Free Epitaph by Shaun Hutson

having coffee and she envied them so much that it hurt. She envied their friendships and their situations. She guessed that their husbands had such good jobs that they didn’t need to work. How else, she reasoned, could they be sitting in a café in the middle of the day laughing, chatting and eating lunch?
    She had friends but they were all in a similar position to her if she was honest. None of them had too much money to spend. Two were divorced, one was bringing up two children alone (the fact that she didn’t see or even know the father of one of them didn’t help). The others struggled by day-to-day in the same way that Gina did. They had nothing to look forward to. No excitement in their lives. At least she had her meetings with her lover, she consoled herself. The meetings might be snatched and hurried but they were better than nothing.
    Weren’t they?
    What would ever come of the relationship? She would never leave her husband. She’d certainly never leave Laura. And yet, she’d told herself, if her lover should offer to whisk her away to a better life would she be able to refuse? It was a dilemma she’d thought about many times but one she feared she’d never become embroiled in. He’d never ask her to move in with him, would he? Instead she would have to make do with their illicit encounters and the temporary rush of excitement and pleasure that they gave her. Crumbs of comfort in a world devoid of anything approaching fulfilment.
    Gina wandered over to the radio and changed stations, twisting the frequency knob until she heard other voices. There was somestatic, some foreign words that she didn’t understand and then more voices.
    She listened for a moment. It was a discussion about politics.
    Gina shook her head and turned the dial once more. There was more music. Classical this time. She moved to another station and found a tune that she recognised and liked. She eased the volume up slightly, hoping that the infectious lightness of the song would somehow transmit itself to her.
    It didn’t.
    Gina looked at the wall clock and checked its time against the electronic digits on the cooker. She sighed.
    Laura should have been home by now.

20
     
    Paul Crane bumped his head as he tried to turn over.
    The impact startled him awake.
    He muttered something under his breath, wondering what he had banged his head on and also why it was so dark in the room.
    He tried to move a hand to touch the part of his forehead that he’d struck but he couldn’t. His arm wouldn’t move more than an inch.
    Again Paul wondered why it was so dark. He couldn’t see an inch in front of him and what the hell was that smell? Try as he might, he was unable to identify it.
    He tried to sit up.
    A couple of inches and his head collided with something once again.
    ‘What the hell?’ he grunted.
    If this was a dream it was certainly more vivid than any he’d ever had before. What was going on? Why was it sodark and why couldn’t he move more than an inch or two in any direction?
    Beneath his hands he felt slippery material. It wasn’t the leather of his sofa and it wasn’t the cotton of his sheets so he obviously hadn’t managed to make it into bed in his drunken state.
    If you’re not in bed, why are you lying down?
    The internal voice was back again.
    And why is it so completely and utterly pitch-black?
    He didn’t remember putting out the lamps in the sitting room. He certainly hadn’t turned the television off. That much he was sure of.
    So where’s the light then, dummy?
    He lay perfectly still for a second, breathing in that peculiar smell then he pushed outwards to both sides of himself, half expecting to fall off the sofa or discover that he was actually lying on the floor, wedged against the sofa and the coffee table.
    That was it. That was what had happened. He’d rolled over in the night and fallen off the sofa, so anaesthetised by the amount he’d drunk that he hadn’t even realised. He was still wearing his