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‘My phone number. In case you think of anything you can do.’
She was definitely flirting, there was no mistaking it. Matt smiled at her and pocketed the number before he walked back to his car, feeling unsettled again He looked back as he opened the driver’s door, expecting her to still be watching, but the door was closed.
***
When he first saw the man watching him playing in the garden, he wanted to go and talk to him, because he looked so sad. Maybe he wanted to play, but was too shy to ask, just like when he had gone to nursery and wanted to play in the sandpit with the bigger boys. But Mummy had told him not to talk to strangers so he didn’t, even though the man didn’t look like the bad men Mummy worried about, the ones like the baddies on TV. This man just looked sad.
Perhaps it would be okay if he asked him his name, because if you knew someone’s name then they weren’t a stranger were they? But then the man had gone, and he decided he should ask Mummy first anyway, because she would know what to do. He would ask her at tea time.
Except, by the time he was ready for tea and saw that he had his favourite fish fingers, he had forgotten all about it.
Chapter Five (#ulink_3d4ca660-e830-5b9f-bb8d-71debd4c7d7c) Saturday
The woman hoisted the heavy bag containing all the various forms she had to fill in onto her shoulder and smiled with no real conviction at the weary young man in front of her.
‘So that will be all for now…John,’ she said in a bright tone, wondering what his real name was, because he didn’t look like a John, and couldn’t the powers that be think of a name a little more imaginative than that? ‘But if you need anything, let me know, you have my number. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week.’
She was aware of sounding patronising, but it was a long day and she wanted to get home and get ready for her weekly bingo night with the girls. He just looked at her blankly, though she thought she saw a flash of impatience for just a moment. Well fine, she didn’t want to be here either. She left ‘John’ sitting alone at his new kitchen table in the house the government had paid for along with his new identity, and went home to get ready for bingo.
Later, after a few cocktails courtesy of a win on the next-to-last house, which was a modest sum but enough to pay for this week’s night out, it didn’t seem to matter much if she spoke more about her job as a Resettlement Officer than she should have. If she let slip that she had spent the day ‘settling’ a mysterious young man into his new home under an assumed identity; if she let her friends jump to certain conclusions that were most likely true. People needed to know who was living among them, after all.
By the time she was on her fifth drink she had all but convinced herself that she had a civic duty to warn people if there happened to be a dangerous criminal in the area. It wasn’t the sort of thing she was quite used to dealing with and the responsibility, she told herself in a fit of tequila-induced disapproval, should be on somebody with far broader shoulders than her own.
Ricky had looked up at the disused building, one of its boarded-up windows put through by Tyler and his mates, and nodded.
‘Yeah, it’s perfect.’
Somewhere to hide when they wagged school, or playing truant as his mother would call it if she found out, and have a fag or even some of Tyler’s brother’s weed when they could sneak some. Ricky liked weed better than fags, it tasted better in his mouth and made him feel a bit light-headed and more relaxed, somehow. Fags just made him want to be sick.
‘We could bring girls here too. Bet there’s some right fit birds in that posh school of yours.’
‘It’s not posh,’ Ricky had said automatically, then more or less contradicted himself with, ‘but you won’t get any of them round this place.’ Not with him and Tyler anyway. If they were sixth-form boys maybe. Tyler just shrugged, for once making no comment about Ricky and his ‘posh’ classmates.
‘I’ll bring these birds I know then. Get them stoned, get a blowjob.’ Tyler used his hand and a tongue in his cheek to mime the action, and Ricky laughed, because he was expected to.
‘You ever had one?’ Tyler asked, sly now, looking sideways at him.
‘Had what?’
‘A blowjob.’
Ricky had shrugged, nonchalantly.
‘Yeah course.’
He hadn’t even kissed any girls, and couldn’t imagine how you even went about asking them to do that to you.
That was how he had ended up here, lying on his coat sharing a spliff with a girl who was apparently the best friend of the other girl Tyler had invited, whose head was conspicuously bobbing up and down under Tyler’s jacket as she did just that. Tyler looked at him from across the room through the smoke haze and winked as he pushed his hand down on the shape of the girl’s head in his lap. Ricky tried to grin back, but inwardly winced. It seemed vaguely abusive, somehow, even though the girl was obviously more than up for it.
