‘Wow. Lucky you.’
‘Yeah. Faced with that or a morning in bed with you, it’s a no-brainer.’
‘Good. Come back to bed.’
‘I am so not coming back to bed. You know what’s going to happen if I don’t get good grades this semester?’
‘Back to the States to Mummy.’
‘You know my mom.’
‘Uh huh, I do. Scary lady.’
‘You said it.’
‘So, you’re afraid of her?’
‘Everyone’s afraid of my mom.’
Suzy sat up a little and scooped some of her long dark hair back. ‘More afraid of her than you are of me? Is that the real reason why you came here? I’m just the excuse for you to escape from her?’
He leaned down and kissed her, tasted her sleepy breath and inhaled it deeply, loving it. ‘You’re gorgeous, did I tell you that?’
‘About a thousand times. You’re gorgeous, too. Did I tell you that?’
‘About ten thousand times. You’re like a record that got stuck in a groove,’ he said, hitching the straps of his lightweight rucksack over his shoulders.
She looked at him. He was tall and lean, his short dark hair gelled in uneven spikes, with several days’ growth of stubble, which she liked to feel against her face. He was dressed in a padded anorak over two layers of T-shirt, jeans and trainers, and smelled of the Abercrombie & Fitch cologne she really liked.
There was an air of confidence about him that had captivated her the first time they had spoken, down in the dark basement bar of Pravda, in Greenwich Village, when she’d been in New York on holiday with her best friend, Katie. Poor Katie had ended up flying back to England on her own, while she had stayed on with Tony.
‘When will you be back?’ she said.
‘As soon as I can.’
‘That’s not soon enough!’
He kissed her again. ‘I love you. I adore you.’
She windmilled her hands. ‘More.’
‘You’re the most stunning, beautiful, lovely creature on the planet.’
‘More!’
‘Every second I’m away from you, I miss you so much it hurts.’
She windmilled her hands again. ‘More!’
‘Now you’re being greedy.’
‘You make me greedy.’
‘And you make me horny as hell. I’m going before I have to do something about it!’
‘You’re really going to leave me like this?’
‘Yep.’
He kissed her again, tugged a baseball cap on to his head, then wheeled his mountain bike out of the apartment, down the stairs, through the front door and into the cold, blustery April morning. As he closed the front door behind him, he breathed in the salty tang of the Brighton sea air, then looked at his watch.
Shit.
He was due to see his tutor in twenty minutes. If he pedalled like hell, he might just make it.
4
Click. Beeehhh… gleeep… uhuhuhurrr… gleep… grawwwwwp… biff, heh, heh, heh. warrrup, haha…
‘That noise is driving me nuts,’ Carly said.
Tyler, in the passenger seat of her Audi convertible, was bent over his iPhone playing some bloody game he was hooked on called Angry Birds. Why did everything he did involve noise?
The phone now emitted a sound like crashing glass.
‘We’re late,’ he said, without looking up and without stopping playing.
Twang-greep-heh, heh, heh…
‘Tyler, please. I have a headache.’
‘So?’ He grinned. ‘You shouldn’t have got pissed last night. Again.’
She winced at his use of adult language.
Twang… heh, heh, heh, grawwwwpppp…
In a moment she was going to grab the sodding phone and throw it out of the window.
‘Yep, well, you’d have got
pissed
last night, too, if you’d had to put up with that prat.’
‘Serves you right for going on blind dates.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. I’m late for school. I’m going to get stick for that.’ He was still peering intently through his oval wire-framed glasses.
Click-click-beep-beep-beep.
‘I’ll phone and tell them,’ she offered.
‘You’re always phoning and telling them. You’re irresponsible. Maybe I should get taken into care.’
‘I’ve been begging them to take you, for years.’
She stared through the windscreen at the red light and the steady stream of traffic crossing in front of them, and then at the clock: 8.56 a.m. With luck, she’d drop him off at school and get to her chiropody appointment on time. Great, a double-pain morning! First the corn removal, then her client, Mr Misery. No wonder his wife had left him. Carly reckoned she’d probably have topped herself if she’d been married to him. But hey, she wasn’t paid to sit in judgement. She was paid to stop Mrs Misery from walking off with both of her husband’s testicles, as well as everything else of his – correction,
theirs
– that she was after.
