“No way!” she had said firmly, so nothing doing there then.

  Hugh went home to write up the case, do a standard letter to Sarah and make up a bill to send to Tony Rayner. He would have liked to discuss this and other cases with Ali, but she was terribly preoccupied with Joshie at the moment. He didn't think she’d be very interested. Before long, she was supposed to be coming to work for him. He was beginning to wonder how that would work out. He could imagine she would get quite tearful at being separated from Joshie for a whole day several days a week. He hoped she wouldn't resent it. But it had been their plan and he still wanted to go ahead with it if at all possible. And he would frankly need the extra help. It would be one less person to have to pay when the office opened properly. It would be some time before he actually started to make any money. All the drawings for their living expenses would be borrowed money for the time being.

  Sometimes, despite loving Joshie to bits and certainly not wanting him to not be there, he did think that they had rather rushed, even bungled things by having a baby so soon. With planning the better course would have been to wait and have children later. Though of course Joshie hadn't been planned at all and that was at least as much his fault as hers. They’d barely had time to get to know one another properly really.

  He just knew he loved her to distraction. And, having fought it long enough for his own reasons which he now felt must have been incredibly immature of him, he didn't have any resistance left. Happily their sex life was still as vibrant and intoxicating as the first night they’d spent together. Though that was something they must sort out. They’d let the contraception side of things slide rather.

  But even before Joshie came along, they hadn't exactly done a great deal of talking. He cursed himself now that he’d always been so close with information so far as Ali was concerned. He’d always felt she was so perfect that if she got to know more about him, she might not like him any more. For heaven’s sake, even Amanda, Graham’s partner, probably knew him better than Ali did which was ridiculous. Except that there was one thing he couldn’t talk to her about at all, just one episode of his life that he’d never spoken of to anyone except the other person involved from whom he had cut himself off completely. He couldn’t talk to anyone about it. He could hardly bear to address it himself. The very thought of it made him break out into a cold sweat and be unable to breathe. He hoped that no repercussions from it would ever surface.

  Apart from that, he wanted to share everything with Ali now. He wanted them to be soul mates not just bed mates. But he didn't know how to start and she didn't seem to expect it any longer. It was the way things had developed and, short of counselling or something similar which seemed a little extreme for a happy couple to go in for, he didn't know what to do about it but he just knew that their marriage ought to be more three dimensional.

  He thought of their small son and of his closeness in many ways to Ali and was comforted and calmed by these things, though Ali’s possible current state, if that turned out to be the case, wasn’t going to help.

  He was also a little concerned that Ali may be having quite a lot of contact with Phil. Emails, texting, probably `phone calls too when he wasn't at home. But she was entitled to have a friend. Making a fuss about it hadn't worked very well in the past. It would seem extremely po-faced to try to stop it and he wasn't sure it could be stopped now. They seemed to have dug themselves into their particular little comfortable grove fairly irrevocably. It was just a pity she couldn't have made a girlfriend at the Cambridge job instead of a man-friend. He tried not to think about it.

  Ali didn't ask about the case and he didn't say anything. Anyway Ali was already in bed feeding Joshie by the time he’d finished his paperwork and come out of his little study. He did his burping and nappy changing stint, rocked Joshie to sleep and put him in the cot next to their bed. Ali stretched and looked at him in that way and he didn't need a second invitation, forgetting for now to worry that they got so little time to talk to each other properly, let alone the other issue that was nagging at him.

  CHAPTER 10

  August

  “THAT SOLICITOR YOU engaged for me asked me if I’d consider living with you. I thought that was a bit of a cheek.”

  “It was only for me to be here. Because of what’s happened to you. It’d be quite hard for me but I’d do it if you wanted.”

  “Huh! Hard for you how?”

  “I don't want to talk about it really. I wish I hadn't said that.”

  They were lying in bed. Of course. They never spoke otherwise. Sarah had invited him back after leaving the police station and naturally he couldn't say no. But he was as troubled as ever by the one dimensional, one-sided nature of their relationship and it didn't seem to be getting any better. He’d broached the subject of contraception with her several times and got the brush off. She said it was none of his business. He’d tried to use a condom but she’d refused point blank to agree to that so he assumed she must have something sorted.

  She seemed to take the attitude that he was “just the man”. In fact she’d said it once. It made him feel like something on the periphery with no rights or standing, like a third class citizen of some backward state or a less than full member of a club, excluded from the main events, only able to look in from the outside. It was making him depressed and he knew he should get out of this situation soon before it started to suck the will to live out of him.

  “Sarah,” he said on the spur of the moment, “I think I’m going to have to stop seeing you.” He knew he’d regret it as soon as the words were out, but he had to do it.

  “What’s brought this on?” she said with a wry disbelieving expression.

  “What hasn’t brought it on? Look I’m not going into it. And I imagine you know perfectly well how I feel. And if you don't, then there’s definitely no hope….No,” he hurried on before she could butt in, “I know you’ve made it eminently clear that there isn't any hope of a relationship. I didn't mean that. What I meant was no hope of you ever thinking or behaving like a normal person. Our situation is extremely unhealthy and I can't put up with it any longer.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Sarah.

