A Loving Light
Copyright© 2026 by Marc Nobbs
Chapter 1: Unguarded
I lay on my back, once again awake before my alarm sounded. But there was no weight pressing down on me from my left, no arm draped over my chest, no leg hooked over mine. I couldn’t hear her breathing, smell her perfume, or feel her warmth. I stretched my arm into the space to my left, where Carly should have been—where she’d been almost every morning for nearly two months. But that part of the bed was cold. Empty.
I hated waking up alone.
I glanced at the clock on my bedside table. It was just after six-thirty. I picked up the remote for my CD player from beside the clock and aimed it at my desk on the opposite side of the room. Slowly, deliberately, I pressed ‘Play.’
Just like the previous two mornings, Alabama Sweetheart began playing at a sufficiently low volume to avoid disturbing my housemates.
The opening track was ‘The Nightmare Mix’ of ‘A Woman’s Work,’ and it was the ideal song for a melancholic morning—a world away from the polished, orchestral version she would perform at the Oscars the next night. Instead, it was the sound my unearned wealth had granted her the freedom to create.
The creative freedom Clarissa’s money had bought her.
It was soulful. Mournful, even.
Driven by Roxy’s piercing electric-guitar hook and Lana’s deep, resonant cello part beneath Carly’s angelic vocals...
I squeezed my eyes tight.
The music sat underneath Kayla’s voice, not Carly’s.
The girl from Beaverbrook wasn’t gone exactly. But the rest of the world saw Kayla Valentine now. The Alabama Sweetheart.
I smiled as I recalled the first time I called her ‘Sweetheart.’ She loved it so much that I said it again, calling her my ‘Alabama Sweetheart.’
And now, that was the name the rest of the world knew her by.
But to me, she was and always would be just Carly.
I sighed as a particularly emotional part of the song played—just Carly singing over Lana’s cello, the contrast so stark—
Lana!
We had the badminton tournament today. She’d kill me if she knew I’d been out with everyone until after two in the morning and then hardly got any sleep.
Who was I kidding? Of course, she knew. That girl seemed to know everything.
Registration for the tournament closed at nine, and I was picking up Lana at eight.
I had an hour and a half to get ready. Coffee, shower, all that morning shit.
But maybe a few more minutes lying here first, just until the end of the song. It was a great song.
Fifteen minutes later, I forced myself out of bed, pulled my robe down from its hook on the back of the door, and slipped it on. Then I trudged downstairs to the kitchen as quietly as I could.
I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror on the way.
God, I looked rough.
I wasn’t sure if the dark circles under my eyes were due to the alcohol or lack of sleep, but the result was the same either way. I leaned towards the mirror and pulled down my lower lids to reveal slightly bloodshot eyes. Hopefully, they’d be back to normal by the time I collected Lana in an hour and a quarter.
I had plenty of time.
I ran my hand through my hair in a futile attempt to tame it.
I needed a haircut. Desperately. My mop was getting out of control, and I was beginning to resemble some unkempt Nineties Britpop wannabe. Not exactly the look of a respectable ‘businessman.’
I chuckled. Yeah, right. ‘Entrepreneur.’ What a joke. I was just a kid trying to do something good with someone else’s money.
With Clarissa’s money.
Money I didn’t deserve.
I turned away from the mirror and glanced at the clock on the opposite wall.
Ten to seven.
I had an hour to get myself sorted and leave the house. I’d promised Lana I wouldn’t be late.
Coffee first. I needed caffeine.
Maybe I had time to fry up some bacon as well. That wouldn’t take long. Coffee and grease. Then a shower. Then clothes.
I had an hour.
Should be plenty of time.
Lana was waiting outside Campus Heights when I arrived.
“You’re late,” she said as she placed her two sports bags and racquet in the boot. Her tone was light. It was an observation, not a scolding. She’d used the same gentle tone every time we’d spoken since Carly left on Wednesday.
“Not by my watch, I’m not,” I said, holding up my left hand and tapping the antique watch on my wrist.
“Yes, well, that old thing is probably slow. When was the last time you wound it? You know you’re meant to do it every day, right?”
I stared at her, trying to channel Imogen’s patented ‘that’s a stupid question’ look, but she just giggled.
“Hey!” I said, grinning. “Family heirloom.”
“Yeah, I know. You’ve only mentioned it like a thousand times.”
I shook my head and grinned. “Get in the car, or you can walk to the tournament.”
She stuck out her tongue at me, ran to the passenger door and jumped into the car.
It was reassuring to see her like this. We’d met for lunch over the past two days, and Lana had been ... Careful. Just checking on me without making a fuss. She hadn’t tried to ‘fix’ me or offer empty platitudes.
She’d just been there.
Which was exactly what I’d needed.
But now, this bratty attitude was exactly what I needed, too. After all, today was meant to be fun.
The ache in my chest would ease with time. My broken heart would mend. Eventually. Broken hearts always did.
Didn’t they?
And they mended a lot faster than wounded hearts healed.
While I checked that everything was secure in the boot, she turned around in her seat and whined like a teenager on a road trip with their parents, “Hurry uuuup!”
She grinned, and I gave her another hard look.
I closed the boot, then climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Are you being deliberately insufferable?”