The girl’s friend who was eagerly smoking Tyler’s weed, a hand resting high on Ricky’s thigh, turned to him and giggled, passing him the spliff, now ringed at the end with sticky pink lip gloss. He took a drag, closing his eyes for a moment and waiting for the familiar wave of peace, but it didn’t come. He only felt irritated as the girl – Mandy, Molly? – snuggled up next to him. She smelled of fags and some fruity cheap perfume and, he realised, a touch of body odour. Or maybe that was him. Ricky tried to surreptitiously sniff his own armpits, ducking his head towards the girl, who instead took it as a sign and moved in for the kill, planting her sticky lips on his.
His first kiss. It was kind of gooey, but not unpleasant, and he felt a stirring in his trousers that intensified when she guided his hand to one of her small breasts. Irritation forgotten he kissed her harder, using his tongue clumsily, and was only jerked back to reality by the nasal tones of the other girl, appearing from underneath Tyler’s jacket and wiping her mouth.
‘Oi, you’re the brother of that kid that got killed aren’t you?’
Ricky felt his erection shrivel and he sat up, shrugging off Mindy or whatever and glaring at the other girl.
‘Yeah, so what?’ He sounded more aggressive than he had meant to and the girl next to him shrank back, but her friend only laughed and turned to Tyler.
‘Touchy isn’t he?’
‘Leave him alone, man.’ Tyler’s voice was a contented drawl. He pushed the girl none too gently in Ricky’s direction. ‘Go and give him some of what you just gave me, that’ll chill him out.’
The girl made as if to comply, moving towards Ricky with what seemed to be a sly and yet also somewhat vacant look, and Ricky felt a moment’s panic at the thought of her lunging at him, but her friend shoved her back.
‘He’s with me; you always do this. He’s not interested are you?’ She fixed Ricky with a challenging stare.
He had had enough. He got up, passed the spliff back to Tyler and shrugged his coat on.
‘You goin’?’
‘Yeah.’
Tyler shrugged. ‘More for me then,’ meaning, Ricky knew, the girls as much as the weed. He felt nauseous, looked around at the grimy room and suddenly wanted a shower. He walked off without saying goodbye to Mindy, making his way out onto the street and breathing in grateful gulps of cold air. As he started off towards home he heard heels clattering along behind him.
‘Wait!’
It was Mindy, hurrying up to him with a worried expression on her face.
‘I’m okay,’ he said, sharp enough that she stopped a few yards away looking deflated. ‘I just want to go home, all right? I'm not in the mood.’
‘Is it true, what Shauna said?’
Ricky sighed, shuffling his feet and looking down at them, then back up at her.
‘Yeah.’
Taking his confession as a positive sign she stepped towards him, close enough so they were almost touching, looking up at him with an expression of hope. She was pretty, he thought, and would be more so if she didn’t have that stupid stuff on her lips and fake eyelashes stuck awkwardly onto her eyes like deformed spiders with legs going every which way. She couldn’t be any older than him.
‘I’m not like her you know. I mean, I wouldn’t have done that.’ She waved a hand in the area of his groin.
‘I know.’ He thought about her moving his hand onto her tit, but decided not to mention it.
‘It must be hard.’ She changed the subject abruptly, leaving him wondering at first what she meant and glancing down towards the very area he thought for a second she was referring to. Then she went on, ‘Knowing the killer’s been let out. I saw your mum in the paper. Pretty, isn’t she?’
‘I suppose.’ He didn’t want to talk about his mum, not now, and when the girl moved in for another kiss it was the memory of Lucy’s face as she had berated him about the shoplifting incident yesterday that caused him to pull away.
‘It’s not you,’ he said quickly when the girl looked crushed, ‘it’s just, I don’t want to talk about that. I’m sick of hearing about it all, to be honest.’ As he said the words he understood they were true, that he would be happy to never have to think about the release of his brother’s killer and the implications of it ever again. ‘I’ll see you again, yeah? Give me your number.’
The girl looked happy again, whipping out a state of the art mobile that made Ricky embarrassed to have to pull out his mum’s old Nokia. She rattled her number off to him, frowning when Ricky paused as he went to enter her name into his contacts.
‘It’s Mitzi. Like the girl off the telly.’
‘I know that. My phone was just playing up.’
