Free The Lazarus Hotel by Jo Bannister

they sat down Miriam murmured, ‘I don’t understand why you screamed.’
    Mrs Venables flustered like a disturbed hen. ‘I was surprised, I didn’t know what it was. Then it knocked my tray flying.’
    â€˜And then you screamed. After it was gone.’
    â€˜I suppose I froze. You don’t expect to see something like that.’
    â€˜Like what?’ She waited but there was no reply. ‘Was it a dog, Esme? You screamed because a dog upset your tray? It doesn’t seem like you. You might have yelled and thrown something at it but I wouldn’t have thought you’d have screamed.’
    The housekeeper’s eyes flared, alarm lingering in their depths. ‘I don’t know what it was. I barely saw it, just the size of it and the movement. It was dark and big, and it moved—’
    â€˜Like a dog?’
    â€˜I don’t know. It was fast like a dog. But—’
    â€˜Yes?’
    She shook her head firmly, refused to think any more about it. ‘It must have been a dog. It couldn’t have been anything else.’
    Richard brought in the tea and scones and an assortment of crockery designed for other meals. Helping herself to jam, Miriam chuckled. ‘Perhaps it belongs to one of the builders. Perhaps his wife won’t have it in the house.’
    Mrs Venables shuddered. ‘I don’t blame her.’
    The incident had broken everyone’s train of thought. They took the opportunity to stretch their legs, wander round, admire the view.
    Richard took his cup to the window to watch the city closing down for the weekend. Midway through Friday afternoon, already everyone who could was heading out. The roads were twisting multicoloured ribbons of high-powered transport engineered for travel at a hundred miles an hour but here restricting one another to about three.
    The tweed suit that had as much personality as some people he’d known arrived at his shoulder. He waited for Miriam to speak but for a while she just stood beside him watching the city wind down.
    At length she said, ‘Why are you here really?’
    The directness of that edged him on to the defensive. ‘I need – some help with my job.’
    â€˜You have a good career – even I’ve heard of you. I can’t tell you anything about television reporting.’
    â€˜I had a good career. I lost my nerve.’
    â€˜What you call losing your nerve others might call learning some sense.’
    Richard smiled. ‘You’ve been talking to my wife.’
    â€˜Ah. An intelligent woman.’
    â€˜She wants me to cover Westminster and come home nights. She reckons dodging bullets is a young man’s game.’
    Miriam winced. ‘She really knows how to put the boot in, doesn’t she?’
    Richard’s grin broadened, then faded. ‘Maybe she’s right. Maybe seven years is enough. Maybe it’s not something you should try making a life’s work of.’
    â€˜But?’
    He wasn’t convincing himself either. ‘But actually that’s crap. There are some great foreign correspondents in their fifties. Till this last year I always meant to be one.’
    â€˜What happened this year?’
    His eyes widened. ‘What didn’t? Mostly that charnel-house that for the sake of political correctness we call Former Yugoslavia. Look, I’m no virgin. I know what it is to look, and look carefully, at images no station could show. I know what it’s like talking to people who’ve suffered acts of appalling barbarism, and then travelling five miles up the road to talk to the guy responsible who thinks it’s all right to use people as kindling as long as their churches have a different symbol on the roof. Even so, some of the stuff they’ve done to each other—’ He shook his head in helpless disbelief.
    â€˜But Bosnia isn’t the only place where the inconceivably awful gets worse every time you look.