She grinned again.
“Wanna tell me why?”
She shrugged. “You play better when you’re a little bit annoyed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, stop it, or I won’t play at all. We’re doing this for fun. Remember?”
Her grin softened into a sincere smile. “I know, but it would still be nice to do well.” She paused. “To win.”
I nodded. “It would, but not if it means you get hurt. Have you got your knee brace?”
She nodded. “Both of them. One for playing, then the stronger for between games.” She paused once more, then smiled. “Thank you, Paul.”
I started the engine and looked at her as I rested my hand on the gear stick. “What for?”
“For buying the braces. For caring enough to. And—”
“I told you I take care of my friends.”
“I know, but you still spent over a hundred pounds on them.”
“You know I can affor—”
“I know, but that’s not the point.” She turned to face me fully, pulling the seat belt away from her body slightly so she could move. “The point is that you cared enough about my well-being to do something. Okay, so your ‘something’ was more than most people could have done, but...”
She smiled.
I arched an eyebrow. “But what?”
Her eyes and her tone softened even more. “Most people wouldn’t have bothered to do anything. Even if they could afford it.”
I nodded, then put the car into gear and pulled away from the kerb.
“And thank you for indulging my ... erm ... competitive nature.” She grinned at me.
I chuckled. “Your competitive nature? I think I need the distraction of this tournament right now more than you need to feed your competitive nature.”
She raised her eyebrows, pulling a ‘thinking face.’ “I see your point. So ... You’re welcome.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. This might actually turn out to be fun, given the mood Lana was in.
We were entering the South Westmouthshire Open Badminton Championships, and our destination was somewhere I’d never been—the Westell International Exhibition and Conference Centre on the town’s western outskirts.
The site was enormous—a ten-thousand-seat concert arena, a modest conference centre, and three vast exhibition halls, which were the largest indoor spaces I’d ever seen. The sports halls at Micester High and on the university campus were huge—big enough to accommodate eight badminton courts. This place dwarfed them. The tournament used all thirty-two courts in Exhibition Hall A.
Thirty-two courts. Unbelievable.
I was in three tournaments over the weekend—mixed doubles with Lana, and Men’s doubles with Geoff on Saturday, and then I’d be back on Sunday for the Men’s singles.
Geoff and Madison had approached us a couple of weeks earlier and asked if we wanted to team with them in the Men’s and Ladies’ doubles. I’d agreed, thinking I’d be there anyway. But Lana had politely declined, saying she didn’t want to risk straining her knee.
It was Geoff who suggested we all enter our respective singles tournaments as well. Again, I figured, ‘why not?’ but Lana declined. She did say she’d come along and support me, though.
Although I suspected her ‘support’ would involve pointing out where I was going wrong. Repeatedly and at length.
We arrived just before half-eight and were registered and ready to play by quarter to nine, giving us time to warm up on one of the courts. Geoff and Madison joined us five minutes later.
God knows how they’d managed to schedule so many tournaments across four different age groups, but somehow it worked.
The first round took up the whole of the morning session. It was a round-robin format with four teams in each group, which meant I’d be playing six matches in three and a half hours. Although they were only one-set matches.
Once the action began, the morning quickly dissolved into a haze of shuttlecocks, sweat, and squeaky trainers. Lana and I dominated our first match, while I just scraped through in my first men’s doubles with Geoff, winning by only four points. The ‘chemistry’ wasn’t quite there, but it was the first match we’d ever played together.
My second mixed-doubles match was tougher than the first, but we won. Geoff and I lost our second but won our third immediately afterwards and made it to the quarter-finals.
Five hard-fought matches in quick succession meant that by the time Lana and I played our final match of the morning, my legs and lungs were burning. I hadn’t played this hard, for this long, in forever. Lana was starting to show signs that her knee was bothering her as well. She wasn’t limping, but her usual nimbleness deserted her.
We lost. Convincingly. Which was frustrating because I knew that we could have won—if I wasn’t quite so shattered. If this had been the first game and not the third...
I was a step slower reaching the shuttle, and Lana was letting shots go that she’d returned easily in our first match.
In the end, it didn’t really matter. Both teams knew we’d already qualified for the quarter-finals and were just playing to see who finished top of the group, but still...
We finished our final match just after twelve, half an hour before the lunch break officially began, so Lana and I would get a little extra rest. And I was going to need it. The quarter-finals were straight after lunch—Men’s first, then mixed, with almost no break between the two.
Both of those matches were full three-set contests, too.
I was going to sleep well that night, especially if I won either quarter-final.
Throughout the morning, Lana and I had spent quite a lot of time with Madison and Geoff between matches, because they were the only people at the tournament who we knew. So, we watched them finish their match, then headed out of Hall A into the foyer linking the exhibition halls. The space doubled as a food court, lined with kiosks filling the air with aromas of everything from fried onions to curry.
“What d’you fancy?” I asked as we entered the food court. “It’s on me.”
“Paul, don’t be silly, you can’t buy us all lunch,” Geoff said.
“On me,” I said firmly.
“There’s no point arguing with him,” Lana said. “He’s a stubborn arse when it comes to his generosity.” She grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Even if you don’t let him pay, he’ll probably slip the cash into your bag later when you’re not looking.”