writing_shadows

Something about trains always put Val to sleep. Be she never so awake, talking, reading, travelling with friends, at some point during the train journey would come the sudden jerk and start that told her she’d fallen asleep again. Now the half-wail of the brakes jolted into her consciousness, as the train pulled into Cambridge station. It had been light for a couple of hours.

As she walked to where she’d left her car, she realised she’d enjoyed baiting the academic she’d met, and looked forward to his performative séance, even as bits of her said that poking such things, unless you were very aware of what you could be dealing with, was a bad idea. She had spent nearly a decade ignoring those bits, and the syringe in its case in her handbag bore witness to the fact that she’d go on ignoring.

She wondered, now, if it were worth going back for other degrees, or whether her innate disinclination to work to anything approximating anyone else’s schedule would mean she’d just be throwing money away. She suspected the latter.

Val got out in her drive, touching base briefly with the security guards she’d had for a couple of months now, before going in her door, keying in the code that would put the alarm in abeyance while she walked through the house. She opened her bedroom door, murmuring softly, not loud enough to wake Andy but enough so that he’d recognise her voice whether he woke or not. He didn’t.

The sheets were in disarray and twisted, witness to another restless night for him. The hours of darkness were hardest; there tended to be an easing off around dawn. She changed quickly into her negligee and slipped into the bed, easing the remote alarm control from Andy’s unconscious grasp and resetting the system. She straightened the sheets a bit and then lay down next to him. He shuddered once, then nestled in and relaxed. She smiled and circled him with her arms.

No, he didn’t love her. But she was making a difference.