Are You Awake?

by Claire McGowan

real story, and for the first time in a long time he felt like chasing its tail, seeing where it led. Maybe because of that spark of recognition, perhaps a trick of his tired mind. Maybe because it was so close. Or maybe he was just desperate for something that took him out of his own brain.

He’d go to bed in an hour and a half and be up at six to start it all over again. Was this living? Wringing the barest moments of joy from it?

Did she love him? Was it worth all this, the exhaustion, the resentment? It wasn’t his fault he didn’t wake – and nothing much was to be gained from them both being up, since he had to work the next day and not make mistakes with the finances of very important clients. But still. She would have been less annoyed with him if he’d just share her misery sometimes.

In the documentaries she watched, the crimes were always solved by plucky civilians on the right track, spotting the clues the police had missed. No one ever mentioned that when you let yourself brush up against dark things, they left indelible marks.