Shooting in the Dark

testing me, being defensive.’
    Sam shook his head. ‘I’m shaking my head,’ he told her. ‘Dora didn’t need to be defensive when she was alive. She certainly doesn’t need to now. She’s not here any longer. If you can hear her, like I can hear her from time to time, it’s because I want her to be here. What you hear is not Dora, or Dora’s ghost. It’s just some inadequacy in me, my idea of what it would be like if she was still around. If some part of her was still around. That’s all. Nothing real.’
    ‘Like the knocking in the engine,’ she said.
    ‘What about you? What does my house sound like to you?’
    She smiled. ‘Mildew,’ she said. ‘Damp. It sounds as though it’s been loved at one time, filled with children’s voices. But now there’s just a private detective rattling around rooms that are far too big for him. There’s neglect here, Sam. The house carries the sound of weeping. You ought to do something about it.’
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I keep thinking I should give it away, some kind of homeless charity. Childhope or Shelter? One time we thought of moving the office here. It needs more than I can give it.’
    ‘I’ll stay for a while,’ she said. ‘As long as I can. Maybe the two of us together can bring some life back to the place?’
    ‘Hope so,’ he said. ‘The alternative’s got an altogether too final ring about it.’
    ‘You know, there’s something else I’ve learnt today.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘I don’t want to sound patronizing, but it’s good to know that you can think.’
    ‘That’s not patronizing,’ he said. ‘That’s downright superior. But you’ve got to think, Angeles, that’s the only thing that separates us from the lentils.’
     
    He slumped in the big armchair and listened to her exploring her room upstairs. Heard her opening and closing drawers, putting her clothes away in the ancient wardrobe, stumbling on the frayed carpet. He knew what it was behind all the other sounds in the house. That dull murmur was always there if you really tried to listen. It was all the times that had been, and were here no longer. It was all the times that had gone.
    Celia rang the doorbell and Sam showed her through to his sitting room. ‘I was going to make coffee,’ he said.
    She sighed and sank into a chair. ‘It would save my life, Sam. I promise I won’t stay long. There’s a couple of things for you to sign, then I’m going home for an early night.’
    Sam took a step towards the kitchen. ‘Take it easy for a few minutes. I’ll put the kettle on.’
    Sam’s business would have been impossible without Celia. What he brought to the job was all dogged inspiration. He knew people and what they were capable of and he could sniff out a lie at the stage where it was still being contemplated. But Celia could organize people, money, and filing systems. She was good at protocol and knew how to design a letterhead and keep accounts. Celia knew the difference between an invoice and a statement, and she could explain it to Sam in a way that made him wonder why he hadn’t twigged it years before.
    When they’d first met Celia had been a retired Quaker schoolteacher, kind and twinkly-eyed but as dry as a biscuit. Sam had been an alcoholic chancer desperate to drown himself in the arms of a million women. By all the laws of social convention they should never have met, but despite their difference they had each inspired the other to expand their individual horizons.
    Celia had soon forgotten that she was almost seventy and she had delved into kitsch in a big way. Her neck and wrists were festooned with bangles and beads. Tonight she was wearing a purple cape over a beige mid-length dress with tassels. And she wore a gold anklet above a pair of shoes that wouldn’t have looked out of place doing the tango.
    Sam sometimes fell off the wagon, but usually he was dry. He fell off the wagon whenever he gave way to the heartbreaking obsession that he was in control. Sometimes he thought it was getting easier to deal with. And often he knew it wasn’t. The craving never went away: over the years he’d evolved a way of hiding from it. You hid from the craving by ignoring everything that had happened yesterday and paying no attention to anything that might happen tomorrow.
    Yesterday was gone and nothing would bring it back. It was in the realm of accomplishments and failures. Yesterday’s word had been spoken, and old Khayyam was right, all the