An Absence of Natural Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

honestly think you’re being haunted?’
    He held her eyes with his. This was no longer a novelty to her. It was characteristic of his openness and honesty and it made her realize, as the wine swam into her system, just how much she didn’t want him hurt any more than he’d already recently been.
    â€˜The truthful answer is that I don’t know,’ he said.
    â€˜Isn’t it much more likely that a former team-mate is playing a practical joke on you?’
    â€˜They’re not here, though, they’re back in the North. I can think of a couple of practical jokers in the squad, but no one who’d take this much trouble.’
    â€˜We should go down there when we’ve finished eating, take a look.’
    â€˜I was hoping you’d say that.’
    â€˜I’m staying with you tonight, Tom.’
    â€˜I was hoping you’d say that, too.’
    They got up straight away by unspoken common consent because eating was only pleasurable when there wasn’t a hollow of anxiety ballooning in your stomach. That was how Tom felt as he went to fetch the key, and the expression on her face told him that was how Rebecca felt too. They walked from the kitchen to the sitting room in silence. The key made a lot of noise as its teeth bit into the ratchets of the old mortis lock mechanism, the tumbling rasps reverberating off the hard surfaces of the walls.
    At the bottom of the stone steps, he switched on the pearly globes to reveal a pristine space in a silence so complete it struck him as profound. There was no ambient noise from the street, no muffled soundtrack of neighbouring lives through the sturdy walls, no thunder of aircraft engines on their commercial flight-paths juddering down from the skies above.
    He stole a sideways look at Rebecca, who was searching the floor with her own eyes, but seeing nothing other than stone because there was nothing else to see. She frowned and sniffed.
    He asked her, ‘Can you smell something?’
    â€˜My imagination,’ she said, shaking her head.
    Tom thought any phantom scent would have to be quite strong to register, competing with the garlic and hot chillies and pungent spices of the meal they’d just eaten. And the beer he’d drunk with it, of course. And the wine she’d drunk. He breathed in slowly through his nostrils nevertheless and savoured the air, but it smelled completely innocent to him.
    Rebecca looked at him and he returned the look, and she smiled and he saw the tension leave her shoulders and an anxious vertical line fade to nothing on her forehead. She lifted her arms and placed a hand on each of his shoulders and he noticed, for the first time, that she was only an inch or so shorter than he was. Heels might come into the equation, he thought. But then he forgot about the equation altogether, because she leaned forward and kissed him.
    â€˜Let’s go upstairs,’ she murmured. ‘Frankly, Tom, we’ve got far better things to do.’
    They spent quite some time doing those better things, only making it to his bedroom spent and ready for sleep after midnight. Rebecca climbed naked between ivory cotton sheets remembering that she’d speculated on black satin aboard a king-sized four-poster with a faux imperial crest above the headboard. The thought made her snort a stifled laugh and, drowsing beside her, he heard it.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜Liar.’
    â€˜If you knew everything about me you’d get bored very quickly.’
    â€˜No, I wouldn’t.’ He yawned. ‘Does everyone call you Rebecca?’
    After a pause, she said, ‘Everyone but my dad. My dad called me Reeba. You can’t call me that.’
    â€˜Obviously.’
    â€˜So you’ll just have to use my full name.’
    â€˜It seems a bit formal.’
    â€˜Formality, Mr Harper, can be a good thing.’
    Rebecca awoke once during the night. For a fraction of a second she