teens, spread over her face like a dark red stain.
‘You prefer doom and gloom?’
‘No, it’s just-’
‘Forget it.’ She slumped back in her chair. ‘I’m the one who should apologise. When I opened my eyes this morning, I said to myself, today’s the day when I start making changes in my life. And the moment you walk in the room, I bite your head off.’
‘Old habits die hard, I guess.’
She winced. ‘I suppose I deserved that.’
‘Yep.’ He pointed at the newspaper. ‘What’s the dilemma today?
‘Hey, Daniel, I’m trying to be nice.’ She nodded at the slogan on her coffee mug. ‘And I haven’t even absorbed all the caffeine yet. Meet me halfway?’
He dropped down onto the bench and swung an arm around her. Under the fluffiness of her dressing gown, her shoulder was hard and bony. Until that moment, he hadn’t realised that she was shaking slightly, or how much of an effort she was making to conquer the fear she’d felt the day before.
He poured himself coffee. ‘OK, let’s start again. I had a useful conversation with Hannah last night. She seemed confident that Stuart would turn up soon, safe and sound.’
Louise’s eyes widened in horror. ‘You didn’t tell her everything?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Holy shit. She’ll think I’m a neurotic sociopath.’
‘She’s a detective chief inspector, she should be unshockable. You don’t spend years in the police without coming face to face with plenty of bad stuff.’
Louise crunched on her cornflakes. ‘I suppose Dad came across a lot of it, too. How can anyone want to do that job? I couldn’t bear it. Especially not in the CID, dealing with death and disaster. Imagine having to break the news to someone that their child has been murdered. The work would crucify me.’
‘When I was a boy, he told me it was like an addiction. Once the drug got into his system, he could never imagine doing anything else.’
‘You understood how his mind worked.’ She turned her face to him. Without make-up, her flesh seemed raw. The breezy mood had evaporated. ‘I never did.’
On another day, he might have resorted to a teenager’s jibe.
‘She’s interested in you.’
He withdrew his hand from her shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Touched a nerve, did I? It’s obvious, there’s chemistry between the two of you.’
‘Don’t be stupid, she’s in a long-term relationship.’
‘Tell you something.’ She leant towards him. ‘Marc Amos didn’t pay her much attention at the party.’
‘Nothing odd in that. Plenty of couples make a deliberate effort to socialise with other-’
‘You’re making excuses for them.’ A touch of Louise’s habitual asperity; she couldn’t help herself. ‘Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least boredom.’
‘Slow down, Louise. I enjoy talking to Hannah about Dad. Filling in gaps, you know? But that’s as far as it goes. I don’t even want another relationship. Certainly nothing as heavy as I had with Miranda. I’m ready for a break.’
The look in her eyes said:
‘You’ve had a break. That’s why you pissed off to America. To lick your wounds before you came back to start again…’
He groaned. ‘You sound like an agony aunt.’
‘You ought to study the problem pages.’ A mischievous grin. ‘All human life is there.’
‘No matter how many I read, I’ll never figure out how women think.’
‘Like I never understood Dad?’ she asked softly. ‘I never worked out why he left us for that woman. As for Stuart, why did he treat me the way he did? Men and women, trying to read each others’ minds? It’s like trying to crack an unbreakable code.’
Marc didn’t haul himself out of bed until Hannah sang goodbye up the stairs. A sign of good humour; often she left without a word, her mind already focused on the day ahead at work. The sex had been good last night, and he wished he could be sure that was the reason for her cheeriness. But his confidence was in bits.
It was too easy to blame her job for what had gone wrong. In their early years together, it suited him that she was a police officer. He was happy to have time and space for himself, the chance to get lost in books and dreams. Hannah’s anecdotes about her cases fascinated him; she was a good storyteller and, long ago, he’d encouraged her to embellish the tales and put them into a book —
In her haste to be away, she’d forgotten to put her breakfast things in the dishwasher. He lined up the dirty cups and plates in neat rows — in their early days together, he’d found her lack of domesticity endearing; now it provoked irritation. A DCI should never be slapdash, surely? Order and method pleased him; the real world was messy and unsatisfactory — this was why, at every opportunity, he escaped into a Victorian triple-decker.
He forced on a pair of new trainers. They were tight, and the only other time he’d worn them, they’d made his heels bleed, but today he’d wear them as a penance. An antique mirror hung in the hallway; he’d picked it up at a craft fair at the Brewery in Kendal the day after they’d moved in here, an overpriced impulse buy. His reflection glowered at him, scornful of his extravagance. After the lawyers shelled out his aunt’s legacy, he’d allowed himself to become carried away. He’d bought in too much stock that he couldn’t shift, while repairs and renovations to the house and the new shop in Sedbergh swallowed far more than he’d budgeted for. The new roof alone cost double the estimate. At the end of December, the quarter day’s rental payments on the two shops came close to cleaning him out. Thinking about it brought him out in a cold sweat. Hannah wasn’t aware: he kept meaning to break the news, but the time never seemed right.
He stood in the cloakroom, zipping his windcheater. The washbasin taps dripped permanently and the wooden window frame was too rotten to survive another Lake District winter. So much work still needed to be done, and he wasn’t sure Hannah’s heart was in their new home. Had she agreed to move to Undercrag just because it was close to the Serpent Pool?
He couldn’t bear to live here alone. To be comfortable with his own company was one thing, the echoing emptiness of solitary existence very different. Until early this morning, he’d presumed he and Hannah would spend the rest of their lives together. When they’d made love, there was no hint of anything amiss. But he’d woken and couldn’t get back to sleep. He got up around four to make himself some hot chocolate, and noticed her mobile, lying on the chest of drawers. Something prompted him to pick it up and check her messages. Unforgivable, but he couldn’t help being nosey, and she’d been annoyingly vague about the police business that had kept her out that evening. He expected it was something she could easily have ignored, if she hadn’t been a workaholic.
She hadn’t deleted her latest text. Carelessness, again. Reading the four words dried his throat, and made his heart hammer against the walls of his chest.
Traffic, bloody traffic. As he queued at a red light on the A591, Marc told himself that Daniel Kind must have sent the text. Newly returned to England, a free agent after splitting with his girlfriend. Marc had always wondered about Hannah’s devotion to Ben Kind. Was she making up for missed opportunities by starting an affair with Ben’s son? She was getting itchy feet, and so she had lied to him. It felt like being battered about the head with a brick. If she had nothing to hide, she’d have been upfront and said she was seeing Daniel. He might have suggested coming along himself. Hence why she’d pretended she was up to her eyes in work. Sometimes three was a crowd.
An impatient horn blast ripped through his reverie. The light had turned to green, and he was dawdling. He raised a hand in apology to the guy in the car behind and put his foot down, rounding the next bend so fast that he veered onto the other side of the road. Luckily there was a gap in the line of vehicles heading towards Ambleside.
