‘So is there a pub around here?’
‘There’s a pub around everywhere, isn’t there? But aren’t you driving?’ I insist on paying my share of the bill although he tries to wave me off. ‘You don’t want to do a long drive after beer, do you?’
‘Who said I was going to do a long drive?’ He grins, and I see a glimpse of the charming man I fell in love with.
‘Where are you staying then?’ I am disingenuous, and he grins again.
‘Come on. I’ll buy you a pint.’
‘I don’t drink pints,’ I say. ‘You know that.’ Does he though? Does he really know anything about me at all?
‘Half of cider then,’ he says, holding out a hand. I don’t take it, but I walk next to him, feeling the heat from his body – and I feel a small flutter of something. I let him lead me across the square, into The George and Dragon on the corner. He orders at the bar and then brings the drinks to the high table I’m perched at.
‘You look beautiful today.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Jeanie. I was very – hasty. I was horrible. Work’s been hard. I’ve been – stressed. I can see it’s been hard for you…’
I flush hotly as I take the glass of golden fizzy liquid from him.
‘I miss you, Jeanie,’ he says again quietly, and I say nothing.
We sit in the window and watch the world go by.
Does he think I am so easily bought?
* * *
I don’t let Matthew stay; I don’t even let him come into the cottage. And I am so proud of myself.
He walks me home, and then he leaves again.
It takes some strength of will – but I let him kiss my cheek, and then I close the door and lean on it, feeling like I’ve done something bad in rejecting him. But it is the right thing.
After he’s gone, I try to do some marking, but it is half-hearted, and the cider has made me blurry round the edges. I’ve hardly drunk since that awful dinner with Alison and Sean.
I take a long bath, despite the balmy temperature. I need to think, but I must drift off, because the next thing I know…
Someone is battering at the door.
Fifty-Eight
Marlena
So yeah, okay, I was still trying and totally failing to tie up the Nasreen case. There was literally no trace of her, and that was really unsatisfactory. I was pissed off the bloody police weren’t all that bothered (‘Just another silly little Muslim cow getting her priorities all wrong,’ the old-school DSI had said when he finally agreed to meet me.) I’d had another meeting with the far more sympathetic DI Stevens about interviewing Nasreen’s family again, but I was taking matters into my own hands now.
I was leaving for the airport when Robo called.
‘All right, mate? See, I looked again at that email address. There was something niggling me about it.’
‘Like what?’ I said. I was catching a flight to Istanbul and another internal flight on to Antakya in Turkey to speak to the consul, and I was late already, my anxiety levels high as that famous old kite.
‘Well I think it was a decoy.’ He sounded enthused, as only a computer nerd could. ‘It was a fake IP address, rerouted through the original email address.’
‘You’re losing me, Robo.’ I dragged my jacket on and locked my front door. ‘Just talk English.’
‘It’s not from Frankie Randall’s computer. It’s generated by a different account altogether.’
‘Oh.’ He had my attention now. I stood, case in one hand, key in the other. ‘Well whose then?’
‘Someone called Scarlett King?’
Fifty-Nine
Jeanie
12 June 2015
When I wake the next morning, startled by something unknown, startled from a deep and dreamless sleep again, I don’t know where I am.
Instead of the gentle cooing of the wood pigeons, I open my eyes to a big black bird perched on the windowsill outside: a crow, or a raven perhaps. Small shiny eye, sharp tapered beak, tap-tapping at the glass. Not pretty like the blackbirds. The dead blackbirds outside Malum House.
I must have forgotten to pull the curtains when…
When we…
I roll over and see Matthew’s dark head on the other pillow, and my heart flip-flops.
Shit.
Blearily I realise it’s his phone that has woken me. It’s ringing and then cutting off and then ringing again.
‘You’d better answer it.’ I nudge his arm gently, shy despite what we’d been doing before we fell asleep; despite my faint hope that maybe, just maybe, it would be all right again. ‘Someone really wants you.’
He’d come back last night. He’d banged at the door, and he’d even got tearful. He’d begged me to let him in, and when I finally relented, he’d said how sorry he was.