1

The night around me throbs in time with my stride. The limbs of the trees that line the road remind me of blood vessels, or the tiny, branching passageways of the lung. At this edge of town the sparseness of the street lights makes everything indistinct. I try to reduce my pace from the relentless pounding it has been since leaving my parents’ house two minutes ago. The evening is in ruins. Home is only fifteen minutes away, and I’m craving the privacy of my room and a few slugs of vodka to take the edge off.

My brothers; ah, my dear, beloved brothers. Their conversation at the dinner table had been like a pincer movement. Do Zach and Alistair do this out of malice, or just stumble into it by habit? It hardly matters. The evening had been dominated by Zach, smug at the prospect of flouncing around on TV again, while the rest of us struggle to hold down real jobs. ‘I expect you all to watch me,’ he said. ‘I’m flying the flag for the Griffin family here.’ He made himself sound like an ambassador, rather than what he really is: a game show contestant on some two-a-penny Freeview channel. And then Alistair had felt the need to discuss Iraq, and how the amount spent on the war had made Britain more vulnerable to the ongoing global financial crisis. Why does he never talk about the thousands of people who have died? Why does everything always have to be about money? I had to challenge him on it. Bingo: instant argument. Just add wine.

And although I’ve managed to walk away before wrecking the evening for everybody, I’ve only left in a physical sense. In every other way I’m still there, still arguing with them. Families, eh? Can’t live with them, can’t slaughter them and bury them under the patio.

I look up from the pavement and, yes, the outside world still exists. At the bend in the road is one of the few other houses in the vicinity, almost as large as my parents’ place, white and ruthlessly rectangular, the sort of house estate agents refer to as a ‘cottage’ in order to soften its ugliness. I glance through the gap in the surrounding wall and see a man crouching down at the front door, picking the lock in the glow of the security light. My pace slows, and after a few more steps I’ve stopped. Did I just see that? I press my back against the rough flint of the wall. Yes, the snapshot is still clear: the long hair and leather jacket, hands at eye height as he fiddles with the door mechanism.

I take another step, just the one. So, I’m going to walk away again, am I? Twice in one evening seems a bit too much like cowardice. I don’t know who owns this house, but am I really going to stroll on by while someone goes through their stuff, trampling all over their lives for a bit of drug money? Fishing out my mobile, I stab at the tiny plastic buttons and end up with four nines. It’s a new phone and I fumble to find the delete key.

Wait a minute. Let’s get this straight: I’m seething, I’m on the brink, and I’m going to phone the cops – who have always made me nervous – to report a crime when I don’t even know for certain that one is taking place.

I lower the phone. My breath is coming too fast. I can see it fogging in the cold air, short-lived and luminescent from the light of a street lamp. I have to step back, take stock, the way Dr Nylund told me. I close my eyes, but a scene immediately plays across the inside of my eyelids: me pushing my chair back from my parents’ dining table and retreating to the sanctuary of the toilet while the others finish the lamb, oblivious. I open my eyes to banish the images.

Leave it. Just leave it and go home.

Maybe the guy at the front door is the owner. He might be struggling to get his key into the door after staggering back from Foley’s wine bar. On the other hand, if he is a thief, he’s not going to wait around for me to make a decision. He’s going to be half a mile down the road with his pockets stuffed full of jewellery. I know how Zach would react. He’d walk past, thinking it was bad luck; just one of those things. Unless it happened to him, of course. Then it would be bang out of order.

Well, I’m not Zach.

I peer round the corner to see the porch is now empty, just as the security light times out. Why is nothing ever simple? The windows of the house are dark, the night silent except for a faint rustle of leaves. This is one of the last properties on the outskirts of Strathurst before the town begins in earnest. It’s expensive, but without the luxury of being isolated in woodland like my parents’ place. He can’t have left – the walls are over two metres high and topped with broken glass, and I’m pretty sure I’m covering the only exit. Which means he’s inside, illegally or otherwise. I’m hoping for the former; if I prevent a burglary, at least I’ll have salvaged something from the evening.

End of excerpt

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