Not Dead Enough

you?’ he said.
    Swinging her tray of food on to her bedside table, she said, ‘The gift, of course! But I want to know how you are. I want to know about—’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Open it!’ he said in a tone suddenly so aggressive it startled her.
    ‘OK,’ she said.
    ‘What are you watching that crap for?’
    Her eyes still flicked back to the screen. ‘I like it,’ she said, trying to calm him. ‘Poor guy. His wife’s in a wheelchair. He’s just blown the hundred and twenty-five thousand pound question.’
    ‘The whole show’s a con,’ he said.
    ‘No, it isn’t!’
    ‘Life’s a con. Haven’t you figured that one out yet?’
    ‘A con?’
    Now it was his turn to point at the screen. ‘I don’t know who he is, nor did the rest of the world. A few minutes ago he sat in that chair and had nothing. Now he’s going to walk away with thirty-two thousand pounds and feel dissatisfied, when he should be rip-roaring with joy. You’re going to tell me that’s not a con?’
    ‘It’s a matter of perspective. I mean – from his point—’
    ‘Turn the fucking thing off!’
    Sophie was still shocked by the aggression in his voice, but at the same time a defiant streak made her reply, ‘No. I’m enjoying it.’
    ‘Want me to go, so you can watch your fucking sad little programme?’
    She was already regretting what she had said. Despite her earlier resolve to end it with Brian, seeing him in the flesh made her realize she would a million times rather that he was here, with her, tonight than watch this show – or any show. And God, what the poor man must be going through…She punched the remote, turning it off. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
    He was staring at her in a way she’d never seen before. As if blinds had come down behind his eyes.
    ‘I’m really sorry, OK? I’m just surprised you’re here.’
    ‘So you’re not pleased to see me?’
    She sat up and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. His breath was rancid and he smelled sweaty, but she didn’t care. They were manly smells, his smells. She breathed them in as though they were the most intoxicating scents on the planet. ‘I’m more than pleased,’ she said. ‘I’m just…’ She looked into those hazel eyes she adored so much. ‘I’m just so surprised, you know – after what you said earlier when we spoke. Tell me. Please tell me what’s happened. Please tell me everything.’
    ‘Open it!’ he said, his voice rising.
    She pulled away some of the tissue, but, like a Chinese box, there was another layer beneath, and then another again. Trying to bring him back down from whatever was angering him, she said, ‘OK, I’m trying to guess what this is. And I’m guessing that it’s a—’
    Suddenly his face was inches in front of hers, so close their noses were almost touching.
    ‘Open it!’ he screeched. ‘Open it, you fucking bitch.’

38
    Skunk, driving along in falling, purple-tinted darkness, clocked the bright headlights again in his mirror. They had appeared from nowhere moments after he left the Regency Square car park. Now they were accelerating past the line of traffic and cutting in behind a blacked-out BMW that was right on his tail.
    It wasn’t necessarily anything to worry about, he thought. But as he reached the two solid lines of vehicles backed up at the roundabout in front of Brighton Pier, in his mirror he caught a fleeting glimpse of the face of the man in the passenger seat, flashlit under the neon glare of the street lighting, and began to panic.
    He couldn’t be completely sure, but it looked too fucking much like that young plain-clothes cop called Paul Packer, whose finger he’d bitten off after a run-in over a stolen car, for which he had been banged up in a young offenders’ institute.
    At full volume on the car’s radio, Lindsay Lohan was singing ‘Confessions of a Broken Heart’, but he barely heard the words; he was looking at the traffic flow in and out of the roundabout, trying to decide which exit to take. The car behind hooted. Skunk gave him the bird. There was a choice of four exits. One would take him towards the town centre and clogged-up traffic. Too risky, he could easily get trapped there. The second was Marine Parade, a wide street with plenty of side roads, plus fast open road beyond it. The third would take him along the seafront, but the danger there was, with just one exit at either end, he could get blocked in easily. The fourth