‘It really hurts, still, Mum.’
‘What does? Oh, right, your brace.’
Tyler touched the front of his mouth. ‘It’s too tight.’
‘I’ll call the orthodontist and get you an appointment with him.’
Tyler nodded and focused back on his game.
The lights changed. She moved her right foot from the brake pedal and accelerated. The news was coming up and she leaned forward, turning up the radio.
‘I’m going to the
old people
this weekend, right?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t call them that, OK? They’re your
grandparents
.’
A couple of times a year Tyler spent a day with her late husband’s parents. They doted on him, but he found them deadly dull.
Tyler shrugged. ‘Do I have to go?’
‘Yes, you have to go.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s called
servicing the will
.’
He frowned. ‘What?’
She grinned. ‘Just a joke – don’t repeat that.’
‘Servicing the will?’ he echoed.
‘Forget I said it. Bad taste. I’ll miss you.’
‘You’re a lousy liar. You might say that with more feeling.’ He studiously drew his finger across the iPhone screen, then lifted it.
Twang… eeeeeekkkk… greeeep… heh, heh, heh…
She caught the next lights and swung right into New Church Road, cutting across the front of a skip lorry, which blared its horn at her.
‘You trying to get us killed or something?’ Tyler said.
‘Not us, just you.’ She grinned.
‘There are agencies to protect children from parents like you,’ he said.
She reached out her left arm and ran her fingers through his tousled brown hair.
He jerked his head away. ‘Hey, don’t mess it up!’
She glanced fondly at him for an instant. He was growing up fast and looked handsome in his shirt and tie, red blazer and grey trousers. Not quite thirteen years old and girls were already chasing him. He was growing more like his late father every day, and there were some expressions he had which reminded her of Kes too much, and in unguarded moments that could make her tearful, even five years on.
Moments later, at a few minutes past nine, she pulled up outside the red gates of St Christopher’s School. Tyler clicked off his seat belt and reached behind him to pick up his rucksack.
‘Is Friend Mapper on?’
He gave her a ‘duh’ look. ‘Yes, it’s on. I’m not a baby, you know.’
Friend Mapper was a GPS app on the iPhone that enabled her to track exactly where he was at any moment on her own iPhone.
‘So long as I pay your bill, you keep it on. That’s the deal.’
‘You’re overprotective. I might turn out to be emotionally retarded.’
‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take.’
He climbed out of the car into the rain, then held the door hesitantly. ‘You should get a life.’
‘I had one before you were born.’
He smiled before slamming the door.
She watched him walk in through the gates into the empty play area – all the other pupils had already gone inside. Every time he went out of her sight, she was scared for him. Worried about him. The only reassurance that he was OK was when she checked her own iPhone and watched his pulsing purple dot and could see where he was. Tyler was right, she was overprotective, but she couldn’t help it. She loved him desperately and, despite some of his maddening attitudes and behaviour, she knew that he loved her back, just as much.
She headed up towards Portland Road, driving faster than she should, anxious not to be late for her chiropodist. The corn was giving her grief and she did not want to miss the appointment. Nor did she want to get delayed there. She badly needed to be in the office ahead of Mr Misery and, with luck, have a few minutes to catch up with some urgent paperwork on a forthcoming hearing.
Her phone pinged with an incoming text. When she reached the junction with the main road, she glanced down at it.
I had a great time last night – wld love to see you again XXX
In your dreams, sweetheart.
She shuddered at the thought of him. Dave from Preston, Lancashire. Preston Dave, she’d called him. At least she had been honest with the photograph of herself she’d put up on the dating website – well, reasonably honest! And she wasn’t looking for a Mr Universe. Just a nice guy who wasn’t 100 pounds heavier and ten years older than his photograph, and who didn’t want to spend the entire evening telling her how wonderful he was, and what a great shag women thought he was. Was that too much to ask?
