Watching You by Michael Robotham

husband’s body?”
    “We cannot settle your claim without a death certificate.”
    Marnie looks at her hands. She feels dizzy. It’s as though she’s stood up too quickly from a hot bath.
    “Do you have children, Mr. Rudolf?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is your life insured?”
    “Of course.”
    “If something happened to you, would you want your wife to be kept waiting for seven years?”
    “I hardly think that’s the—”
    “I can’t access his bank accounts. I can’t cancel his gym membership. I’m still paying his annual credit card fees. I can’t stop his direct debits. I can’t divorce him. I can’t mourn him. I can’t change his address or redirect his mail or wind up his investments. I was married to him for five years, but I don’t have any rights because he disappeared instead of dropping dead in front of me. I have two children. I’m trying to feed them and keep a roof over their heads. I’m begging you…please.”
    Mr. Rudolf won’t look at her.
    “Can I get some sort of advance payment?”
    “We don’t make advance payments.”
    “I’m owed three hundred thousand pounds. We paid our premiums every year. This isn’t right! You’re trying to take our money.”
    “This isn’t my decision. We have rules. We have formulas—”
    “Formulas?”
    “We cannot pay a claim without a death certificate.”
    “How do I get that?”
    “Talk to a lawyer.”
    Mr. Rudolf shuffles paper now, wishing to end the conversation. Marnie’s voice grows louder, but she doesn’t realize that she’s shouting until a security guard comes to the door. Marnie tries to hold on to the arms of her chair, but her fingers are pried loose and she’s forced to her feet and frog-marched along the corridor to the lift.
    It’s not until she’s outside that she remembers her umbrella. They won’t let her back inside. She blinks and looks at the puddle lapping over her shoes. Pedestrians flow around her, dashing between doorways as if they’re stealing bases, ignoring her tears, which look like raindrops.

6
    J oe O’Loughlin wakes when it’s still dark outside. He seldom sleeps well. Mr. Parkinson snores and snuffles, nudging him awake, wanting to be entertained. Sometimes he tries to avoid going to bed, dozing off in front of the TV or reading a book, waking hours later, feeling victorious because half the night is already gone and he’s stolen sleep like a thief.
    His dreams have changed. In the nightmares of his childhood he was always running, trying to escape a monster or a rabid dog or perhaps a Neanderthal second-rower with no front teeth and cauliflower ears. When he married, his nightmares involved his wife and children in danger, always out of reach.
    Now he has a different recurring dream. He imagines standing in an attic room, aiming a gun at a man’s forehead, screaming at him to let a girl go. Begging him. Pleading. Then the gun jumps in his hand and seems to rip organs loose in his chest.
    The memory is like a strip of film that plays on a loop. He can’t expunge it from his unconscious or drown it with alcohol. Instead he is forced to watch every frame through his eyelids, night after night, pulling the trigger, feeling the spray of blood, and seeing dull black dead eyes staring at him triumphantly.
    He killed someone. Not an innocent man, not a saint, but a monster who had done terrible things. None of this seemed to ease Joe’s conscience or make his dreams any less vivid. Nor could he confess his sins or seek forgiveness or assuage his guilt in other ways. Although not a believer in heaven or the concept of an afterlife, Joe often wondered why people thought they have to die to go to hell.
    His left arm is jerking and his head seems to move in sympathy. He fumbles for his pills, knocking over the bottle, scattering the contents across the wooden floor. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he tries to retrieve them. Pills have rolled under the dresser and the bed.
    Sitting on the edge of the