Bright

Janice, Andrew’s assistant, was buried under a pile of parcels when Bright arrived at the village late the next morning.

“Oh good. You can drop these off to your dad for me,” she said, peering out from behind the stack of boxes and several large courier bags.

“All of them?” Bright asked, dubiously.

“I doubt that very much,” Bright muttered, but he found an empty box near the printer and scooped the parcels into it.

Janice gave him a grateful smile, pushed her glasses onto the bridge of her nose and went back to tapping away on her laptop. “Also, Mr Cartwright is waiting for you in your office. He’s been there since nine-thirty,” she added, without looking up.

Bright carried the box into his office and found a space for it on top of the filing cabinet. “Good morning, Mr Cartwright,” he said to the elderly man, who was glaring up at him from one of the two worn visitor chairs.

“Is this what you call morning? It’s almost afternoon.

What kind of time is this to be starting work?” “Well, I do have another business ...”

“Don’t give me your excuses, I’m not interested. In my day, a man would have put in several hours of hard labour by now. What are you going to do about my front porch light? Could have broken my neck if I’d been out after dark.” He took a sip from a cup perched on the end of Bright’s desk. “And this tea is dreadful.”

“What exactly is the problem with your porch light?” “It’s not working, is it? It should be in the records. I sent

one of those online messages to Mr Stevens last week and nothing has been done about it, which is typical, of course.” Bright quickly brought up Mr Cartwright’s file on An-

“Yes, I see you lodged a notice on Friday evening,” he said.

“Mr Stevens — Andrew — is away on paternity leave at pres- ent so there hasn’t been time to action that yet.”

Bright decided to ignore that. “I’ll make sure the electri- cian calls in as soon as possible, Dougal.”

“That’s Mr Cartwright to you,” he huffed, pulling himself to his feet. “I want it done by tonight.”

“I’ll do my best,” Bright said, but Dougal was already shuf- fling out of the room and, if he heard, he didn’t respond.

Klaus didn’t answer when Bright poked his head through the door to his unit, calling his name, a couple of hours later. He left the box of parcels on the bench and had a quick look around but his father wasn’t in the house, or in the small garden. The radio was on, ‘Jingle Bells’ playing softly. The Thunderbird was still parked in the driveway and when he tried it, the garage door remained locked. He headed back up to the main building where he decided to stop at the cafete- ria for a proper cup of coffee. Janice had brought him a cup of tea earlier and Dougal had been right about one thing: it was dreadful.

As Bright waited for his latte, he glanced around and saw his dad sitting at a corner table eating lunch. He took his coffee and went over to join him.

“Well, hello.” Klaus beamed up at him. “Is it Friday

“I’m working here for a bit.” Bright eyed the spread in front of his father. A plate with the smeared remains of a chicken pie was pushed to one side and Klaus was eating a blueberry muffin. He also had a cream doughnut and a bliss ball.

Klaus grunted and reluctantly tore off a piece. Bright chewed for a bit and his dad sipped his tea.

“Good, good.” Klaus finished the last of the muffin and tucked into the remaining doughnut.

“There were a lot of them. What are they anyway?” “Hmmm? This is pretty good. You should get one.” “Dad. The parcels.”

“What parcels?”

Bright sighed. “The ones I dropped off at your place. That you had delivered to the office.”

“Right, yes. From the internet. Did you know you can get almost anything online these days? Except hay. The young man I spoke to said I should try a pet store.”

“Why on earth would you want hay?”

“Right, well, I’ll come down a bit later and have a look.”

He wanted to make sure Klaus wasn’t losing his marbles. Or being taken advantage of. He and Bern had set up an account so that Klaus had a certain amount of spending money when he’d started to become forgetful — as they liked to phrase it — so there was no risk his dad was whittling away his life savings, but he wanted to find out what, exactly, was going on.

“There’s no need to have a look,” Klaus said. “It’s nothing to do with you. You don’t see me poking my nose into your private business, do you?”

“Sorry. I’m just a bit concerned.”

“Well, you can bloody well not be. I can take care of my- self. I don’t suppose you could pick me up a loaf of bread before you come over though, could you?”

Bright stood and patted his dad gently on the shoulder. “Sure, that’s not a problem. I’ll come by about four.”

“Make it four-thirty. I’m pretty busy.”

On his way back to the office he passed Mary who was deco- rating the front desk in the foyer. She was wearing a striped green and white dress and looked like a ridiculous pixie. Bright slunk past not wanting to be pestered by more party details. She was singing a Christmas carol, loudly and out of tune, and Bright thought longingly of his office at Dain- ty Dwellings, the smell of sawdust and the steady, although slightly gloomy, presence of his business partner Gary.

“No more, thankfully. That’s the third lot we’ve had for your dad in as many weeks. I had to send back two pairs of gumboots for him that were the wrong size last week. Has he taken an interest in gardening?”

Klaus had never much liked gardening. That had been his mum’s domain. After she’d died, the gardens had gradually turned to weeds and then his dad had removed them and returned it to lawn. They’d had the most boring garden in the street. Grass and a few trees. Plenty of room to kick a ball around though. Now, Klaus’s section was maintained by the Palms and it was hardly big enough to need a pair of gum- boots. He’d grown up on a farm though, so perhaps he was getting confused and thought he still lived there.

Bright looked through the window at the pool. There was one lone swimmer, doing slow laps. He should take advan- tage of the facilities — there was a pretty good gym too. At the moment, all he did was work, visit his dad and go for runs. The occasional beer with friends. Anything to avoid his empty house.

“Thank you, Lois, I’m very careful, I promise. I’ll see you tomorrow.”