Free The Thing on the Shore by Tom Fletcher

“You want any?”
    â€œWhat?” said Harry.
    â€œViagra, marra. You want any?”
    â€œOh!” said Harry. “No, my wife and I have a very satisfactory relationship, thank you. We’ve got everything we need. Our … bodies are OK. We don’t need … don’t need anything extra, thank you very much. No, thank you very much.”
    â€œNot to worry,” said Ollie. “I can always shift a few in Gallagher’s.”
    â€œBut I thought that was where young people go?” said Harry.
    â€œYeah,” said Ollie, “but it still helps them out. You know how it is.”
    When Harry turned back again, he was disappointed to see that the strange little topless singing man had disappeared. He wondered if he’d temporarily drifted off. There was still music playing and people dancing. He gestured to the bartender. She looked at him uninterestedly from the other end of the bar, then slouched over toward him. He smiled at her. He was going to sing.

B EFORE THE L IGHTHOUSE N IGHT
    Arthur remembered things being OK. He remembered everything being fine, back when his dad had been working at the museum. It had been a good time for them. Harry had come back in the evenings with his head still supported by his neck, not just lolling forward like it did now. His hair had been gray but clean and swept backward, not gray and greasy and flat. He had ironed his clothes, and they had always been fresh and fragrant. Every evening he had walked along the cliff from the museum with some kind of bounce to his gait. Sometimes, when the sun set in a hallucinatory blaze of pinks and greens, streaking the ocean with colored ink, Harry would stand there on his way home and look out over the water like some kind of personable scientist in a far-future utopia, his shirt loose and his glasses low on his nose, his hands in his pockets. Once upon a time Harry had been a perfectly capable man. A respectable man. Standing there on the cliff experiencing some kind of joy in the view.
    Rebecca used to get home later than Harry and, as a rule, Arthur and Harry would have the tea ready for her arrival. Rebecca was a manager at the Tesco supermarket. It was a good job. She was a sharp, smart woman usually dressed in a fitted navy-blue suit when out and about, with glossy shoulder-length hair and subtle, but effective make-up. She was the first person Arthur knew to acquire a mobile phone. After tea she would sit in the armchair with her knees pulled up—she always wore jeans and soft jumpers when at home—and do the crossword while half-watching the news.
    Thinking about it, the house used to be pretty nice, with its clean, plain rooms and lots of warm lamps. Where were all the lamps now?
    Arthur stood in the doorway to the living room and looked around. Actually the lamps were all still there. It was just that the bulbs had gone years ago, and the stands and shades had faded away into the dust and accumulated clutter of the background. Drying clothes now hung over them or they rested, broken, down alongside the skirting boards.
    What had his dad done? Arthur stepped into the room but then just stood there indecisively. It felt disloyal and vindictive to ask the question, but what had Harry done?
    Had he actually done anything? Did it have to be his fault? Well, no, but Arthur felt pretty sure that it had been. Yet his mother had never seemed like the kind of person who would react to something, to anything, by killing herself. Getting angry or walking out, yes. Throwinga frying pan across the kitchen, absolutely. Suicide, however, seemed too much. Maybe she did simply fall. Maybe she did fall after all.
    What could his dad have done to her? The worst thing Arthur could imagine was some kind of violence, but even then, his mum would not just have left the house and jumped to her death. She would have fought back, screamed, shouted, or called the police. She had not suffered fools, or bastards,