A Darker Shade of Blue Read Online Free

taste was stale in his mouth and he poured the remainder down the sink. There was a bottle of whisky in the cupboard, only recently opened, but he knew better than to start down that route too soon.
    In the living room, he switched on the TV, flicked through the channels, switched off again; he made a cup of tea and glanced at that day’s paper, one of Marianne’s magazines. Every fifteen minutes, he looked at his watch. When he thought he’d given them time enough, he phoned.
    Marianne’s father came on the line. Soft-spoken, understanding, calm. ‘I’m sorry, Tom. She doesn’t want to speak to you right now. Perhaps tomorrow, tomorrow evening. She’ll call you.… The twins? They’re sleeping, fast off. Put them to bed as soon as they arrived.… I’ll be sure to give them your love. Yes, of course. Of course.… Goodnight, Tom. Goodnight.’
    Around nine, Whitemore called a taxi and went across the city to the Five Ways pub in Sherwood. In the back room Jake McMahon and a bunch of the usual reprobates were charging through Cannonball Adderley’s ‘Jeannine’. A Duke Pearson tune, but because Whitemore had first heard it on Adderley’s Them Dirty Blues – Cannonball on alto alongside his trumpeter brother, Nat – it was forever associated with the saxophonist in his mind.
    Whitemore’s father had given him the recording as a sixteenth birthday present, when Tom’s mind had been more full of T’Pau and the Pet Shop Boys, Whitney Houston and Madonna. But eventually he had given it a listen, late in his room, and something had stuck.
    One of the best nights he remembered spending with his father before the older man took himself off to a retirement chalet in Devon had been spent here, drinking John Smith’s bitter and listening to the band play another Adderley special, ‘Sack O’ Woe’.
    Jake McMahon came over to him in the break and shook his hand. ‘Not seen you in a while.’
    Whitemore forced a smile. ‘You know how it is, this and that.’
    McMahon nodded. ‘Your dad, he okay?’
    â€˜Keeping pretty well.’
    â€˜You’ll give him my best.’
    â€˜Of course.’
    Whitemore stayed for most of the second set then called for a cab from the phone alongside the bar.
    *
    Darren Pitcher moved in with Emma Laurie and her three children. October became November, became December. Most Sundays Whitemore drove out to his in-laws’ bungalow on the coast, where the twins threw themselves at him with delight and he played rough and tumble with them on the beach if the cold allowed, and if not, tussled with them on the living-room settee. Marianne’s parents stepped around him warily, keeping their thoughts to themselves. If he tried to get Marianne off on her own, she resisted, made excuses. Conversation between them was difficult.
    â€˜When will we see you again?’ she asked one evening as he was leaving.
    â€˜When are you coming home?’ he asked. Christmas was less than three weeks away.
    â€˜Tom, I don’t know.’
    â€˜But you are coming? Coming back?’
    She turned her face aside. ‘Don’t rush me, all right?’
    It was just two days later that Bridget Arthur phoned Whitemore in his office, the first call of the day. Emma Laurie was waiting for them, agitated, at her front door. She had come back from work to find Pitcher with Jason, the elder of her two sons, on his lap; Jason had been sitting on a towel, naked, and Pitcher had been rubbing Vaseline between his legs.
    Whitemore and Arthur exchanged glances.
    â€˜Did he have a reason?’ Arthur asked.
    â€˜He said Jason was sore, said he’d been complaining about being sore …’
    â€˜And you don’t believe him?’
    â€˜If he was sore,’ Emma said, ‘it was ’cause of what Darren was doing. You know that as well as me.’
    â€˜Where is Darren now?’