  “I’m leaving now,” he said getting out of bed and finding his clothes. “Please don't call me any more.”

  “But just now you said you’d come and live with me if I wanted you to.”

  “Yes. If you wanted me to. But you don't.”

  He got his clothes together and left the bedroom. Amos was down in the sitting room carefully cleaning his paws. He stopped and turned his pretty face towards Tony. Tony fancied he saw a triumphant gleam in the cat’s narrowed vivid green eyes.

  While he was hurriedly dressing, Sarah came in. She was stark naked and leaned against the door frame watching him. He tried not to look at her slender form. He spent enough of his time as it was imagining them together, how it was. And how it would be with love on her part thrown in as well. It would be like heaven on earth. But it was never going to happen and he didn't want to leave with the impression of her beautiful body, the body he worshipped and loved to the bottom of his soul and with every fibre of his being, etched on his memory to forever haunt him. He was close to tears as he tied the laces of his trainers and picked up his keys and wallet.

  “Well don't I at least get a goodbye kiss?” Sarah was asking as he slammed out of the front door without saying anything or looking back.

  CHAPTER 11

  September

  ALISON AND ANDREW had talked shop almost exclusively since arriving at the pub, apart from him relating that his little flat that he rented wasn't far from here. He was now telling her about the case that had stopped him from meeting her on Wednesday. When he’d `phoned yesterday and said he wouldn't be able to make it that evening, she’d been convinced that it was just a ruse, that he’d blown her out and that she’d never hear from him again. However he’d said quickly that he could meet her the same time the next night if she was free. She had an appointment booked in for four o’ clock on the Thursday but had decided that if it became protracted that the woman would just have to be told to come back another time. After all she was entitled to a life too.

  She’d scarcely stopped thinking about him since the Saturday at Hugh’s. She didn't know much about him really except that he was pleasant (very pleasant indeed for a police officer in her solicitor’s estimation), he spoke without any obvious accent and was attractive with dark latin looks and was now a DI. He had a quite restrained, understated manner about him that she found incredibly sexy. She recalled thinking the same thing years ago when she’d known him. She didn't know what his marital status was except that a small rented flat didn't sound like he was married or, if he was, that he was living with the wife. And it was referred to as ‘my’ flat, not ‘our’ flat.

  All these snippets of information were assimilated almost unconsciously. But the resulting conclusions were very much at the forefront of her mind as she tried at this moment not to think about him in bed. Those fantasies would have to be reserved for when she could be alone again with her thoughts. Although just in case she had in her bag her old contraceptive cap and a tube of the jelly that went with it that she had dug out the previous morning. She hoped the cap hadn't perished and sprung a leak in the two years or so that had gone by since it had last seen active service.

  The case was very weird he said. He couldn't say too much because Hugh had been called to the station to act for the woman. Alison reminded him that Hugh wasn't with the practice any longer. Oh yes I keep forgetting, he said, but anyway it was common ground that there had been strange goings-on near the woman’s home previously and that the woman had now been found at the scene of one of them. The previous incidents hadn't been so serious. Graffiti on cars and garage doors for example, faeces pushed through letterboxes (“Yuck” said Alison), cats found dead from stab wounds (“Oh no!” said Alison).

  But this time, an elderly person had woken up early yesterday morning to find someone in her bedroom (she couldn't say if it was a woman or not) slashing the clothes in her wardrobe with a knife and smashing the bottles on her dressing table. The person arrested and brought to the station lived nearby and had been found the same morning slumped in the garden of the old woman’s house, in a dazed though not unconscious state, holding a knife. The woman had been processed and the knife, and the fibres on it, were currently being forensically examined.

  Frankly, it was a bit of a puzzler, Andrew said. The woman had been in a cell all day until a doctor had declared her fit for interview, and it had been late afternoon by the time Hugh had turned up to represent her, apparently instructed by a boyfriend of the woman. Hugh had got the woman out of the place as quickly as possible but, Andrew said with a rueful smile, much too late for him to have kept his appointment with Alison, and once again he apologised.

  As Andrew finished, they were sitting here with their eyes riveted to each other’s again and both unable to break the spell.

  But Andrew did at last and, looking down, he pushed a beer mat around the table with his forefinger.

  “What are we doing here Alison?” he said.

  In a quiet voice she said: “Do you mean what are we literally doing here having a friendly after-work drink together? Or do you mean what might we do?”

  He raised his head again. “I suppose I meant, yeah, what might we do?” He smiled slightly.

  It was, she recognized, clearly his way of trying to dispel awkwardness.

  “Do you mean do I want to sleep with you?” There. She’d said it. She’d taken the plunge!

  She could tell that he was searching for a response. But he was looking at her unflinchingly now. They were on opposite sides of the small table. She would have liked it if he'd taken her hand across the table. But that would have been rather obvious. And her impression of him was that he wouldn't like to be that obvious. He moistened his lips and said slowly:

  “As I told you earlier, my flat’s not far from here. If you’d like a short walk….”

