Opening extract
There is always a moment when, in the night, the beast hears the other beast.
Chapter One
Jack felt as if the door to his life had been left open and a stranger had walked in.
“Well?” Karen asked.
“It's a shock,” he said.
“It's what's happened.”
Jack sipped at his whiskey, let the single ice cube clink on his teeth, felt the irritation rise.
“It's an accident, not an attack, not a plan. I thought you might be happy, celebratory. I thought you might congratulate me, us.”
“It's not like I'm blaming you.”
“Blaming me?” Her eyes widened.
“Accusing you of anything.”
“What are you saying?”
“It's always been your responsibility.”
“I forgot.”
“Exactly, you forgot. I've never really thought about it. You took it on. I didn't force you or anything. I'm not saying it was deliberate—a trick—but you're talking like it's a done deal.”
“It is.”
“It's not here, is it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“It's early days. It can be…”
“What—corrected? Got rid of? Killed?”
Jack clenched his fist round the glass. “You're being overdramatic.”
“Overdramatic?”
“We need to discuss it calmly. Right now it's not anything, just a conglomeration of cells.”
“It's real. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.”
“Six weeks.”
“It's got a heart.”
“All I'm saying is if you lost it, it wouldn't make any difference.”
“It would make a difference to me.”
Jack spread out his arms, indicated the balcony and the sea and the lights of the Palace Pier bright against the evening sky. “How could it be better?”
“I want things to develop, to go forward. I want our own place. I want a home, I want a family. I want a life. We're not twenty anymore. You're not Peter Pan. We're getting old.”
Jack watched as Karen turned and went into the flat: her broad shoulders, her flat back, the way the hair on her neck grew in a soft downy anticlockwise whorl that he could trace with his fingertips. The last thing he wanted was a baby. Actually, the last thing he wanted was to lose Karen.
Extract ends