've any books I can use next term and buy them if you have."
    "I wouldn't be sure which."
    "Now, Jake, I thought you were listening at dinner." He's become the playfully severe lecturer Jake fell in love with halfway through Sean's evening class on gay Hollywood, and Jake feels half his age, though they're both thirty. "I told you I'll be teaching fifties melodrama," says Sean.
    "Honestly, I'd rather you looked yourself. You aren't lecturing for an hour."
    "I do want to see where you work," Sean admits, and swerves the car backwards.
    Jake loves his abrupt impulses, but this manoeuvre could be dangerous in the fog that seems heavier in Fenny Meadows with each shrinking day of winter. It lurches to follow them as Sean parks precisely in a space with a single deft twirl of the wheel. He slips out of the car as Jake does, and is striding towards Texts when he grabs his hipbones as if to mime how suddenly he has stopped. "What am I looking at?"
    Three faces with as little colour to them as the fog are staring out of the display window—three of the same round smug hairless face lined up as if awaiting wigs. They're too large for their bodies by half. One body cut out of a magazine wears a man's suit, the middle one exhibits hairy knees beneath a kilt, while the right-hand body sports a dress. Each is perched on a heap of copies of Dressing Up, Dressing Down , by Brodie Oates. Beside them a sign says WHAT DOES HE MEAN? FIND OUT ON FRIDAY. "Shall we?" says Sean.
    He's only proposing they should enter the shop. As they reach the doorway the guard moves into their path. "I hope you're going to behave yourselves in here," he says so low he mightn't want them to be able to prove he spoke.
    Jake has faced down bouncers more butch than him. "We couldn't behave anyone else, could we?" he says sweetly and takes Sean's hand.
    Sean doesn't try to keep it to himself, but he doesn't quite hold Jake's either. Sometimes he's shy outside the gay patch of Manchester. Jake can feel him growing hot, perhaps with embarrassment or fury at the guard for saying "That's what I mean. We don't need that in here."
    "Who's we?" Jake asks more sweetly still.
    Sean grips his hand and tells the guard "He's one of you."
    The guard's face turns so red it reminds Jake of a traffic light. "He's bloody not. I'm not having that."
    "You can't," Sean says, deciding to enjoy himself. "I am."
    Jake is wondering how long they're going to test how red the guard's face can become when Lorraine trots past in baggy corduroys. Her ponytail wags and then lifts as she swings around on the READ ON! mat. "He works here," she says.
    The guard grimaces as the tip of her hair brushes his flaming cheek. "Who?"
    "I wouldn't mind either, but it's this one. Are you coming upstairs, Jake?"
    "I ought to." Jake leads Sean past the mat before relinquishing his hand. "Will you be here when I come down?" he hopes aloud.
    A jewel of fog trembles on Sean's