Gravity's Chain by Alan Goodwin

can eat, I can drink and I can sleep some more. Tomorrow I do the show, then I go to Wellington, then I leave New Zealand in one piece.’ My head thumped and for the first time I felt sick. ‘Is there something else, Bebe?’
    â€˜Not that easy to get out of tonight.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜It’s been run past the top brass. The office here wouldn’t have released the information without orders from above. London thinks it is a good idea for you to attend, a chance for some positive publicity after the debacle at the Dorchester. You know, the chance to show you at your best, remembering good times, being among friends.’
    Again I knew the answer, but again I asked anyway. ‘And how will anyone know I’m at my best?’
    â€˜Some local press will be there to cover the event. It’s a feel-good story, Jack. A couple of questions, bland answers, you know, the sort of thing you were supposed to have done at the Dorchester.’
    â€˜So this is payback time, is it?’
    â€˜That’s pretty much how it goes, Jack. You might not like it, but George wants this to happen and you can’t afford any moremess-ups with the company. There are enough nervous people around, what with the Driesler affair and then the Dorchester fiasco, without you causing another stir here.’
    Driesler had reacted to my outburst, describing me as arrogant and prone to irrational statements. He’d accused me of being more worried about the Nobel Prize than about the truth.
    â€˜Yeah, yeah.’ I knew defeat when I saw it; I just wish I’d done the business with Lucy. That would really have given George something to chew on.
    Now Bebe was reminding me he had power in our relationship and I accepted the lesson. Silently he took the evening’s itinerary from his pocket and laid it on the end of the bed before leaving.
    I needed more sleep, but that was impossible now. Perhaps Bebe was right: Mary might not go and without her the evening could just be bearable. Shit, who was I kidding? Of course Mary would be there. Mary, my dead wife’s sister: the sharer of secrets. I hadn’t seen her since Caroline’s funeral, when she had just stared and stared: every time I looked up, there she was, meeting my eyes. When I had arrived she was standing with her parents and two sisters, as though joined by the hip rather than by genes and grief. Caroline’s father, frail from arthritis, studied the ground, her mother the sky. It was a fitting symbol of the years of fractures in their marriage. Like many of their generation, they had stayed married long after the love died. Caroline had despised them for their weakness. Mary thought them noble for protecting the children from divorce. The three sisters stood like Kennedy wives, all dressed in stylish black, all with smooth black nylon calves that brought an unwelcome surge of desire. Mary was the only one to acknowledge me, even if it was with hostile eyes. Other family members had offered some welcome, thoughit wasn’t much more than a whispered hello. The day was bright and sunny and everyone wore sunglasses, to hide wet and red eyes. My dark lenses hid the absence of tears.
    I was deep in fatigue at the funeral. After Caroline’s death and the initial burst of police and medical activity I’d worked continuously for three days. Ideas came in a flood during that strange period and I struggled to keep pace with them. Through each day and night, standing at the whiteboard overlooking the sea, I furiously scribbled, printed and erased. This was the final frontier of Superforce; this was when I stormed the city walls of the theory. The details still took a year and refining the paper nearly as long again, but this was when the pieces of spiral field maths and deception were forged. In those three days it was as though I was listening to the most beautifully harmonious music as each note slipped into its rightful place. I knew