Secrets and Shadows

Chapter 14

The house was dark and quiet. Grace switched on the table lamp that stood on a sideboard just inside the hallway, blinking in the sudden light as shadows dance across the polished wood floor.

.‘Hello, hi there,’ she said.

‘Hello love, you’re late. Bad day?’

‘Shitty in the extreme, thank you, Gary, the absolute pinnacle of shitiness. Two bodies, husband and wife, murder/suicide or murder/murder, I’m not sure at this moment but it is a bad one and I’m shattered. What I really need is a bath, a long hot bath and a very large vodka and tonic.’

‘I’ll get it for you if you like, I am, as you know, the world’s leading authority on the mixing of vodka and tonic,’

‘No, it’s OK thanks, I’ll get it and then it’s that bath. A long soak with lots of sweetly smelling bubbles, get rid of the stink of death.’

‘You want me to scrub your back?’

‘You’re on.’

‘And your front as well?’

‘Now you’re talking, Gary’

But there was no Gary. Gary was dead, dead from a sudden heart attack. All the words were inside her head. She picked up a framed photograph from the sideboard, the photograph of a man smiling into the camera. Grace blew him a kiss to him and put the photograph back. ‘Good night, Gary, God Bless, Sleep tight, my darling.’