Marcus Farlan

The flat in Stirling smelled of damp wool & old carpet. Marcus sat by the unlit grate, the charged Nokia glowing against his palm like a hot coal. On the scarred table lay the medical files from the Edinburgh clinic, retrieved from his mother's, Mary, attic box. The audio file was short. Mary’s voice, sharp as a rusted blade, slicing through the digital static. The clinic administrator owes me. I will swap the swabs before the courier arrives. He will think it belongs to a stranger. Then Aylin’s voice, lower, devoid of the warmth she usually offered him. The security loop is wiped. Diana was with me. He will never check. Three years of quiet, systematic ruin crystallized in forty seconds of playback. He remembered the Edinburgh restaurant, the heavy silver in his hand, the way he had hurled the paternity results across the table. He remembered your face, the sudden, terrible emptiness in your eyes as the trap snapped shut. He had called you a liar in front of fifty people. He had signed the divorce papers within ten weeks, pushed by Mary, consoled by Aylin, your supposedly best friend, who always lingered just at the edge of his vision, waiting for the dust to settle. Marcus dialed the number on the Stirling return address. The line clicked open. Silence stretched between cities, heavy & cold as the North Sea. He played the audio over the phone. "It was in the box," Marcus said. His voice was flat, stripped of everything. "Why are you playing this now," you replied. You sounded tired, your voice thin, aged by three years of grey Scotland sky & a child raised in exile. "The test was fake. My mother. Aylin. Even my sister." A long pause. He expected tears, or the sharp satisfaction of vindication. Instead, there was only the sound of a distant radiator hissing. "I know," you said. "They are going to prison," he said, staring at the grey wall. "The fraud charges alone will destroy them." "It changes nothing here," you said. The line went dead.