Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘Did you find Robert?’ Juliet called out in a sing-song voice. Simon shivered. He pictured her words as tentacles, wrapping around him, pulling him into the strange, depraved world she inhabited. He shut his eyes for a second. Then he tried the closed door. It was unlocked and opened easily. The awful smell hit Simon full in the face and he fought hard not to be sick. He saw a mess of colours and horror, grey skin, features twisted in pain. Proust had predicted this. This’ll be a murder investigation by the end of the week, you watch.

The man was unmistakably Robert Haworth. He was nude, lying on his back on one side of a double bed. The blood from his head wound had soaked into the bedding beneath him and dried. One of his arms trailed on the floor. By his hand, Simon saw his glasses; one lens was missing, the other cracked.

Simon noticed a large stone doorstop, about the size of a rugby ball, in one corner of the room. Its top edge was dark and sticky with blood and matted hair; before he could stop himself, Simon thought of an evil child’s hard, faceless doll, and shuddered. He placed his fingertips on Haworth’s wrist because it was what you did, not because he held out any hope. At first he thought he’d imagined it, that small, insistent beating. He must have. The grey skin, the blood and the crusty filth around Haworth’s body presented a clear image of death. A few more seconds convinced Simon he had imagined nothing. There was a pulse. Robert Haworth was still alive.

‘Give us a snog, then, Sarge,’ Graham whispered, kissing Charlie’s neck. They were in her bed in the chalet, semi-clothed, the duvet pulled up over their heads. ‘Do your underlings call you Sarge? Or ma’am? That’s what they say on Prime Suspect. ’

‘Sh!’ Charlie hissed at him. ‘What if Olivia wakes up? Can’t we go to your place?’ She hadn’t been groped in the same room as her sister since the two of them were fifteen and thirteen respectively. How weird those teenage parties were, in retrospect: dozens of couples dotted around somebody’s dimly lit living room, necking and putting their hands inside one another’s clothes while Ultravox or Curiosity Killed the Cat played in the background.

‘My place? No chance,’ Graham breathed in Charlie’s ear. ‘You’re not setting foot over the threshold until the next time Steph gives the place a good spring clean. You’d be shocked by my slovenliness.’

‘Steph cleans your house as well as the chalets?’

‘Yep. She’s my own personal waste-disposal system. She’s my out-tray, at home and at work. Anyway, forget about the dogsbody. It’s your body I’m interested in . . .’

It was strange, Charlie thought, to feel Graham and hear him but be hardly able to see him. The chalet was full of a deep, black darkness, reminding her that she really was in the countryside here. Even in Spilling, a rural market town, the night sky was a dark mushroom-skin colour, never pure black. She’d told Graham this as they’d stumbled tipsily back from the old barn building that housed the spa facilities and a small, cosy bar. ‘We get proper nights here,’ he’d said proudly. ‘No light pollution at all.’ Charlie had thought this was an interesting way to put it. She’d never thought of light as a pollutant before, but she could see what Graham meant.

She felt his bare chest against her skin, the thick hair on it. She wasn’t sure she liked furry chests, but she could put up with it. Everything else about him was attractive. If they were a couple, people might say Graham was out of her league. She ordered herself to start thinking of him as a whole person, rather than as a composite of certain body parts: her imaginary boyfriend come to life. He had long muscly legs and a nice bum, though; Charlie couldn’t help noticing that. Colin Sellers had once accused her of thinking like a man when it came to sex. That was a good thing, surely. Why shouldn’t it be uncomplicated? It made more sense to have a purely physical relationship with someone who looked like Graham than to cry into your pillow every night over a non-relationship with someone like Simon Waterhouse, who put red wine in the fridge and couldn’t even get himself a proper haircut.

Graham was tugging gently at Charlie’s camisole, murmuring, ‘No idea how to get this off at all . . .’

She giggled, aware that he had taken off more clothes than she had, that she was stalling. Graham had no doubts about what they were embarking upon, Charlie could tell. Which was nice. He reminded her—in attitude rather than appearance—of Folly, her parents’ black Labrador, who leaped on top of Charlie and licked her enthusiastically whenever he could. She decided to keep the comparison to herself. Graham seemed fairly thick-skinned, but you could never be sure.

She helped him to remove her underwear. ‘I don’t think you’re fully aware of how sexy you really are, ma’am,’ Graham whispered, running his fingers lightly over her body. ‘Or is it guv?’

‘No comment.’

‘Your red lipstick and your jeans . . .’

‘They’re old, ordinary jeans.’

‘Exactly.’

Charlie tried to kiss him, but he pulled away, saying, ‘You’re miles sexier than Helen Mirren . . .’

‘Any particular reason why you’re comparing me with her?’

‘. . . and that wrinkly blonde bird from The Bill, and her from Silent Witness. ’

‘And Trevor Eve from Waking the Dead? ’ Charlie suggested.

‘No, he’s sexier than you,’ said Graham with certainty. Charlie laughed and he put his hand over her mouth. ‘Careful not to wake big sis.’

‘Little sis, actually.’

‘So why do you let her boss you around?’

Charlie’s mobile phone began to ring. She’d chosen the opening bars of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ by Eminem as her ringtone. A mistake. The longer it went unanswered, the louder it got. ‘Shit!’ she hissed, fumbling in the darkness, pulling random objects out of her bag. She put her hand on the phone just as it stopped ringing.

Light filled the room. Charlie blinked, turned to look at Graham. She’d assumed he’d switched on a lamp to help her find her phone, but he was still lying down, almost completely covered by the duvet. He groaned, pulling it over his head. Great, thought Charlie. Just when I need a hero to rush to my rescue. Bracing herself, she turned and looked up.

Olivia had pulled the curtain aside and was squinting down through the mezzanine’s wooden railings. She was wearing her Bonsoir floral kimono pyjamas and looked tense and alert, not at all as if she had just been woken up. ‘Yes, I’ve heard everything,’ she said. ‘Not that you two care.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’ said Charlie, pulling on first her knickers and then her shirt. Not again, she thought, as the painful memory of herself and Simon at Sellers’ fortieth birthday party filled her head. She was furious with Olivia for making this like that, though Olivia knew nothing about the incident at the party. It was the one significant thing Charlie had never told her. ‘Why were you pretending to be asleep?’

‘Why didn’t you check whether I was asleep or not before having sex in my bedroom?’

‘It’s not your bedroom! Your bedroom’s up there. This is my bedroom. ’ Charlie felt anger rise and explode inside her like a firework display, blocking out everything else. For a moment she forgot Graham was there, until his head emerged from the bedding.

‘Looks like I’ve overstayed my unwelcome,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you ladies in peace.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Charlie told him quietly.

‘You stay.’ Olivia was standing now, throwing clothes into her suitcase. ‘You’re the one Charlie wants to be with, not me. I’ll go. One night of this shit’s enough for me. I’m buggered if I’m spending a whole week being the odd one out, listening to you two shag each other senseless every night.’ She pulled her long beige coat on over her pyjamas, looked as if she was on her way to a fancy-dress party.