Free A Bright Moon for Fools by Jasper Gibson Page A

watched her sleep as he used to when he was a child, curling up on the end with the bedroom door locked against his
father, her eyes swollen, his hands in hers.
    The next day Slade started his own investigation. He found a tracking company on the internet and spent fifty pounds to find out where Christmas lived. He ignored the phone messages from Diana,
apologising, saying she had changed her mind, ordering him not to do anything, and drove to a quiet residential street in Streatham, South London. He couldn’t find anywhere to park but drove
around and around for more than an hour until he found a space from where he could still make out the front door of Number 14, Holly Avenue. He got out, walked over and rang the bell. No answer. He
went back to his car and waited.
    Slade was on a stakeout. For the first time in his life he felt a craving for doughnuts. He left the car and jogged up the road onto the high street, nervous that he might miss Christmas. He
found a Greggs bakery but they didn’t have any doughnuts left so he bought a tuna sandwich, a large bottle of Coca-Cola, a coffee, and a gingerbread man. Slade went back to the car, put the
food inside, then rang the doorbell. No answer.
    Listening to the car’s radio he ate the food and drank the coffee. He needed to piss. When there was no one around he urinated as fast as he could between two vans on the other side of the
road. He went back to his car and waited.
    In the glove compartment there was a Bowie knife and Slade practised getting it out and springing from the car. It got dark. He needed a shit. For an hour he fought the sensation as it grew ever
more merciless, receding, coming back with greater urgency until, just as he was ready to shit between the two vans, one of them drove away. He was tormented by the certainty that the moment he
took his eyes off the street, Christmas would appear. There was a pharmacy on the corner so he hobbled there and bought two packets of Imodium and some ProPlus. He went back to the car, nearly
shitting himself. After swallowing half a pack of the antidiarrhoeals, the urge subsided, but his stomach hurt. He was sweating. He glared at the people who walked past and peered at him in his car
going nowhere. It was the middle of the night. He had been there for more than ten hours. To stop himself falling asleep he took the caffeine pills and stayed awake all night until the dawn spread
over the street.
    When London woke up, vehicles sometimes blocked his view and he would curse and get out until they moved on. Another day of the shooting pains in his stomach, sticky clothes, the radio. He took
more Imodium, more ProPlus. When he could no longer ignore the hunger Slade risked another trip to Greggs and bought bags of doughnuts and cookies and crisps so that he wouldn’t have to go
again, but as he ate the urge to shit came back. He took a handful of Imodium. He was increasingly disturbed by the idea that Christmas might have already left town. He thought about breaking into
Christmas’ house but he didn’t really know how to disable an alarm system.
    Through the whole of the next night, Slade waited, joining in with the radio discussion programmes, insulting everyone who spoke, taking more caffeine pills, his stomach swelling and twisting.
He saw in another dawn, staring through his windscreen at the blue front door, until late that morning Harry Christmas drove past him in an old beige Mercedes and parked right at the other end of
the street.
    Slade, his hand shaking from caffeine and exhaustion, grabbed the knife, wrapped it in his jacket, and crossed the road onto the pavement. There wasn’t anyone about. His prey locked the
Mercedes and Slade yelled, “Christmas!” Slade saw him turn, straighten, and then bluster himself back into the car. Slade started to run. The jacket fell, the knife exposed. He sprinted
towards the Mercedes but he had given himself away too early. Christmas pulled out into the road