With a deep breath, she unbolted the door and pulled it open.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Hey, Moggy, is that the way to greet your old dad?’
‘How did you find me, Stan?’
‘It’s not rocket science, Moggy, a friend of a friend said you were living around here. It’s cold out, aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘No.’
She pushed the door, but he was too fast. His foot was already there, stopping it from shutting.
‘Seriously, go away.’
‘Aw, come on. I’ve got nowhere to go, just let me in until the morning. I haven’t got enough money to stay anywhere.’
‘Go back to Carol.’
‘I can’t, she threw me out.’
She shook her head. ‘I wondered how long it would take her to see sense.’
‘Please, I fell over, I’ve hurt my head and feel dizzy. It’s dark along that road.’
Waving her hands to activate the motion sensor hall light, Morgan looked at her father’s face. He did have a graze on the side of his head and some scratches on one hand, but they didn’t look fresh. They were a couple of hours old. His hair was fully grey and he looked more dishevelled than the last time she’d seen him. It had been at least a year. They’d rarely spoken in the five years since her mum’s death. She’d blamed him for everything.
Against her better judgement, she opened the door and took a step back.
‘You’re a good girl, Moggy, you always were. Feisty, but kind.’
‘You can come in for tonight on one condition.’
‘What’s that, love?’
‘You don’t call me Moggy. I’m not a flipping cat. It’s Morgan.’
He lifted his fingers to his lips and mimed zipping them shut. ‘Sorry, Morgan.’
She pointed towards her open flat door and watched him stumble towards it, the smell of cheap whisky permeating the air around him. It was so strong she waved her hand in front of her nose to waft it away. A sinking feeling inside made her wonder if she was going to regret this dutiful act of kindness tomorrow.
Six
After dropping Morgan off, Ben had driven straight home to his empty four-bedroomed house. It was untidy, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d dusted. Maybe it was time to get his act together; Cindy had been gone over three years now. Her stuff was still all around the house; he hadn’t been able to touch it, although he had moved the awful faceless figurines she’d insisted on collecting. They were the only things he’d boxed up so he didn’t have to look at them. When she’d been alive the urge to draw faces on them whenever they argued had been strong and difficult to suppress. He’d managed to resist, though, and always imagined this small feat had earned him brownie points with whoever was watching over him. Not enough points to save Cindy though.
He felt sad and in dire need of a treble shot of something strong. Suicides always left him this way. No matter how many he attended it was always the same; it was something he could never get used to. Didn’t want to get used to if he was honest. Accidents and murders, even terminal illness were all tragic and devasting, but these people didn’t die by their own hands. They didn’t willingly wake up and decide that today they’d swallow fifty paracetamol and put a plastic bag over their head because they could no longer take the pain inside that being alive caused them.
In the kitchen, he opened the freezer and pulled out the bottle of vodka he kept in there. He took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with ice and neat vodka. Sitting at the kitchen table, he stared at Cindy’s fluffy dressing gown on the back of the chair opposite him. It no longer smelt like her; instead it smelt of bacon grease and dust. He knew he should eat something. He hadn’t had anything since a bacon buttie that morning. Downing the vodka, he got up and opened the fridge door. Two eggs, some crusty cheese that looked as if it was growing its own penicillin and half a tin of chopped tomatoes greeted him. He grabbed the tomatoes, looked inside the tin and gagged. They were green and furry. It would have to be eggs again, and he didn’t want eggs. Opening the cupboard, he found a packet of chocolate digestives that would have to do. Refilling his vodka glass, he took that and the biscuits upstairs with him to the bathroom. He would have a shower, finish his drink and eat as many biscuits as he could before sleep overtook him.
As he stood under the spray of steaming hot water, he cast his mind to Olivia Potter, wondering if section had located her husband and what it meant if they hadn’t. Was Morgan right to raise concerns, or was she being overzealous because it was the first sudden death she’d attended on her own? When he’d towel dried himself and was dressed in clean boxers and a long-sleeved T-shirt he felt better. Walking past the master bedroom, he stared through the open door at the super king-size bed. He hadn’t slept in that either since Cindy had gone. It reminded him of how lonely he was. Instead, he’d taken to sleeping in one of the spare rooms which doubled up as a home office. The single bed was comfortable, a bit of a squeeze but he managed.
Finishing his drink, he tossed the packet of biscuits on the small chest of drawers next to the bed and threw himself onto the mattress. Days like this wore him out; mentally, emotionally, physically, coming home to this empty house which was like a shrine to his dead wife exhausted him. Memories he didn’t want to surface always did after a suicide, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop them. He sat on the bed and opened the biscuits, slowly making his way through half a packet as he looked down at the paunch which protruded over the top of his boxers. He needed to sort his life out. Once upon a time he’d have cooked a healthy meal, been up for a run before work, maybe even gone for one at the end of his shift. He wouldn’t be living off crap and vodka. What would Cindy do if it had been him who had died? He smiled; she definitely wouldn’t be living like some weird hermit, that was for sure. His stuff would have been boxed up and donated to a charity shop the day after his funeral.
So, what are you holding on to, Ben? This stuff is just stuff; your memories are inside your mind and in your heart. He lay down and stared up at the ceiling; there was a large crack running from the light across to the wall above his head. If he didn’t get a builder in to look at it the whole ceiling could come down. He closed his eyes, and like he did every night, determined that tomorrow he would find a builder and tomorrow he would get some boxes to pack away Cindy’s stuff.
Seven
Morgan’s eyes opened wide; the room was dark, but she didn’t need to look at her phone to see the time was 04.25 because that was the exact time she woke every single morning. It didn’t matter how tired she was, how late she went to bed, if she’d been drinking, if she was ill. It never made any difference. For the last five years, since the worst day of her life, her brain had somehow convinced itself that she needed to be awake at this godforsaken hour and so she was. As she lay there, she heard a loud snore coming from the direction of the living room and groaned, pulling a pillow over her head to muffle the noise. She was hoping it had been a bad dream, that her useless father hadn’t really turned up late last night and was now drooling and snoring on her one and only chair. Forcing herself to get out of bed, she pulled her dressing gown around her, pushed her feet into the big, furry slippers she’d bought herself on her last shopping trip to Primark, then went into the living room to shake his shoulder. Bad enough he was here, in person, stinking out her lovely flat; she wasn’t going to listen to that awful noise which sounded like a cross between a chainsaw and a hoover. Grabbing his shoulder, she shook it. He didn’t flinch, so she used more pressure.