An Absence of Natural Light by F. G. Cottam

‘You know what it is that separates great players from those that are content just with being good?’
    â€˜I hardly think this is the time to be discussing football.’
    â€˜It’s making the right decisions at the crucial moments. It’s not just having the nerve to step up and say you’ll take the penalty kick. It’s waiting that eternity for the whistle to blow and then when it finally does, placing the kick where the keeper can’t reach it, in the top corner, from a dead ball, in front of the billion people you know are watching you.’
    â€˜And you could do that?’
    â€˜I did that every single time, Rebecca.’
    â€˜That’s really comforting to know, Tom.’
    â€˜Sarcasm and contempt won’t put me off you, you know. My feelings for you run too deep.’ He reached across the table and took both of her hands in his. ‘Will you come home with me now?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said. She even managed a smile. ‘I’ll come home with you, Mr Harper. I thought you’d never bloody ask.’
    The party was in full swing when they returned to Absalom Court. There might have been only one arrival and a gate-crasher at that, but she was making her presence unquestionably felt. A haze of Gauloises smoke had seeped through the basement door into the sitting room.
Kind of Blue
was melodic and insistent and loud from below. Shalimar perfume sweetened air that would have been sour otherwise with burnt tobacco. It was heady and it smelled expensive in a chic, continental sort of way.
    There was laughter, which was disconcerting. Rachel Gaunt had a husky, abrupt bark of a laugh. It was explosive and sardonic, the mirth of a capricious nature. It was amused, but cruelly so. Coming from someone long dead it was not something anyone could comfortably listen to. Wordlessly, they approached the basement door. And Rebecca heard the stiletto clack of the thing on the other side of it get louder, ascending the stone steps deliberately as it neared them.
    They could have sensed the presence even had it been silent. There was a gravid, static charge this close to its lair. The air felt heated by some out-of-kilter force, as though some transition loomed, grave and unearthly. But it wasn’t silent. There was the subtle insistence on the other side of the door of skin quietly writhing under satin.
    Then it spoke.
    â€˜Tom Harper, here in the flesh, as I live and breathe.’ To Rebecca’s ears, Rachel Gaunt’s voice bore the velvet promise of slow and languorous coupling. She glanced at Tom, but his face betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. From its other side, the handle of the door was tested and teased. For now, it remained locked. For now it did, she thought.
    â€˜I’ve been watching you,’ said the voice. ‘You might be the best looking man I’ve seen since Terence Stamp was Billy Budd and that was in ’sixty-two. Have you seen that one, Tom? Ustinov directed. We could watch it together, you and I. You’ve the space for a screening room down here; it’s the perfect spot, with the absence of natural light. I know how much you enjoy your films.’
    Tom didn’t respond. He bit his lip. Her voice had breeding and musicality when she spoke in sentences. She sounded clever and civilized.
    â€˜Where are your manners, Tom? You hadn’t struck me as uncouth. It’s disappointing, this failure to observe the common courtesies. Aren’t you going to invite me to join you?’
    Again, he didn’t respond to her. And when she spoke next, the tone of her voice was pitched differently; somewhere gleeful and lascivious where Rebecca suspected it truly belonged.
    â€˜Don’t be timid, Tom. Life’s a gamble or it’s nothing. Don’t you want to live all the way up? Don’t you crave that?’ Laughter again, throaty and knowing. ‘All you have to lose is your innocence. You’ve a