Free The Trouble with Henry and Zoe by Andy Jones

is, it diminishes April.
    Not sleeping with a bridesmaid on the night before your wedding is, Henry knows, nothing to be proud about. But he is nevertheless glad that he didn’t. It would confuse things. Guilt
encouraging him to stay; an illicit orgasm urging him to leave.
    Besides the clothes he wore yesterday, Henry has a clean t-shirt to wear in the morning and then his rented tux for the ceremony. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door is a new white shirt,
never worn. He has a coat, his phone and his wallet. He has keys to the brand new front door he is supposed to open in two weeks’ time before carrying his new bride across the threshold.
    Sitting on a low antique desk is a pad of paper, printed with the castle’s letterhead. Henry takes a seat at the desk, picks up the complimentary biro and begins to write. He covers a
single sheet of paper without looking up, then folds it neatly in half, resisting the impulse to read his unspeakable words. He stands from the desk, rolls the stiffness from his neck and pulls on
his coat.
    Walking towards the door he looks at Brian, as still and quiet as the hills, sleeping the sleep of a contented, uncomplicated man. He puts his hand to his friend’s head, not sure what the
gesture means or why he is making it. Daring Brian, perhaps, to stir in his sleep and ask Henry what the hell is he doing?
    Brian snuffles, groans and rolls onto his opposite side, turning his back on Henry.
    The windowless corridor is pitch black and Henry holds a hand to the wall, feeling his way as he creeps forwards to the top of the staircase. At school they had read
Great Expectations
.
Henry hadn’t enjoyed it, but a few images remain. He recalls Pip sneaking downstairs to steal something – food, he thinks, the image of a pork pie making Henry’s stomach rumble.
As Pip crept, the stairs creaked, seeming to shout ‘Stop thief!’ at every step. Henry remembers some dark character threatening to gut the boy – to remove and cook his liver
– if he failed in his task, and Henry suspects he will suffer a fate no less gruesome if he is discovered on these stairs. The other memory is of Pip’s benefactor, Miss Havisham, jilted
by her betrothed, and now as pathetic and ruined as her decaying, infested wedding cake.
    Henry pushes the thought away.
    The stone stairs don’t creak and Henry finds himself in the entrance hall of the castle. The double wooden doors are bolted top, centre and bottom, but he is not sure if they are also
locked with a key. The bolts slide open with no more noise than the cracking of a knuckle – one, two, three. Henry glances about the hallway and up the stairs but sees no one, hears nothing.
He takes hold of the door handle – a heavy iron hoop wider than his fist – and twists. The sound of the lock’s mechanism echoes loudly in the open space, a heavy three-part
ka
-
ka
-
klunk.
Henry and the castle hold their breath, and the absconder fancies he can hear his own heartbeat. And then . . . the sound of movement.
    Very slowly, Henry turns his head to the right, towards the room allocated to the Smith party this past evening. Through the open door the room is still and dark. Dark except for a single pool
of light cast by a table lamp adjacent to a deep, wing-backed leather armchair. His father leans forwards, his shadowed face expressionless, the black hair falling across his forehead in messy
strands. His parents fought again last night and Henry wonders if his father harboured any doubts before his own wedding night. And if he could turn back the clock, would he act on them?
    Father and son stare at each other with such calm stillness that Henry wonders if it couldn’t be a dream, or its dark cousin. Henry takes a deep slow breath; he nods towards his father.
Big Boots raises his hand and Henry sees he is holding a cut-glass tumbler a quarter-filled with amber liquid. His father tilts the glass in Henry’s direction – a gesture of farewell
– and