‘All right?’ she said, as he turned to greet her. He went to hug her and she took a step back.
He went still. ‘You’re angry.’
‘Not with you,’ Lydia said. But she felt the lie, bitter on her tongue.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Fleet said, his gazed fixed on her face, ‘there wasn’t anything I could do.’
‘I know that,’ Lydia said. ‘And you warned me.’
He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I can’t believe-’
‘Don’t,’ Lydia said, interrupting him. ‘It’s in the past.’
There was a pause and Lydia looked out across the park, unable to focus on Fleet for any length of time. She felt numb but knew it was a fragile protection, liable to crack at any moment. ‘And I’m out now. It’s done.’ Lydia had accepted Charlie’s offer to get her out of trouble which put her squarely in his debt. The price of his help had been entering the Crow Family business, something she had been at pains to avoid. To make matters worse, she had then been offered immediate release by a man she barely knew but suspected worked for the secret service. Desperate for freedom, she had shaken the man’s hand. Now she owed him ‘friendship’, whatever that meant. A small part of her blamed Fleet for the mess, however unfair that was.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you,’ Fleet’s voice was quiet, earnest. ‘I had to keep working the case.’
‘My case.’
‘Yes. Sorry. I had to keep working and I was worried it would make everything worse.’
‘I understand,’ Lydia said, although she didn’t. Not entirely. There had been a sense of rejection, she realised, now. Fleet had always worked with her, always turned up and backed her up. In this case, she had felt abandoned. She hated how needy and vulnerable that realisation made her feel and consciously stuffed those feelings down as deeply as she could.
‘What can I do to make it up to you?’
‘There’s nothing to make up,’ Lydia said, forcing herself to look at Fleet. ‘You had to do your job. I understand. I knew what I was getting myself into when I dated a copper.’
‘That sounds horribly like past tense,’ Fleet said, his eyes damp.
Lydia shrugged. ‘We had a good run. Longer than I expected.’
‘No.’
The pain was there, circling, but Lydia felt a calm, blankness at her centre. ‘I think so. No hard feelings?’
‘Stop it,’ Fleet said, angry now. ‘Stop talking like we’ve only just met. You can’t just throw us away over this. We have a solid relationship, we can get through this. We just need to talk about it properly. I know you will need some time-’
‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ Lydia said.
‘I’m not,’ Fleet said. ‘I’m not fine and I don’t want us to be over.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lydia said. ‘But we are.’
Chapter Two
Lydia walked back to The Fork. Rain began to spit and she allowed herself a bleak smile. Of course it was raining. She had broken up with her boyfriend and now her hair was getting wet; she was a walking cliché. The feeble attempt at humour didn’t help. She still felt wretched. That was the word. She knew she must be upset and in pain, but the dreadful numbness was still there. A blankness where feeling ought to be. Perhaps she was a sociopath?
A small girl was walking with an adult just in front of Lydia. The child stumbled on a piece of uneven pavement and fell. Her tear-streaked face was filled with pain and surprise, her mouth opening in a pitiful wail, and Lydia felt her own eyes fill in sympathy. Not a sociopath, then. Just a wreck.
Lydia knew she ought to reach out. To phone her best friend, Emma, or her mother, but she had never been good at opening up when she was in a bad way. She tended to forge on alone, and sort things out for herself. Independent, her mother said. Bloody stubborn, her Uncle Charlie called it.
Back at The Fork, she trailed up the stairs to her flat and went straight to her bed to lie down. Just for a moment. She stretched out and counted the cracks on the ceiling, her mind carefully empty.
After a while she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, her left shoulder was freezing cold. She opened her eyes to see Jason next to her, his hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently.
‘You were having a nightmare,’ he said.
‘Was I?’ Lydia was still disorientated. A fragment of her dream was at the edge of her consciousness but when she examined it, it disappeared.
‘You were shouting.’ Jason looked worried. The familiar crease appeared between his eyebrows and Lydia wanted to reach out and smooth her finger over it, erasing it.
‘I’m fine,’ Lydia said, sitting up.
Jason moved away and while it was nice not to be flirting with frostbite in her shoulder, she missed the contact. He was looking at her warily. ‘You look weird.’
‘Charming.’ Lydia scrubbed at her face with her hand, trying to wake herself up. Her eyes were gritty and filled with flakes of sleep and her cheeks were damp. She must have been crying in her sleep. Or drooling.
‘Coffee? Toast?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Lydia said. ‘I ate half a loaf earlier. But thanks.’
Now Jason looked really concerned. ‘What’s happened? Are you having flashbacks?’
‘Flashbacks? From what?’
‘Being in jail?’
‘No,’ Lydia shook her head. ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine,’ Jason said. ‘I’ll make you a tea.’
‘Coffee,’ Lydia said.
‘You need tea. With sugar. You don’t look right.’ He hesitated by the bedroom door. ‘Is it from our trip?’
Lydia took a moment to realise what he was referring to. So much had happened since Jason had hitched a ride in her body and they had gone to visit a ghost in the disused tunnels of the London Underground. It had been unsettling, and a physical challenge, but it paled in comparison to everything else. ‘No,’ she shook her head to add weight to her response. She took a breath, preparing to tell Jason about Fleet, but then realised that she couldn’t say the words. Not yet.
Later, after two mugs of disgustingly sweet tea, which she drank only to reassure Jason, Lydia sat at her desk, fully-dressed and ready for distraction. She couldn’t bear to think about Fleet and, as if conjured into being by Jason’s sweet concern, she kept having flashbacks to being trapped in the cell at the police station. Lydia’s tried-and-tested approach for dealing with any sort of emotional upset was to throw herself wholeheartedly into something else. In the past this had resulted in a love affair with Paul Fox and a short-lived career as a pet-groomer. Now, it meant one thing - work. She pulled up her client list and scanned the case notes. She would dispense justice, she would ferret out truths, she would solve enigmas. And, if she buried herself with enough of them, perhaps she would begin to feel normal again.
Her files weren’t very encouraging. There wasn’t much in the way of enigmas, more a depressing list of infidelity cases, spousal uncertainty and background checks for companies doing due diligence on prospective employees. Those were the worst of all, in Lydia’s opinion, entailing, as they did, a dull hour or two online and in databases and nothing else.