Each Day I Wake: A gripping psychological thriller: US Edition by Seb Kirby Page A

that they’d decided not to go home and instead sleep at their desks. As long as they belonged, he wouldn’t disturb them. Everyone knew they shouldn’t be here but a blind eye was turned as long as the building was secure. It was a fine line. One night, for sure, something would go wrong and the wisdom of being easy on the stayers would be called into question. But everything he’d now learned told him to go with the flow, to give those around him what they wanted. Life was more manageable that way.
    It hadn’t always been like this.
    As he emerged from the elevator and began the long walk around the corridors on Floor 34, he thought back to those earlier times.
    His days in the children’s homes he’d been sent to were a time of ever building hatred. Hatred of those who had placed him there. Hatred of those who told him what to do, how he should behave. Hatred of the unknown driver who’d killed his father. And, yes, hatred too of the mother who’d allowed her children to be taken from her and separated from each other.
    He still had to fight back the tears as he thought about Della, the sister he’d lost. Nothing had been more terrible than being parted from her.
    It had made him angry and determined to fight. Anyone and everyone who crossed his path. By the time he was sixteen he was well-enough known to the police and the magistrates for them to send him to juvenile prison. The two years he spent there hardened him the more. It was what you did to survive. What else would anyone expect if you crammed together the toughest, most deprived and drugged-up section of the youth population in such a place?
    When he was released at eighteen, his first thought was to find Della. But she was lost, sent to homes who knows where and, being three years older than him, she would be out there living a life of her own. He’d realized then that she could be anywhere. Living with a new name, in another country for all he knew. And in any case, what had he to offer if he was ever to find her and come back into her life? He was a mess, a ball of anger about to explode as it flamed down a mountainside. He understood this truth about himself, more than ever now.
    Back then he’d blamed them . All those well-meaning, self-serving types who’d made a living out of his distress. Now, looking back, he knew that much of the blame rested with him.
    It had taken nine years as a merchant seaman to understand that. He’d travelled the world, seen the misery out there in Africa, in the Far East and South America and discovered that this world is founded on despair and suffering, the exploitation of one man by another - of many women by many men - and understood that in comparison his suffering was not so great. It was the norm. It was those who lived with happiness and in peace and who knew only love that were the exception. They were the ones who failed to understand that the happiness, peace and love they took for granted was only made possible by the suffering of the many out of their sight. Just as he’d taken those things for granted and expected them as a right before that night when his father failed to make it home from work.
    And, yes, he’d done his share of hurting others. In fist fights in dockside bars. With women in the loneliest of lonely nights. It had made him feel better – but not for long enough. After fighting his way through it all, he realized that nothing he could do to others would ever take away the anger and the hatred he was now destined to feel. Yes, he’d somehow found the strength to hide these things from view. At least that’s what he was trying so hard to believe was true.
    When he returned to London, the time spent in the merchant navy had given him a past he could talk about. It was enough to get him this security job. And here he was, patrolling one of the most prestigious buildings on Canary Wharf.
    He stopped. He could hear movement in one of the offices ahead. He’d have to check it out.
    He