As Ricky walked away he wondered why he didn’t feel any more pleased with himself. His first kiss and a girl’s number and she was nice too, especially when she was away from that other one. But mention of his mother and Jack had annoyed him. It was everywhere he turned at the minute, he couldn’t get away from it. Stirring up old memories of playing with a smiling, red-cheeked toddler who held his arms out to Ricky with an expression of absolute adoration. He had never been jealous of Jack, not when he had been alive anyway.
He was worried too about his mum, who had been in a strange and restless mood ever since the news that Terry Prince had walked free. There was a determined light in her eyes, a tension in her body as if she were waiting for something that unnerved Ricky and made him wonder what his mother would do next. He had the feeling something was about to happen, something even bigger than him scoring with a girl, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around for the fall out.
When he reached his nan’s she pursed her lips at him and Ricky hoped she couldn’t smell either tobacco or weed on him, or see any difference in his eyes, but she only said, ‘You’re late. I hope you got your homework done? You know your mum said you weren’t to go out at all.’
‘Sorry, Nan.’ He hurried off up to the spare room he always slept in when he was here, sitting on the bed and taking the phone out of his pocket to have a look again at Mitzi’s number. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he texted her.
It’s Ricky, this is my number, he typed and then paused before he pressed send. He ought to put a kiss, but then kisses were for girls weren’t they? He half wished Tyler were here to ask his advice, but he wouldn’t want Tyler to know about his lack of experience with the opposite sex.
It was at least ten minutes before his phone buzzed in response and Ricky grabbed at it, eager to see if it was Mitzi. It was, but her response puzzled him.
Look on Facebook. I’ve just seen it she had typed and Ricky’s brow creased. He rarely even used Facebook, it was more for his mum’s generation, and most of his mates used Pheed or Instagram now or just messaged each other on their BlackBerrys, which unfortunately with his ancient phone wasn’t something he could join in with.
No internet here. What have you seen? he typed and this time her answer came swiftly, words that Ricky sat and stared at for a long time, a knot of dread unravelling in his gut.
There’s a page about your brother and the guy that killed him.
Ricky didn’t reply but lay back on his pillows staring at the ceiling. It was to be expected, it had already been all over the news, yet here was what he dreaded most, that it would encroach on his life, his world, even colouring his meeting Mitzi. He felt like he didn’t want to see her again at all now. Five minutes later his phone buzzed again.
Are you ok? I’m here if you want to talk.
Ricky turned his phone off.
While Ricky was navigating the uncharted waters of teenage dating, his mother had been preparing for her own date, the first in two years. Lucy was surprised at how her hand shook when she leaned over the mirror to apply her eyeliner, and at the way her stomach fizzed with excitement, making her hungry yet at the same time unable to eat. As much as she tried to tell herself that she was only doing this for the information she hoped to get out of Matt, part of her reacted to the prospect of seeing him again with an entirely different agenda.
She wondered if perhaps going to bed with him would help get rid of the jittery, on-edge feeling that had been with her constantly since the phone call. Four days. It felt like so much longer, and yet at the same time Lucy had the disconcerting feeling that time was not being measured in increments of how long had passed since that morning, but rather was counting down to something, some momentous event that the phone call from the Parole Board had triggered.
Her mother had looked at her quizzically when Lucy confessed she was meeting Matt at the Italian restaurant in town, but to Lucy’s relief had voiced no disapproval, nor questioned Lucy’s motives when she had revealed who Matt was, only passed comment on vaguely remembering how handsome the young cop had been. Ricky was staying at hers and was still grounded, though Lucy knew her son would attempt to talk her mother round if he could.
Matt had phoned her that morning, as she had somehow known he would, to ask how things were with Ricky. Lucy had found herself steering the conversation around to him asking her for a meal. There was an unspoken connection between them somehow; both having been brought together yet again by his involvement with her children. Not the most romantic situation perhaps, but it could prove to be a fateful one. To make their ‘date’ for that very night was her own idea, perhaps in fear that if she gave herself too long to think about it she might change her mind.
Lucy knew that Detective Inspector Winston was attracted to her; although he had never been anything but polite she could read it clear as day in his eyes and the way he had so very deliberately not looked at her bare legs when she had been perched on the counter. She had noticed at the edge of her awareness even back then, but it had barely registered, all information unrelated to Jack coming to her as if through a fog, the same fog that had followed her for years, always threatening to envelop her. Somehow, since the news of Prince’s release, that fog had gradually cleared after the initial shock, leaving behind a sharp anger yes, but also the feeling that she was fully alive again.
