Read Eeny Meeny for Free Online Page A

had no intention of sleeping.
    Instead he drove across town to suburban Shirley, parking up in a quiet residential street. He never used his own car, so as not to give himself away. The beaten-up Golf with the tinted windows was designed to deflect attention from its true purpose and it worked – passers-by wrote it off as another teenager’s attempt to soup up an old wreck. It was the perfect vantage point from which to watch undetected.
    A seven-year-old girl appeared in the window and Mark sat up, his eyes glued to her. She surveyed the street outside, then pulled the curtains to, shutting out the world. Mark cursed his luck – some days Elsie stood at that spot for twenty minutes or more. Her gaze would flit now here, now there and over time Mark had convinced himself that she was looking for him. It was a fantasy, but it fed his soul.
    The sound of high heels on the pavement made him slide down in his seat. Stupid really, no one could see in. But shame makes you do strange things. He couldn’t let her discover him like this. He watched as the trim 32-year-old marched up to the house. Before she could get her key in the lock, the door opened and she was gathered into the arms of a tall, muscular man. They kissed each other long and hard.
    And there it was in a nutshell. His ex-wife swept off her feet by another man – with Mark left out in the cold. A wave of fierce anger ripped through him. He had given that woman everything and she had stamped on his heart. What had she said when she called time on their short marriage? That she didn’t love him enough. It was the most debilitating of character assassinations. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He just wasn’t enough .
    They had married too young. Had a baby too quickly. But for a while the chaos and emotion of first-time parenthood had glued them together. The shared fear that their baby would stop breathing if left unattended, the sleep-deprived paranoia that you were doing a bad job, but also the immense joy of seeing their little girl grow and thrive. But slowly Christina had grown tired of the rigours of parenthood – the deadening routine, the privations – and had thrown herself back into her career. Which made her arguments during their bitter custody hearings all the more obscene. She played the mother card to the hilt, contrasting her loving nature, ordered existence and well-paid job with Mark’s unpredictable and dangerous life as a Southampton copper – not forgetting to throw in some choice anecdotes about his drinking. And what had she done when she’d got sole custody of Elsie? She’d gone straight back to work full-time and handed over care of their child to her live-in lover. The woman who had once claimed to love Mark with all her heart had turned out to be a deceitful and vindictive little shit.
    Christina and Stephen had gone inside now and all was quiet. Elsie would have had her bath and be dressed for bed. Snug now in her Hello Kitty dressing gown and slippers that Mark had bought her, she’d be curled up in front of the CBeebies bedtime story. It was too young for her really, but she had a sentimental attachment to it and never missed it. Suddenly Mark felt the anger subside, subsumed by a terrible sadness. He too had found parenthood tough – the never-ending round of baths, bed, stories, play dates and more – but he would have given anything to be back in the midst of it now.
    It was stupid to come here. Mark gunned the engine and sped away from the house, hoping to leave his troubles right there in the street. But as he drove they clambered round his brain like monkeys, goading him with his failure, his insignificance, his loneliness. Heading for home, he suddenly changed direction, shooting down Castle Way. There was a pub near the docks that ran illegal lock-ins. As long as you were in there by midnight you could drink all night. Which is exactly what he intended to do.

15
     
    The Brightston home was an imposing Victorian