Free Burial by Neil Cross

perfumed smoke, billowing, diffusing against the sunset. The yellow flames. The brown river.
    He grabbed his bag and walked away.
    He flew from Delhi and walked wearily through UK customs.
    He stood in the English airport, ridiculous in his gap-year student clothes -- this man with no idea who he had become.
    Before leaving Heathrow, Nathan called Sara at work. She answered on the fourth ring.
    'Nathan?'
    He swelled with a violent nostalgia. It took him a moment to speak. And then, all he could say was: 'Hi.'
    'Where have you been ?'
    It seemed to her that losing his job, his girlfriend and his flat within a couple of weeks had worked something loose in Nathan's head. She'd told her friends (in a grave, not unhappy tone): Nathan had a breakdown.
    He said, 'I'm okay.' It sounded true when he said it. Then he told her, 'I've been to Greece,' and it sounded like a l ie. Before she could ask any more questions, he said, 'Look, I've no right to ask this. But I need a reference.'
    'What kind of reference?'
    'A landlord's reference. I need a place to live.'
    'So what you're phoning to ask is: pretend we never went out, and write a letter saying what a fabulous tenant you were.'
    Pretty much. I know it's a shitty thing to ask.'
    It was a shitty thing to ask. But she said 'Fine' because she pitied him.
    He caught the train home and booked himself into a cheap hotel, then showered and shaved and went to buy a local newspaper.
    The next afternoon, armed with Sara's reference, he paid the deposit and two months' rent in advance on a small, clean, one-bedroom flat.
    It was on the top floor - into the eaves - of a big, Victorian building.
    On the ground floor was a day nursery; his little bedroom overlooked the playground.
    Since it was summer and the nights were short, Nathan could afford to wait until the first comforting signs of dawn before trying to sleep - which meant that, often, he woke to the pleasant screams of young children at playtime. He lay in bed listening to them, just as he might lie in a sun-warmed tent, listening to a chattering brook.
    The sound of the children made him happy. Their existence seemed so tremendously unlikely, he took comfort from it. He never watched them playing, because he thought that from their perspective his face -- peering down from the small, high bedroom window -- would look ghostly and lost, and he wanted to spare them that.
    But even their tears and tantrums, from this high place, sounded good to him.
    He lay there, listening to them, and wondered what he was going to do about getting a job.
    It was easy.
    He visited an employment agency, where his agent displayed contempt for his paltry CV, enquiring in a frigid tone why he'd left his 'previous employment'.
    He took in a slow breath, held it for a moment and then told her: 'I was kind of made redundant.'
    'Kind of. Was there a restructure?'
    'Not really. Kind of
    'Kind of
    'The show I was working on - it was called The Mark Derbyshire Solution!
    After a moment, she said 'I see' in a manner that Nathan had learned to recognize; it was the way people chose to hide their sudden, incandescent interest in celebrity, even minor celebrity. She looked Nathan in the eye and said, 'It must have been terrible for you.'
    'It wasn't good, no.'
    'And if it's all right to ask - how is he?'
    'How's who? Mark? I haven't spoken to him.'
    'I see,' she said. 'Yes. That poor girl.'
    So Nathan went on the books of the employment agency, and a week later, the agent called to let him know she'd lined up an exciting interview with a prestigious company he had never heard of.
    Nathan no longer owned an interview suit or good shoes; they'd gone into the washing machine and then to a charity shop, scrunched up in a carrier bag. So that afternoon, he went shopping.
    On Monday, he was interviewed for the position of sales executive at Hermes Cards, Ltd. The interview was conducted by two men and two women, who sat behind a long desk like the top table at a