Dead Like You

got a hooter like Concorde.’
    ‘You’re beautiful to me.’
    ‘Have you been to an optician lately?’
    ‘Do you want to hear something I read that made me think of you?’ he asked.
    ‘OK, tell me.’
    ‘ It’s beauty that captures your attention, personality that captures your heart. ’
    She smiled now at the memory as she sat in the traffic jam in the sodium-lit darkness, the heater of her little Ford Ka whirring noisily, toasting her feet. She was half listening to the news on the radio, tuned to Radio 4, Gordon Brown being harangued over Afghanistan. She didn’t like him, even though she was a Labour supporter, and she switched over to Juice. Air were playing, ‘Sexy Boy’.
    ‘Yayyyy!’ She grinned, nodding her head and drumming the steering wheel for a few moments, in tune to the music. Sexy Boy, that’s what you are, my gorgeous!
    She loved him with all her heart and soul, of that she was sure. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him – she had never ever been so certain of anything. It was going to hurt her parents that she wasn’t marrying a Jewish boy, but she couldn’t help that. She respected her family’s traditions, but she was not a believer in any religion. She believed in making the world a better place for everyone who lived in it, and she hadn’t yet come across a religion that seemed capable of or interested in doing that.
    Her iPhone, lying beside her on the passenger seat, pinged with an incoming text. She smiled.
    The rush-hour gridlock up the London Road was being made worse than usual by new roadworks. The traffic light ahead had gone from green to red, to green to red again now, and they hadn’t moved in inch. She was still alongside the brightly lit window display of British Bookshops. She had time to look at her phone safely, she decided.
    Hope you win! XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
    She smiled. The engine idled and the wipers alternated between a scraping and a screeching sound, flattening the droplets of rain that landed on the windscreen into an opaque smear. Benedict told her she needed new wiper blades and was going to get her some. She could have done with them now, she thought.
    She looked at her watch: 5.50. Shit. Normally, the half an hour she allowed to get from the charity’s offices in the Old Steine, where she had a free parking space, to the Withdean Sports Stadium was more than adequate. But this evening she had not moved an inch for over five minutes. She was due on court at 6 p.m. Hopefully it would be better once she was past the roadworks.
    Jessie wasn’t the only person being made anxious by the bad traffic. Someone waiting for her at the Withdean Sports Stadium, someone who was not her squash partner, was in a very bad mood. And it was worsening by the second.

67
    Tuesday 13 January
    It was meant to be dark here! It had been dark when he’d checked it out last night. It was less than a month since the longest night of the year – only 13 January, for Christ’s sake! At 6 p.m. it should be totally dark. But the sodding car park of Withdean Sports Stadium was lit up like a sodding Christmas Tree. Why did they have to pick tonight to have bloody outdoor athletics practice? Hadn’t anyone told the stadium about global warming?
    And where the fuck was she?
    The car park was a lot fuller than he had expected. He’d already driven around it three times, checking that he had not missed the little black Ka. It definitely wasn’t here.
    She distinctly said on Facebook that she would meet Jax here at 5.45. The court was booked for 6 p.m. As usual.
    He’d looked up pictures of Roz on Facebook, too. View photos of Roz (121). Send Roz a message. Poke Roz. Roz and Jessie are friends. Roz was quite a sexy vixen, he thought. She rocked! There were some photos of her all dressed up for a prom night.
    He focused on the task in hand as his eyes hunted through the windscreen. Two men hurried across in front of him, each carrying sports bags, heads ducked low against the rain, going into the main building. They didn’t see him. White vans were always invisible! He was tempted to follow them inside, to check in case somehow he had missed Jessie Sheldon and she was already on court. She’d said something about her car, that it had been fixed. What if something had gone wrong with it again and she’d got a lift from someone instead, or taken a bus or a taxi?
    He stopped the van alongside a row of parked vehicles, in a position that gave him a clear view of the