Chapter One
Lydia looked around the packed room of The Fork cafe. She did not know how to finish the story she had begun, or how the audience was taking the tale so far. Uncle Charlie had his arms crossed and his expression was unreadable. Lydia almost wished he would interrupt or start an argument, anything except the terrifying stillness of his face and body. She was glad he had his sleeves pulled down and that she couldn’t see the tattoos which covered his forearms. They moved when he was angry or worried and Lydia wasn’t sure whether that was something that everybody could see or whether it was another facet of her own abilities. She was so used to keeping those under wraps and secret from Uncle Charlie and the world, that it was just a habit now.
She hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and her eyes were gritty. She kept making eye contact as she spoke, though, and made sure her voice stayed strong and clear. She was a Crow. More than that, she was the daughter of Henry Crow, who was the rightful head of the Family. If she couldn’t put on a good show, who knew what would happen next? She had been arrested, set up by the Fox Family, and if that didn’t constitute a violation of the truce which had been in existence for eighty years, then Lydia didn’t know what did.
It was all horrendously complicated, of course. She had been working for Paul Fox in good faith, developing a trust and a rapport that nobody in the room would believe or be pleased about. When she had been set-up for murder, one of Paul’s brothers had given the police a false witness statement to bolster the case. Lydia still wasn’t sure whether he was working alone, or whether she had been duped by Paul. All she knew was that she had to calm things down and make sure that nobody in the room went off on a revenge mission against another Family. Or the police.
She had to tell a good story and fast. ‘In the story of the crow and the fox, the fox outsmarts the crow. He plays on her vanity and gets her to drop the food from her beak. I got close to a Fox,’ Lydia looked around, daring them to judge her. ‘You all know this. And I’m not ashamed. They are just people, good and bad to varying degrees like anybody else. The point is, though, that I have spent time with the Fox Family and I have learned something very important.’ She paused for effect. ‘Crows are smarter.’ There were a few nods. Lydia ploughed on, putting every ounce of conviction she could muster into her voice. ‘That means we’ve got to make the smart move now.’
‘What’s that, then?’ Uncle John had his arms folded. He probably still saw Lydia as a tiny child and was anxious for the grownups to speak. Lydia fixed him with a stare and held it until he was forced to look away first. She wasn’t afraid of silence. She wasn’t afraid of her Family. She was afraid of being locked up in a tiny box, again, of hearing the cage door slam shut, but in this room, with these people, she felt strong.
An hour later, Lydia was beyond exhausted. She dragged herself up the stairs, feeling like every step was a mountain. Her mum and dad had said their goodbyes privately, waiting at the door leading to Lydia’s flat while the crowd dispersed. Her mum had kissed her cheek and hugged her tightly, while her dad peered at her in confusion before giving her a formal handshake. ‘Good to meet you,’ he said, and the last of Lydia’s emotional reserves drained away.
There was one last thing to do before she could pass out, though, and that was check on her flatmate. Jason was a deceased entity and her presence seemed to power him up, making him less ethereal and wispy and more able to make mugs of tea and, on occasion, save her life. He was sitting on the sofa in the room that Lydia used as both an office and a living room. Lydia could see the fabric of the sofa through Jason and she went and sat next to him. She was too tired to speak and was very grateful when Jason seemed to sense this and didn’t ask her any questions. Perhaps he had been floating at the back of the crowd downstairs and had heard it all. Either way, he gave her a sympathetic grimace and put his hand on the chair next to Lydia, palm facing up. Lydia put her hand on top of his, feeling it become more solid by the second. It was exceedingly cold but Lydia squeezed it gently and let her head flop onto the back cushions of the sofa. She would just close her eyes for a moment. There was the smell of coffee and fried bacon, something which seemed to permeate the whole building from the cafe kitchen on the ground floor, and Jason’s chilly hand was in hers. She was home.
The next day, Lydia got up early. She hoped that all had magically been sorted during the night but, of course, it had not. Lydia didn’t live in a Disney movie and friendly woodland creatures hadn’t appeared while she slept to sort out her problems.
Lydia made coffee and toast, slathering on a thick layer of butter and carrying it out to eat at her desk. Everything ostensibly was the same. The piles of paperwork she never got around to filing, her laptop and portable hard drive and the tangle of cables which seemed to breed in the night, and her Sherlock Holmes mug. But nothing felt the same. She didn’t blame Fleet for doing his job, especially since he had tried to warn her, tried to give her time to do a runner, but those panicked few minutes before the arresting officers had arrived had thinned into something unreal. She couldn’t hold onto the memory of Fleet’s voice concerned and urging her to run, only the uniforms that followed. And the fact of his freedom while she had sat alone in a locked cell. Charlie had always warned her that they were from different worlds and now she couldn’t stop replaying the moment when he had led her out of her flat, surrounded by his police crew. It made something shift inside. Something vital and delicate and very hard to replace.
As if sensing her thoughts, her phone buzzed with a text. It was Fleet.
Lydia finished her toast before reading it, and then went to make another two slices. She still felt empty inside, as if she would never be full again. One night in the slammer and she was utterly wrecked. She kept breaking out in shakes, remembering the feeling of being trapped. Caged.
Licking buttery crumbs from her fingers, she allowed herself to focus on Fleet’s text.
Bridge? Midday? Please.
Lydia waited for the anger she expected. It didn’t come. She pictured Fleet, his beautiful smile and warm eyes and waited for the usual mix of affection, longing, excitement and desire. That didn’t come, either. Instead of being flooded by feel-good hormones or righteous fury, she felt blank. Nothing.
Hell Hawk. It would pass, she was almost sure, just a momentary lapse due to exhaustion and the after-effects of being arrested, but what was worrying was the feeling that she didn’t want it to pass… She could feel her resentment solidifying. She knew that she was excellent at compartmentalising, keeping everything in her life separate. Some would argue she was a little too good at it. She could feel that mechanism kicking into gear, moving Fleet from the box marked ‘significant other’ to ‘useful acquaintance’. That felt nice. Less painful.
In Burgess Park Lydia approached the Bridge To Nowhere. She was early but Fleet was already there, waiting in the middle of the footbridge which spanned the grass. There had once been a canal here, back in the day, but it had been filled in years ago and the bridge was a souvenir. A reminder of how things used to be. Fleet wasn’t in his work suit. He was wearing a smart long grey coat to protect against the cold but Lydia could see he had jeans and a jumper on underneath. She wondered if that had been a deliberate choice on his part, wanting to avoid reminding Lydia of his work persona. If so, it hadn’t worked.