Free Nothing Sacred by David Thorne

suddenly sat up straighter and looked at me, said, ‘Photos.’ With an unsteady panic she opened a dresser in the living room and took out photograph albums, made a sound like the coo of a bird when she realised that they were not damaged, that she had not had that taken away from her.
    â€˜You never met Ollie and Gwynn, did you?’ The way Vick said their names, lingering on them as if savouring their taste – love showed itself in the quietest ways.
    â€˜No,’ I said.
    â€˜Here,’ she said, sitting down next to me at the kitchen table. She put the albums down, picked the top one and put it between us. With Vick next to me, the album open between us, I felt a strange intimacy, as if we were a couple revisiting the highlights of our history together. I wondered how aware she was of the ruins of her home around her; how much of her realised the full horror of her surroundings and situation. She seemed far from rational.
    â€˜That’s Ollie,’ she said, pointing to a shot of a little boy knee-deep in the muddy brown water of the Thames estuary, a spade in his hand and a wide smile on his face. ‘And there’s the two of them,’ holding dripping ice creams and squinting into the sun. On the opposite page of the album was a picture of the two children wrapped in the arms of Ryan.
    â€˜Vick,’ I said, ‘what’s the story with Ryan? What happened?’
    Vick shrugged. ‘After the kids, he didn’t want it.’ She looked above her at the ceiling for some moments, drifted away into her past. ‘He loved to be with me, bought me flowers, so many flowers. Looked after me, did anything for me.’
    She leaned forward, picked up a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, lit one. She inhaled, swallowed the smoke with a sad gasp. She looked at her coffee as if seeing it for the first time, lifted it and drank.
    â€˜Vick? Asking about Ryan.’
    â€˜When I met him I was a mess. He sorted me out. But then, soon’s we had the kids, it all changed. I lived for them, and he weren’t so… necessary. Least that’s what he thought. Changed everything.’
    â€˜You know he’s gambling again?’ I said.
    She didn’t. She paused, cigarette frozen just before her lips. ‘You sure?’
    â€˜Saw him the other night. Betting more than he owns.’
    She inhaled, exhaled with a frustrated sigh. ‘Might explain why he ain’t been answering his phone.’ She stubbed her cigarette out, screwed it into the ashtray violently. ‘Oh, Ryan.’
    â€˜You still haven’t seen him?’
    She shook her head sadly. ‘I’ve left messages, been round. Nothing. Can’t get hold of him. Like he don’t want to know.’ She reached for another cigarette. ‘Looks like it’s just me.’ She looked at me, and lit up in her eyes was desperation and something else, beseeching, as she flicked her lighter. ‘And you.’
    I left Vick’s house in the late afternoon. As I left her at her front door, she had looked at me with red eyes and wrapped herself tighter in her top, said, ‘I hate this place, Danny. It fucking terrifies me.’ She’d looked behind her, into her blackened hall. ‘Whatever it is, it’s wicked.’
    Her friend had arrived, was upstairs packing clothes for Vick, everything she’d need. But still, leaving her framed in her dark doorway, I could not help but wonder at what would happen to her once she had sobered up and the drugs had worn off. When she had to coldly examine the full horror of what had befallen her, and what little the future held.
    I had nothing else to do that afternoon, no clients or cases that needed attention, and I drove out east into the flat Essex country with the dying sun behind me, the skeletal branches of trees muted in the gathering gloom, dark birds flapping aimlessly over sleeping fields. The sky seemed vast and indifferent, and I felt