Just to put the icing on the cake, the tight bastard had invited her out to dinner, to a far more expensive restaurant than she would have chosen for a first encounter, and at the end had suggested they split the bill.
Keeping her foot on the brake and leaning forward, she deleted the text, decisively, returning the phone to the hands-free cradle with no small amount of satisfaction.
Then she made a left turn, pulling out in front of a white van, and accelerated.
The van hooted and flashing its lights angrily, closed up right behind her and began tailgating her. She held up two fingers.
There were to be many times, in the days and weeks ahead, when she bitterly regretted reading and deleting that text. If she hadn’t waited at that junction for those precious seconds, fiddling with her phone, if she had made that left turn just thirty seconds earlier, everything might have been very different.
5
‘Black,’ Glenn Branson said, holding the large golf umbrella over their heads.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace looked up at him.
‘It’s the only colour!’
At five foot, ten inches, Roy Grace was a good four inches shorter than his junior colleague and friend, and considerably less sharply dressed. Approaching his fortieth birthday, Grace was not handsome in a conventional sense. He had a kind face with a slightly misshapen nose that gave him a rugged appearance. It had been broken three times – once in a fight and twice on the rugby pitch. His fair hair was cropped short and he had clear blue eyes that his long-missing wife, Sandy, used to tell him resembled those of the actor Paul Newman.
Feeling like a child in a sweet shop, the Detective Superintendent, hands dug deeply into his anorak pockets, ran his eyes over the rows of vehicles on the Frosts’ used-car forecourt, all gleaming with polish and rainwater, and kept returning to the two-door Alfa Romeo. ‘I like silver, and dark red, and navy.’ His voice was almost drowned out by the sound of a lorry passing on the main road behind them, its air horns blaring.
He was taking advantage of the quiet week, so far, to nip out of the office. A car he’d liked the look of on the
Autotrader
website was at this local dealer.
Detective Sergeant Branson, wearing a cream Burberry mackintosh and shiny brown loafers, shook his head. ‘Black’s best. The most desirable colour. You’ll find that useful when you come to sell it – unless you’re planning to drive it over a cliff, like your last one.’
‘Very funny.’
Roy Grace’s previous car, his beloved maroon Alfa Romeo 147 sports saloon, had been wrecked during a police pursuit the previous autumn, and he had been wrangling with the insurance company ever since. Finally they had agreed a miserly settlement figure.
‘You need to think about these things, old-timer. Getting near retirement, you need to look after the pennies.’
‘I’m thirty-nine.’
‘Forty’s looming.’
‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘Yeah, well, the old brain starts going at your age.’
‘Sod off! Anyhow, black’s the wrong colour for an Italian sports car.’
‘It’s the best colour for everything.’ Branson tapped his chest. ‘Look at me.’
Roy Grace stared at him. ‘Yes?’
‘What do you see?’
‘A tall, bald bloke with rubbish taste in ties.’
‘It’s Paul Smith,’ he said, looking hurt. ‘What about my colour?’
‘I’m not allowed to mention it under the Racial Equality Act.’
Branson raised his eyes. ‘Black is the colour of the future.’
‘Yep, well, as I’m so old I won’t live long enough to see it – especially standing here in the pissing rain. I’m freezing. Look, I like that one,’ he said, pointing at a red two-seater convertible.
‘In your dreams. You’re about to become a father, remember? What you need is one of those.’ Glenn Branson pointed across at a Renault Espace.
‘Thanks, I’m not into people carriers.’
‘You might be if you have enough kids.’
‘Well, so far it’s just one on the way. Anyhow, I’m not choosing anything without Cleo’s approval.’
‘Got you under her thumb, has she?’
Grace blushed coyly. ‘No.’
He took a step towards a sleek silver two-door Alfa Brera and stared at it covetously.
‘Don’t go there,’ Branson said, stepping along with him, keeping him covered with the umbrella. ‘Unless you’re a contortionist!’