PROLOGUE
James Hunter was drunk.
Tonight he’d flown past the happy, confident, slightly tipsy stage, straight into the depressive, miserable phase. He poured another measure of vodka, splashing some on the coffee table.
At one of his first AA meetings, he’d stood up in front of the group and told them he drank to forget, but that was a lie. Alcohol didn’t help him forget. It numbed the pain a little bit, but it also turned him into a melancholy, blubbering mess.
He wiped away the fat tears rolling down his cheeks with the back of his hand.
From the outside, most of his acquaintances saw James as a successful forty-three-year-old man who ran a thriving website-design business. He was happily married. His mortgage was paid off. He was financially secure. On the surface, he was one of life’s winners. Only his drinking hinted at his dark secret.
AA had seemed to be the answer for a while. Of course, it didn’t solve all his problems. The reason he’d turned to drink in the first place hadn’t disappeared, but AA gave him enough support to avoid the seductive lure of alcohol most of the time.
Vodka had always been his drink of choice. Clear and discreet, it could be poured into a water bottle and carried around all day without arousing too much suspicion. It wasn’t completely odourless, but it didn’t smell as strong as other alcohols, and, most important of all, it was effective and got him drunk fast.
‘How long has it been since you fell off the wagon?’ his friend asked, looking concerned.
James felt a wave of unrelenting shame. Why was he so weak?
‘Two years,’ he said quietly, looking at the almost-empty bottle of vodka on the table next to the small glass tumbler. James sat on the sofa, and his friend sat opposite him in an armchair with his fingers interlinked, hands resting lightly on his lap as he looked at James reproachfully.
‘Two years is pretty good going. We all have setbacks sometimes. The trick is to get back on the wagon.’
James nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ll pour the rest down the sink.’
He didn’t want to, though. He wanted to finish the bottle. Once you started, it was so hard to stop. His fingers itched to reach out and grab the bottle. Could he pretend to pour it down the sink and then stash it somewhere, so he could finish it after his guest had left?
‘No need to do that,’ he said. ‘It’s open, so you may as well finish it.’
James blinked in surprise. That wasn’t the response he’d anticipated.
‘I shouldn’t really,’ James said. ‘Not now. I’m feeling better. Just talking about it has helped. I should have come clean years ago. I’m already feeling stronger. The guilt was eating away at me.’
‘I’m not surprised. It must have been a horrible thing to go through, and keeping it to yourself must have been unbearable.’
James sniffed, his gaze fixed on the bottle of vodka.
‘Go ahead,’ his friend said. ‘You can start afresh tomorrow.’
James shook his head and stood up. Unsteady on his feet, he reached out to grasp the arm of the sofa before staggering forward towards the balcony doors. ‘No, I’d better not. I just need to sober up a bit. Fresh air will help. I’m sorry for unloading all this on you.’
He’d not been keen on buying a flat. That had been his wife’s idea. James would have preferred a house with a garden. They couldn’t have animals in the flat either, and he’d always imagined himself having a dog to take for walks and to greet him enthusiastically when he came home.
His wife worked away a lot, and he got lonely. He didn’t like his own company. When he was alone he had time to think. He didn’t like that at all.
He pushed open the balcony doors and felt the cold night air wash over him. The breeze was bracing and felt good. They’d had a mild start to the autumn, but the weather had shifted, and James found the evening air cooler than he’d expected. He leaned heavily on the painted railings and looked down.
Their flat didn’t have the best view. Lincoln had lovely old buildings, and some of the other apartments looked out on the castle or cathedral. Their apartment had been sold as having a view of the river, but you could only see it if you stuck your head out of the bathroom window. The apartments with appealing vistas were more expensive, so they’d opted for this one because it meant they could afford an extra bedroom for James to use as an office.
He gripped the railings and swayed a little as he looked across the road at the multistorey car park. Not the most attractive sight.
James saw someone moving near the entrance. He squinted, leaning forward. It was the homeless girl; he saw her most days. He sighed. Life could be very unfair. She was only a youngster. His wife often carried a cup of coffee down to the girl before she went to work. James had given her a slice of his birthday cake last month. She was a sweet kid.
He couldn’t see her clearly because it was dark, but he could make out the outline of her sleeping bag and the couple of bags she always seemed to have with her.
She was an addict, of course. He’d seen the marks on her arms, but who was he to judge? He was an addict, too. He might be functioning well enough to hold down a job and keep a roof over his head, but an addict was an addict.
James heard a noise and turned to smile as his friend stepped out on to the balcony beside him.
‘I feel like a weight has been lifted,’ James said. ‘I should have come clean ages ago. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, but I’d never believed that until today.’
His friend said nothing but stepped closer and glanced over the railings.
James shivered and looked down. ‘It’s quite a drop, isn’t it? I wasn’t sure about being on the eighth floor, but Diana insisted. She liked the views better higher up. I’m not sure being higher makes the car park look any better, but I suppose we get more light up here.’
He turned to his friend, who was still silent, and wondered if he’d shocked him with his confession. ‘I hope you don’t mind me telling you all this tonight. I’ve been carrying it around with me for so long. It was making me ill.’ James looked away. ‘I hope you don’t think too badly of me.’
This time when James turned back to him, his friend had a strange look in his eyes.
He almost looked angry.
James blinked. His alcohol-muddled brain was trying to tell him something, trying to warn him something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t process his thoughts fast enough.
It wasn’t until he felt the man’s hand beneath his armpit and another hand on his belt that he realised something was terribly wrong.
Even then, when his mind finally recognised the danger, when he realised he needed to run, his body wouldn’t obey his commands. Instead of springing into action from the flood of adrenaline, his muscles refused to respond. Trembling, all James could do was let out a little whimper as he was hoisted into the air and over the railings.
At the last minute, his body jerked into action, and he bucked and twisted, desperately trying to free himself and get back to the safety of the balcony. His body rested on the railings, and he felt a dull pain in his hip as he squirmed against them, and then in the next moment he was given another shove that sent him hurtling to the ground.
In the short time it took James to plummet from the eighth floor, one thought ran through his mind: What have I done?