Waking Broken by Huw Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

head hitting the sofa in Brendan’s cramped front room. His sleep was mostly sound, only plagued in the early hours by flickering dream images that left a sense of unease but nothing concrete.
    The next morning, Brendan left just after six. The photographer was on the newspaper’s early shift and Harper did not even hear him go. Instead, he found a note stuck under a near-cold mug of tea when he woke a little after seven.
     
    Sleep as much as you want. Think of a plan.
    I’ll tell them you’ve been in an accident and are signed off until at least next week.
    If the phone rings don’t answer. I’ll be back by two. BE HERE.
    Brendan.
     
    As instructed, Harper took his time. Contrary to Brendan’s advice, he tried not to think. Instead, he drank the tea and dozed for another hour or so, by which time he could no longer ignore the pressure on his bladder. After a long shower, he dressed gingerly. He pulled the same clothes back on again, hiding the array of bruises that decorated most of his left side. Later, still limping, he went in search of food.
    Now, munching on a slice of toast and marmalade and drinking another, fresher mug of tea, he sat on Brendan’s kitchen table. Trying to ignore the aches in both body and mind, he gazed blankly around the room, looking for familiarity in a world he did not want to understand.
    On the surface, Brendan’s flat seemed almost the same: typical refuge of an unreconstructed permanent bachelor. In the main room, the furniture was unchanged: battered and so far out of date it was almost retro fashion. A litter of books and magazines lay in drifts in all the corners. On the mantelpiece, a struggling spider plant fought for space amongst a collection of bottled beers from obscure microbreweries. A pile of videos was heaped like a discarded Jenga puzzle underneath the ancient analogue television. On the G-plan coffee table, a familiar chess set sat next to a pub ashtray.
    But, although familiar, the room was the one Harper had known when he first met Brendan. It was not the same room he had been in only last week. It lacked the touches that came after Rebecca appeared on the scene. The walls were still the original dingy mud colour. There was no sign of the cushions she gave Brendan for his last birthday or the shelves put up for his books and beer bottles.
    Harper glanced around the kitchen. He smiled as he saw the bottle of Bushmills sitting next to the cornflakes. At least there were some advantages to being single and having the freedom of applying male logic to the contents of kitchen cupboards.
    Thoughts of solitary living turned Harper’s mind back to his own domestic arrangements. When he first woke, his initial reaction to consciousness was to hope yesterday’s nightmare would turn out to have been just that: an over-realistic delusion that could, once the shock had subsided, be laughed away.
    As he stumbled around after his shower, the idea brought a swell of optimism. From the outset, though, underlying that burgeoning hope lay a gritty, nagging fear. It would have been easy to dismiss everything that happened after waking in hospital the previous day as some temporary psychosis brought on by the accident. But everything had been too coherent and too detailed for Harper to really believe it was only a bizarre dream. Besides which, if he had only dreamt up his altered reality, he could not work out why, particularly considering all his bruises, he would stay the night on Brendan’s couch rather than in the comfort of his own bed. Even if he were suffering some kind of delusion, Brendan would have known better and posted him back to Rebecca.
    Harper finally plucked up the courage to resolve the dilemma by getting out his mobile and dialling what should have been his home number. It came up as unrecognised. Rebecca’s mobile number, which should have been programmed into his phone, also failed to work.
    With resignation but no real surprise, Harper came to the conclusion