Dead Like You

heightened state of anxiety, the red mist .
    He’d sent all his team home for the night to get some rest, except for the two Analysts, who were working a 24/7 rota between them. Glenn Branson had asked him for a quick pint on the way home, but he’d apologetically excused himself, having barely seen Cleo this weekend. With his mate’s marital woes spiralling from bad to worse, he was running out of sympathetic things to say to Glenn. Divorce was a grim option, especially for someone with young kids. But he could no longer see much alternative for his friend – and wished desperately that he could. Glenn was going to have to bite the bullet and move on. An easy thing to tell someone else, but an almost impossible thing to accept oneself.
    He felt a sudden craving for a cigarette, but resisted, with difficulty. Cleo was not bothered if he smoked in here, or anywhere, but he was mindful of the baby she was carrying, and all the stuff about passive smoke, and the example he needed to try to set. So he drank some more, ignoring the craving.
    ‘Ready in about five minutes!’ she called out from the kitchen. ‘Need another drink?’ She popped her head around the door.
    He raised his glass to show it was nearly empty. ‘I’ll be under the table if I have another!’
    ‘That’s the way I like you!’ she replied, coming over to him.
    ‘You’re just a control freak!’ he said with a big grin.
    He would take a bullet for this woman. He would die for Cleo gladly, he knew. Without an instant’s hesitation.
    Then he felt a sudden strange pang of guilt. Wasn’t this how he’d felt once about Sandy?
    He tried to answer himself truthfully. Yes, it had been total hell when she disappeared. That morning on his thirtieth birthday, they had made love before he went to work, and that same evening, when he returned home, looking forward to their celebration, she had not been there – that had been total hell.
    So had the days, weeks, months and then years after. Imagining all the terrible things that might have happened to her. And sometimes imagining what might still be happening to her in some monster’s lair. But that was just one of many scenarios. He’d lost count of the number of psychics he’d had consultations or sittings with over these past ten years – and not one of them had said she was in the spirit world. Despite all of them, he was reasonably certain that Sandy was dead.
    In a few months’ time it would be ten years ago that she had disappeared. An entire decade, in which he’d gone from a young man to a middle-aged fart.
    In which he’d met the loveliest, smartest, most incredible woman in the world.
    Sometimes he woke up and imagined he must have dreamed it all. Then he would feel Cleo’s warm, naked body beside him. He would slip his arms around her and hold her tightly, the way someone might try to hold on to their dreams.
    ‘I love you so much,’ he would whisper.
    ‘Shit!’ Cleo broke away from him, breaking the spell.
    There was a smell of burning as she dashed back over to the hob. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
    ‘It’s OK! I like it well done. I don’t like fish with its heart still beating!’
    ‘Just as well!’
    The kitchen filled with black smoke and the stink of burning fish. The smoke alarm started beeping. Roy opened the windows and the patio door and Humphrey raced outside, barking furiously at something in his squeaky puppy bark, then raced back inside and tore around barking at the alarm.
    A few minutes later, Grace sat at the table and Cleo placed a plate in front of him. On it lay a blackened tuna steak, a lump of tartare sauce, some limp-looking mangetout, and a mess of disintegrated boiled potatoes.
    ‘Eat that,’ she said, ‘and you are proving it’s true love!’
    The television above the table was on, with the sound turned down. The politician had gone and now Jamie Oliver was energetically demonstrating how to slice the coral from scallops.
    Humphrey nudged his right leg, then tried to jump up.
    ‘Down! No begging!’ he said.
    The dog looked at him uncertainly, then slunk away.
    Cleo sat down beside him and gave him a wide-eyed frown.
    ‘You don’t have to eat it if it’s really horrible.’
    He forked some fish into his mouth. It tasted even worse than it looked, but only marginally. No question, Sandy was a better cook than Cleo. A thousand times better. But it did not matter to him one jot. Although he did glance a tad enviously at the dish Jamie Oliver was