The Overnight Read Online Free PDF

have crept in while the doors were open: he can't be sure if the children's alcoves across the shop are faintly blurred. He hesitates by the counter but can find no excuse to stay there. It's absurd of him to behave like this when every day that Laura is in Accident and Emergency she deals with human damage most people wouldn't want even to imagine. Perhaps it's best that he and Laura have no children if this is the kind of example he would set them—a father afraid of the dark. A surge of anger sends him to clap his badge to the plaque by the door up to the staffroom.
    The walls of the passage are blanker than fog, but he has never been claustrophobic. He switches on the light as the door hauls itself shut, then he sprints up the bare concrete stairs. Beyond the door past the toilets and the name-tagged staff lockers is a light that he's especially anxious should be working. It is, and for a troubled moment he thinks he isn't alone in the building, but of course Wilf neglected to clock off—he'll need to give Ray a shift error slip. Nigel slides his own card along the groove and drops it in the In rack above Wilf's, and then he confronts the staffroom.
    What could make anyone nervous? Not the walls the colour of pale moss, the straight chairs standing at attention round the table except for one resting its forehead against the edge, the cork wallboard with several Woody's Wheedles sheets pinned to it, the sink full of unwashed plates and mugs and cutlery that must be collaborating on a faint moist stale smell … But this isn't the room where Nigel spends much of his time and feels least at ease. He strides to throw open the door to the office.
    The light in there is reliable too. Three computers attended by swivel chairs and wire trays bristling with papers keep one another company on a bench that sprouts from three sides of the room. A pair of magnetic butterflies have settled on Connie's monitor, Ray's sports a Manchester United badge, and Nigel thinks yet again that he ought to find an emblem to decorate his: it might make him feel more at home. Why should he need to force that? He must have been in windowless places before, but he has never been afraid of the dark—afraid that the lights will fail, trapping him in blackness as profound as the depths of the earth. There wouldn't even be a glow from Woody's office beyond the benchless wall. All this is nonsense, and here's his chance to prove it to himself while nobody's about. Good God, he's supposed to be a manager. He steps into the office and shuts the door behind him, then he slaps the light switch with a vigour that sends him into the instant enveloping dark.
    He can't have taken many inadvertent paces when he stumbles to a halt. He meant to take them, he tells himself. He meant to surround himself with more of the darkness, to prove that no amount of it was the slightest threat to him, however much it feels as if he has been dragged underground. It has done its worst, which is nothing at all, and there's the doorbell ringing at the front of the shop. The muffled distant sound could be signalling his victory or, if he's honest about it, his release. He turns towards the staffroom, but he might as well have no eyes. There's no hint of the outline of the door.
    Has the light beyond it fused, or is he wrong to think he's facing it? He can't see it anywhere around him, but he mustn't panic; he only has to advance until he encounters a wall. He takes a hesitant step and stretches out his hands. They've hardly moved when the left one touches the spongy forehead of whatever's crouched in front of him.
    Nigel lets out a gasping cry that leaves him no breath. As he staggers backwards he hears the object scuttle into the dark. It thumps the bench, rattling the computers, by which time he has realised what it was: a chair on wheels. Of course the noise that slithers softly along a wall is nothing but an echo. He's farther from the door than he could have believed, but at