Chapter 10

The Letter

 

 

It lay on the kitchen table where Sèdonoudè had placed it. Teddy walked around it for some time, making coffee, toast, needlessly arranging bits of crockery which he would not ordinarily bother with at the best of times. That was the cleaner's job, when she was around at least, and not taking to her bed for days on end to struggle with yet another existential crisis. He knew where it had come from; he recognised the stationary. It just sat and glared at him, a ray of sunlight giving it a glow, radiating like a beam from where it hit the filmy plastic oblong containing the address and his name. Every time he looked at it, it gnawed at him a little. Like the gnawing dull ache from his groin which these days would not go away. He needed whisky for a moment like this. The smell of it reeked from his coffee cup. He opened the letter with trembling hands and as he read the words at first, they seemed to swirl, as if he had suddenly developed acute dyslexia. But a