Page 14 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘Wouldn’t it?’ I asked wistfully. ‘Don’t you miss me, Max?’
‘Of course I do, but I’m also working hard, you know, this isn’t a holiday for me. Anyway, I’ll be back before you knowit.’
‘Yes, but Max—’
I stopped, realizing that whatever I said wouldn’t change his mind once he’d made it up, and most of the things I found myself wanting to tell him lately were unsayable anyway, like: Max, I get so lonely without even your weekend visits.
Max, I’m forty-four and my reproductive possibilities are melting faster than the snow in California.
Max, didn’t you once assure methat Rosemary’s doctors didn’t give her more than a very few years to live, and that one day we would marry and have a family?
Max, were you a liar?
I’d been treating the Predictova kit with the watchful reverence that you might accord to a ticking time bomb in your bathroom: I mean, were my internal organs pace-egging to extinction, or what? (Not that the damn thing actuallytoldyou, it justpointed out the probabilities.) But outwardly at least my life had resumed its normal (or maybe abnormal) rhythm.
Nature intended me to be nocturnal, so by night I wroteLover, Come Back to Me, wandered for inspiration in the village graveyard and nearby reputedly haunted places (though not the Haunted Well, because Orla and I made that one up), before finally retiring to my virtuous couch inthe very early hours of the morning.
There I was awoken at dawn by Birdsong, the new baby in the adjoining cottage, until I finally rose in late morning to research, visit haunted venues, take naps, do Crypt-ograms (butnotas Wonder Woman!), go to the pub with Orla and Jason, and start all over again.
The life-cycle of the Sombre-Plumaged Horror Writer.
And my publishers had brought forwardthe publication date of my next novel to April, due to sudden demand for my books, so at this rate they would soon be publishing them before I’d written them.
I was also working at weakening the defences of Jack Craig, upon whom I had serious designs, though unlike those of Jason’s missing wife, Tanya, mine were not of a sexual or romantic nature.
No, his sole attraction lay in the fact thathe was the caretaker of the local haunted house, reputedly the most haunted manor in the country. But then, aren’t they all? It had stood empty since the death of its reclusive owner, and I was desperate to get in there. The heir had apparently taken a quick look round when he inherited before leaving the country for foreign climes: but who knew when the fancy might take him to return, or put theproperty on the market?
All I wanted was the key for one night, and a blind eye turning. He knew very well that I wouldn’t harm anything, but despite his villainous appearance – and reputation – he was proving remarkably resistant to my bribes.
Jack was a small, wiry, feral-eyed man who had an inexplicable attraction for some women, but personally, I found polecats much more appealing.
