Steele’s hand’s on my back, ushering me out the door. ‘Your choice, but one way or the other, tidy yourself up. The only reason you’re going is because you’re female and you’re nearer Pope’s age, so he might take a shine to you, might speak a bit more freely. There’s less chance of that happening if you smell like a wet dog.’
Parnell won’t be happy. It hasn’t been a year since I was last used as bait to draw a confession from a woman-hating narcissist – a woman-hating narcissist who, rather unfortunately, decided against confessing in favour of spitting in my face. To hear Parnell tell it, and he is fond of telling it, it was the worst atrocity ever to sully our fine station. A despicable act that still turns him purple from the collar up.
He’s a good man, Parnell. A protector. A real rock.
And in a turn of events I still can’t get my head around, this good man now knows the other good man in my life.
Whether this is a good thing?
The jury’s still out.
*
Parnell stays silent until we’re back at our desks, facing each other across the partition that stops my mess becoming his mess. It’s obvious he’s itching to say something, though. It’s in the twitch of his jowl and the clicking of his tongue. Those familiar little tics that signal he’s about to pour forth.
Assuming today’s Sermon at the Desk will be on the perils of making yourself pretty for Category A killers, I cut him off at the pass with a short, sharp request.
‘Look, take it up with her, OK? I just follow orders.’
He makes a noise I take to mean ‘since when?’, but he’s smiling. I’ve read him wrong.
‘Hey, hold your horses, touchy. I wasn’t going to say a word about that. One: nobody listens, and two: there’s a very big difference this time. You won’t be on your own. You’ll have Dyer and a guard in the room.’
‘She’s impressive, huh?’ I say. ‘Dyer.’
‘You’re telling me. Did you see the way she aimed that coffee cup in the bin? She wasn’t even looking. She practises, I bet.’
‘The boss said you knew each other?’ I’m trying to play it cool but I admit, I’m hungry for scraps – cases, commendations, career trajectory, even previous hairstyles will do.
Parnell disappoints. ‘We sat on the same HR org chart once upon a time, but I wouldn’t say I know her. I know the name, the face. I know she took down some major players pretty early in her career.’ He slaps his hands together gleefully. ‘Anyway, forget her, I’m more interested in this picnic. You’re not usually one for the great outdoors. You must have it reeeeeal bad, is all I can say.’ I ignore him, busying myself with online banking, checking I’ve got enough spends for an emergency clothes spree. ‘I mean, clearly Aiden’s got it bad, the poor sod. I could see that the second he plaited your hair in the pub.’
‘God, not this again!’ I keep my eyes on the screen, but even my bank balance can’t stop me smiling. ‘It was too hot to wear my hair down and I’d sprained my wrist playing frisbee. Who else was going to do it for me? You?’
‘Would if I could, kiddo. But, you know, four boys; I haven’t had the training. I can no more plait hair than I can lick my own elbow.’
I laugh, which is a miracle in itself given the state of my overdraft. ‘Yeah, well, neither can Aiden. It fell out after two minutes, remember?’
‘Ah, but he tried, and that’s the whole point. It’s a sign. It’s a bright sign.’
Picnics. Plaits. The perfectly brewed tea I wake up to most mornings. So many bright signs blackened by one very bad thing.
The thing Aiden can never know.
The thing he could never, ever forgive.
‘So have you told her yet?’ Parnell’s lowered his voice, although there’s really no need. Renée’s still on the phone and Flowers is swooning over a travel website – booking a flight to Antarctica, if he’s got any sense.
‘Told who what?’ I fan myself with a stack of overtime forms. ‘Jesus, it’s hotter than the sun in here now. Has our air-con got any other settings than North Pole and Club Tropicana?’
‘Don’t change the subject. You know who I mean. Have you told Steele about Aiden? I thought when you mentioned the picnic . . . about being in the bad books . . .’
‘Well, you thought wrong.’ I fan myself quicker, stress-relief as much as anything. ‘Look, I haven’t decided when – if – I’m going to tell her. It’s still early days, there might be no point.’ I used to find lying difficult – every childhood fib, every teenage bluff would feel wrong and inedible, like soil in my mouth. These days, the lies come easy. One after the other, word after honeyed word. ‘I only told you because you’re a nosy bugger.’
And because it was time. Time to give Aiden something. Time to give him a small window into who I am, beyond his lover and his mate and the girl who’d lasso the moon to make him smile.
But in place of the moon, I gave him Parnell. I gave him laughs over pints with the only father figure in my life.
Except my own father, of course. Persona non grata again since the beginning of this year.
‘That’s not fair, you know? I’m not nosy. Aiden’s a really nice bloke, one of the good ones as far as I can tell, and I’m happy for you, that’s all.’
Bless him, he looks it too. All puffed up and proud, the archetypal Papa Bear. God knows how he’ll make it through his eldest son’s wedding next month. He got teary enough showing me photos of the cake.
Still, I opt for the wind-up. ‘Oh, do me a favour. You’ve met Aiden twice, for a total of three hours.’ Two televised football matches, to be precise. ‘You’ve no idea if he’s one of the good ones. He could be a prick of the highest order for all you know. For all I know, for that matter.’
Parnell leans in, the tip of his finger pointing over – infiltrating – my side of the partition. ‘You take it from me, Kinsella, if a man’s prepared to plait your hair in public – or try to – then he’s one of the good ones. And what’s more, if he’ll plait your hair in public, then he’ll lay on a bloody good picnic, I’m telling you. Oh yeah, I can see it now. It’ll be all M&S canapés, Waitrose petit fours.’ He smiles, misty-eyed and amused. ‘Ah, to be in the first throes again . . .’
Not quite the first throes. Not even our first picnic. It’s been over eighteen months since Aiden first sat across from me in this very station, handsome and heartsick, trying to make sense of the news that his long-disappeared big sister, Maryanne, was dead.
And Parnell knows this, of course. Parnell worked Maryanne’s case too. But what Parnell doesn’t know is that we’ve barely been apart since. That we swapped numbers within days, fluids within weeks, house keys within months. Parnell thinks we’ve been together for the grand sum of eight weeks. And the convoluted lie I told – because convoluted is king, I learned that from Dad – about me and Aiden bumping into each other on the bus, and the bus breaking down, and the rain forcing us into the pub, and the chat flowing until dawn, blah-di-blah-di-blah, is frankly the least of the lies I’ve told to my sergeant-cum-father figure. And it doesn’t come close to the lies I’ve told Aiden about my dad or Maryanne.