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER? You’re looking very troubled.”

  “Nothing.”

  He wriggled across to her side of the bed where she was sitting naked on the edge, half facing away from him. Sitting up himself, he put his arm around her and nuzzled her ear affectionately.

  “I know there is. Tell me.”

  “Isn't it a little early for you to be trying to get inside my head?”

  “We’ve just been very close in case you hadn't noticed. If something’s upsetting you, I wouldn't mind knowing what.”

  She sighed. “It’s just….well lots of things really. If there wasn't something to worry about I’d probably find something. But….well for a start I didn't expect it to be so….emotional.”

  “But it was nice wasn't it? At least I thought so. Very nice.”

  “That’s just it. It’s different for a man. All your tackle’s on the outside, readily available, so it’s not going to be hard for you to enjoy it. I’m not saying you’d hump a female baboon or whatever and find it entirely satisfactory but I reckon most men would enjoy it most of the time. But for us it’s different. There’s a big psychological element and….for me it wouldn't usually be like it just was. Basically….well….you’re not just any man….you’re special,” she ended uncertainly.

  She’d never meant to say so much. Definitely she didn't want to frighten him off by appearing too serious and had tried to make it into a sort of joke with talk of baboons, but it did feel serious for her. If he didn't want to see her again, she’d shrivel up and die.

  She could, she thought, wander through the whole of this and many other parallel universes for the next several millions of years or endlessly trawl through infinite amounts of cosmic material but never, never find anyone else who made her feel like Andrew just had.

  The troubled look came from lots of other causes as well but she wasn't going to go into them too. He’d had a big enough glimpse into her mind already. She wasn't going to say that she was worrying about the need for dissembling and subterfuge to get to see him again. She felt sure she wouldn't be at all good at it and Daniel, having strayed himself, was now pathologically insecure and watched her like a hawk. She certainly wasn't going to say just yet that he’d probably be violent, quite likely towards Andrew as well, if he found out she was sleeping with another man. But at least Andrew had his own place which would make it easier.

  And she wasn't going to tell him either about the sudden inexplicable flashbacks she was having to earlier years when, in her teens and early twenties, she’d slept with men and young men not always because she actually really wanted to, but for all the wrong reasons like to gain approval or to avoid actual disapproval or to have someone to go out with or because it was expected and she didn't know how to let them down without offending them. Quite honestly most of the time, if she really thought about it, it was for the wrong reasons. Even her marriage had been as much of a nod to convention as anything else. Like lots of girls, low self-esteem wasn't far below the surface and she just did it to conform.

  But she was older now and this latest encounter had been of her choosing and partly of her making and what had just occurred was immeasurable better than her unsatisfactory early encounters, in a completely different league. Even so she found she was desperate to know that he felt something for her, not just that the sex had been nice. It was crazy. She had thought she’d put behind her all that teenage angst ages ago. She had a career. There was no need any longer to underrate herself. Nobody thought of her that way. Everyone thought if anything that she was over-confident, strident even.

  He was holding her tightly now with his face buried in her light brown hair, hair she always thought of as mousy. It was so comforting and she started to relax again. But he didn't say anything about liking her a lot or about her being special.

  “Don't worry. Sex is about emotions. If it’s nice anyway,” he said instead.

  “I don't know. I thought I’d got shot of emotions, troublesome things that they are. Impinging on everything. I thought if I did it with someone it’d just be purely for fun.”

  “Stop worrying,” he said soothingly still hugging her. “We’ll be fine.” Well that was something. “Could we have a bath or shower together before you go? I’d really like that.”

  CHAPTER 12

  September

  “I’M SORRY TO ASK such a direct question, but I feel I have to at this juncture. Do you ever feel detached from things. From real life?”

  Duncan of course knew about Sarah’s arrest. His mother knew and had barely been able to stop talking about it. Whether anyone else in the vicinity knew he wasn't sure. He hoped not for Sarah’s sake.

  Sarah knew he knew and was being awkward and defensive, but she was clearly also very upset.

  “Why should I? Why? Do you think I’m mad then?”

  “There’s no such thing as just ‘mad’. But you either did go into that old woman’s house and frighten her consciously or unconsciously or you didn't. I’m just asking you whether you feel detached. Because if you do it just makes it more likely that you did do. I thought we might try a session of hypnosis to see if you can recall anything from that night.”

  “I just remember coming round in her front garden. I didn't know how I got there. I felt dull and tired. Like a hangover. Or just as though I hadn't slept.”

  “Has this happened before? There’ve been other incidents around here haven't there.”

  Sarah frowned.

  “Sarah at some point you have to trust someone. If you did do these things unconsciously it would be best if you found out about it wouldn't it? You wouldn't want anyone to get seriously hurt would you? And if you didn't do them, well maybe I can help establish that. It’s important for you Sarah.”

 

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