The look Matt gave her when she opened the door to him was confirmation of her renewed state. His eyes drank her in, clearly appreciating the effort she had made with her hair, her make-up, her dress. Lucy found herself giving him a sultry smile.
‘You look lovely,’ he said, looking down at himself self-consciously, although he looked just as delectable himself, she thought with a half-smile. When they walked into Marco’s after a somewhat awkward car drive, Lucy saw the heated glances other women gave the man at her side and felt as giddy as a teenager at the school disco who had somehow managed to bag herself the hottest guy in school. Much as she had once felt with Ethan, yet back then she had been very much aware of being in his shadow. Somehow being next to Matt made her feel more secure, not less.
She ordered wine in an attempt to calm the fizzing in her gut, even though Matt was of course not drinking. He watched her as she sipped at it, his expression unreadable.
‘So, things are okay at home?’ They had already spoken about Ricky, who had been very much subdued after his run-in with Matt, so Lucy knew what he was referring to. She took another sip of wine before looking straight at him.
‘As good as can be expected. I still intend to do something, I just don’t quite know what yet.’
‘Maybe no more tabloid interviews,’ Matt suggested, and although his tone was light Lucy wondered if he meant it as a reprimand. She had seen the protesters on the news, pacing the town square that lay between the City Hall and the main station, no doubt causing the officers some extra work. Although she had applauded their efforts Lucy thought it strange that in the angry crowd of faces, all of them there because of her child – she had even spotted a home-made banner calling for ‘Justice for Jack’ – there hadn’t been one she recognised. No one who had ever even met either her or Jack.
Lucy smiled and opened her mouth to say something upbeat, but Matt reached over the table and closed a hand over hers.
‘Lucy, you don’t need to put a face on, not with me.’
As sudden tears stung at her eyes Lucy pulled her hand away, more sharply than she meant to, nearly knocking the bottle of wine over until Matt caught it with a deft flick of his wrist. Lucy was impressed.
‘Good reflexes.’
‘I used to box.’
Lucy looked at his broad shoulders and defined arms that his shirt couldn’t fail to highlight.
‘That fits. You look like a boxer, rather than a cop.’
Matt laughed.
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’
‘Maybe.’ She was flirting with him again, she realised, except this time it was natural rather than a contrived effort on her part. Aware of the attraction he felt for her, for the first time she felt the stirrings of desire on her own part, completely independent of who he was and how they were involved.
Although the question she needed to ask him still waited on her lips, it occurred to her that she could allow herself this at least; to sit opposite an attractive man and feel like a young woman again, with all the needs and desires of a young woman, that had been lying dormant under the weight of her grief.
Her leg brushed his under the table. It was an accident, or at least an unconscious movement, but when Matt didn’t move his leg away, only looked at her with a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, she realised he thought she had done it on purpose and felt her cheeks heat up.
‘Shall we order?’
She nodded and grabbed the menu, glad he had broken the loaded silence, and looked at the menu without seeing it, the words swimming in front of her eyes.
‘I’m having Bolognese,’ Matt told her, ‘not very original I know, but I don’t know what half of the things on that menu are. Why can’t they just write them in English?’
Lucy laughed.
‘That’s not very cosmopolitan, inspector.’
‘Will you please call me Matt? You’re making me feel old. But yeah, I’m a pie and potatoes man to be honest.’
‘Not steak and raw eggs? Isn’t that what you testosterone-fuelled boxer types eat?’
‘I think that’s bodybuilders,’ Matt laughed, ‘but what are you having? Salad?’
‘God no. I’ll have the Bolognese as well.’
They smiled at each other as Lucy took another sip of her wine. There was a pleasant warmth in her belly now that was as much due to laughter as alcohol.
‘You know, you’re surprisingly easy to be around. Even yesterday, when you brought Ricky back, it was nice to talk to you. I’ve been isolated lately.’ For a long time, she added to herself.
‘I can imagine,’ he said, leaning over as if he would say something more, but paused when the waitress came over to take their order. The girl’s eyes lingered on Matt as he ordered for them and Lucy felt a simultaneous stab of jealousy – the waitress was young, pretty and wearing a ridiculous tight uniform that showed every inch of her to full effect – and a frisson
