Dead Tomorrow

least.
    ‘Why was it you stopped going to therapy?’ she asked him, then kissed each of his eyes, softly, in turn.
    ‘Because…’ He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t helping me tomove on.’ He eased himself up in bed a little, staring around.
    He liked this room, which Cleo had decorated mostly in white–with a thick white rug on the bare oak floor, white linen curtains, white walls, and a few pieces of elegant black furniture, including a black lacquered dressing table–still damaged from the attack on her.
    ‘You’re the only thing that’s helped me to move on. You know that?’
    She smiled at him. ‘Time is the best healer,’ she said.
    ‘No, you are. I love you. I love you so much. I love you in a way I never thought it would be possible to love anyone again.’
    She stared at him, smiling, blinking slowly, for some moments.
    ‘I love you too. Even more than you love me.’
    ‘Impossible!’
    She pulled a face at him. ‘Calling me a liar?’
    He kissed her.

47
    GlennBranson lay wide awake in the spare room of Roy Grace’s house, which had now become his second home–or, more accurately at the moment, his main residence.
    It was the same every night. He drank heavily, trying to knock himself out, but neither the booze nor the pills the doctor had prescribed seemed to have any effect. And his body, which he normally kept in shape by working out relentlessly at home or in the gym, was starting to lose muscle tone.
    I’m bloody falling apart , he reflected gloomily.
    The room had been decorated by Sandy in the same Zen minimalistic style as the rest of this house. The bed was a low, futon-style affair, with an uncomfortable slatted headboard that, because of his tall frame, he constantly bashed his skull on as he tried to stop his feet sticking out the other end. The mattress was as hard as cement and the frame of the bed felt loose, wobbling precariously and creaking every time he moved. He kept meaning to sort it out with a spanner, tightening the nuts, but away from work he was so despondent he didn’t feel like doing anything. Half his clothes, still in their zipped plastic covers, lay across the armchair in the small room–some of them had been there for weeks and he still had not got round to hanging them up in the almost empty wardrobe.
    Roy was quite right when he told him he was turning the house into a tip.
    It was 3.50 a.m. His mobile phone lay beside the bedand he hoped, as he hoped every night, that Ari might suddenly ring, to tell him she’d had a change of heart, that she’d been thinking it over and realized she did still love him, deeply, and wanted to find a way to make the marriage work.
    But it stayed silent, tonight and every damn night.
    And they’d had another row earlier. Ari was angry that he couldn’t collect the kids from school tomorrow afternoon, because there was a lecture she wanted to go to in London. That sounded suspicious to him, rang alarm bells. She never went to lectures in London. Was it a guy?
    Was she seeing someone?
    It was bad enough coping with being apart from her. But the thought that she might be seeing someone, start another relationship, introduce that person to his kids, was more than he could bear.
    And he had work to think about. Had to focus somehow.
    Two cats, fighting, yowled outside. And somewhere in the distance a siren shrieked. A response unit from Brighton and Hove Division. Or an ambulance.
    He rolled over, suddenly craving Ari’s body. Tempted to call her. Maybe she was—
    Was what?
    Oh, God almighty, how much they used to love each other.
    He tried to switch his mind to his work. To his phone conversation yesterday evening, with the wife of the missing skipper of the Scoob-Eee . A very distraught Janet Towers. Friday night had been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They had a table booked at the Meadows restaurant in Hove. But her husband had never come home. She had not heard from him since.
    She was absolutely certain he’d had an accident.
    Allshe could tell Glenn was that she had contacted the coastguard on Saturday morning, who had reported back to her that the Scoob-Eee had been seen going through the lock at Shoreham Harbour at nine on Friday night, along with an Algerian-registered freighter. It was common for local fishing boats to enter the lock behind a commercial cargo vessel, enabling them to skip the locking fees. No one had paid any attention to the vessel.
    Neither the boat nor Jim Towers had been seen