Dead Simple

‘Are you OK?’
    ‘Apart from being worried sick about Michael, yes, I’m OK, thanks. I’ve got Carly here.’
    ‘She’s arrived?’
    ‘Yes, a couple of hours ago from Australia. I think she’ll be a bit jet-lagged tomorrow.’
    ‘I should come over to say hello.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘You see what I mean – all these people coming from all over the place – we just have to at least be at the church to meet them – and offer them some food. Can you imagine if we weren’t there and Michael then turned up?’
    ‘He would understand – that you cancelled out of respect for the boys who died.’
    Sobbing even harder, Ashley said, ‘Please, Gill, please let’s go to the church and see.’
    ‘Take that pill and get some sleep, love.’
    ‘I’ll call you in the morning.’
    ‘Yes. I’ll be up early.’
    ‘Thanks for calling.’
    ‘Night night.’
    ‘Night!’ Ashley said.
    She replaced the receiver then, charged with a burst of energy, rolled over, her breasts spilling out of the open front of her dressing gown, and gazed down at Mark, who was lying naked under the bedclothes beside her. ‘Stupid cow, doesn’t have a clue!’ Her lips burst into a massive grin, her whole face alight with joy. ‘Not a clue!’
    She put her arms around his neck, held him tightly and kissed him passionately, on the mouth at first, before working her way slowly, steadily, with maximum possible torture, further and further down his body.

40
    He was sweating under the duvet. Too hot, far too hot, somehow it had worked its way right over his head and he could barely breathe. Rivulets of water ran down his face, down his arms, legs, the small of his back. He pushed the duvet off, sat up, felt a numbing crack to his skull, sank back.
    Splash.
    Oh Jesus.
    Water slopped all around him. And felt as if it were inside him too, as if the blood in his veins and the water in which he lay were interchangeable. Some word for it. Some word he grasped for, and it eluded him, slipped from his grasp each time he closed on it. Like soap in a bathtub , he thought.
    Cold now. Unbearably hot an instant ago, now cold. So cold. Oh so teeth-chattering-cold-cold-cold. His head was splitting. ‘Just going to check and see if there are any paracetamol in the bathroom cabinet,’ he announced. To the silence that came back at him he said, ‘Won’t be long. Just popping out to the chemist.’
    The hunger had gone away some hours ago, but now it was back with a vengeance. His stomach burned as if the acids had now turned on the lining for want of anything else to break down. His mouth was parched. He put a hand out and scooped water into his mouth, but despite his thirst it was an effort to drink it.
    Osmosis!
    ‘OSMOSIS!’ In a burst of elation he shouted the word out at the top of his voice, repeating it over and over. ‘Osmosis! Gotcha! Osmosis! ’
    Then suddenly he was hot again. Perspiring. ‘Someone turn the thermostat down!’ he shouted out in the darkness. ‘For Christ’s sake, we’re all boiling down here; what do you think we are, lobsters?’
    He started giggling at his remark. Then, right above his face, the lid of the coffin began to open. Slowly, steadily, noiselessly, until he could see the night sky, alive with comets racing across it. A beam of light shone out from him, dust motes drifted lazily through it, and he realized all the stars in the firmament were projected there from the light. The sky was his screen! Then he saw a face drift across, through the beam, through the dust motes. Ashley. As if he were looking up at her from the bottom of a swimming pool, and she was drifting face-down over him.
    Then another face drifted over – his mother. Then Carly, his kid sister. Then his father, in the sharp brown suit, cream shirt and red silk tie that Michael remembered him in best. Michael did not understand how his father could be in the pool but his clothes were dry.
    ‘You’re dying, son,’ Tom Harrison said. ‘You’ll be with us soon now.’
    ‘I don’t think I’m ready yet, Dad.’
    His father gave a wry smile. ‘That’s the thing, son, who is?’
    ‘I found that word I was looking for,’ Michael said. ‘ Osmosis. ’
    ‘That’s a good word, son.’
    ‘How are you, Dad?’
    ‘There are good deals to be had up here, son. Terrific deals. Heck of a lot better. You don’t have to fart around trying to hide your money in the Cayman Islands up here. What you make is what you keep – like