Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 11 - Water Like A Stone

“You won’t be able to see a thing,” answered Rosemary, but Sam had his argument ready. “We’ll take torches, and Jack will find the ponies. May we, please?”

Toby was already bouncing in his seat with excitement, and Kit looked interested. “Mummy, you’ll come, too, won’t you?” asked Toby, pulling at Gemma’s hand.

“Yes, if Grandma Rosemary says its all right,” she answered, and found she had used Toby’s form of address for Kincaid’s mother quite naturally.

After another quick look at the clock, Rosemary gave in gracefully. “All right, then. But bundle up, and be sure to put the other dogs on leads. You don’t want them taking off across country in a strange place.”

“I should stay and help you,” protested Gemma, but Rosemary shook her head.

“Go with the children. This washing up won’t take but a minute, and Hugh will help with the table. Won’t you, dear?” She raised an eyebrow at her husband, and the gesture reminded Gemma of Duncan.

“Now you see how I suffer for my sins,” Hugh said with a grin, beginning to clear the table. Trying to imagine her dad doing the same, Gemma shook her head. In her family, even though her mother worked like a demon in the bakery all day, her father expected to be waited on at tea.

When Gemma and the boys had put on their coats and collected the dogs, she saw that Lally, who had slipped away up the stairs, had returned dressed for the outdoors as we

The old scullery off the kitchen was now used as a boot room, and Hugh suggested they trade their shoes for pairs of the spare wellies that stood lined up on a low shelf. Gemma, having struggled with boots that were a bit too small, was last out. She found that Lally had hung back, waiting for her, while the boys ran ahead. Jack dashed around them in circles, barking excitedly.

“Oh.” Gemma drew a breath of delight as she looked about her.

“How lovely.” The snow must have been falling heavily since they’d arrived, and now muffled the countryside in a thick blanket of white.

“Did you know that it’s only officially a white Christmas if a snowflake falls on the roof of the BBC in London on Christmas Day?” asked Lally as they started after the boys, the snow squeak-ing as it compressed under their boots.

“That’s hardly fair, is it?” Gemma thought of the occasional London snow, quickly marred by graffiti and turned to brown slush.

This was different, a clean white silence stretching as far as she could see, and she was suddenly glad she had come.

The dog stopped barking, and in unspoken accord, she and Lally halted so that not even the rhythmic squeak of their boots disturbed the peace. They stood together, their shoulders touching, and let the still- falling snowflakes settle on their faces and hair.

Then, faint and far away, Gemma heard the wail of a siren, and her heart sank.

He discovered the joy of possession when he was six. It had been the first day of term after the Christmas holiday, the class fractious with memories of their temporary freedom, confi ned in-doors by the miserable weather, a cold, gunmetal sleet that crept inside coats and boots. Sodden jackets and mittens had steamed on the room’s radiators, filling the air with a fetid, woolly odor that seemed to permeate his sinuses and skin. Odd how smell provided such direct and concrete link to memory; the least scent of s

damp wool brought back that day instantaneously, and with the recollection came emotion, tantalizingly intense.

Their teacher— stupid cow— had encouraged them to show off their favorite Christmas gift. He’d had the latest toy, but so did most of the others, so no one was suitably impressed. But a toady child called Colin

Squires— fat, with oversize spectacles— had

opened a leather pouch filled with agate and cat’s-eye marbles.

Both boys and girls leaned closer, reaching to touch the swirling colors of the agates and the strange, three-dimensional eyes. Colin, perspiring with pleasure, hadn’t been able to resist clicking the marbles enticingly inside his pocket long after show-and-tell was over, and at break he had demonstrated marbles games to a group of admirers.

He, however, had stood back at the edge of the circle, watching with feigned disinterest. Even then, he’d understood the necessity of planning.

Three days later, when Colin’s fleeting charm had waned and the other children had gone back to their usual games, he brushed up against Colin on the playground and came away with the bag of marbles transferred to his own pocket.

He kept his acquisition to himself, gloating over the marbles only in the privacy of his room, where he could fondle them without fear of interruption.

He knew, of course, that he had done something taboo, and that secrecy was the safest policy. What he didn’t realize until he was a few years older was that he hadn’t felt, even then, the prescribed emotion, what other people called “guilt.” Not a smidgen.

Chapter Three

The unopened bottle of ten-year-old Aberlour stood on Ronnie Babcock’s kitchen table, its ready-made red bow still attached. Babcock regarded it sourly as he added the day’s post to the already toppling pile beside the bottle, then tossed his coat over a chair filled to overflowing with unopened newspapers.

The scotch was a gift from his guv’nor, Superintendent Fogarty, and you could always trust the super to judge the appropriate level of gift giving to a T. Not a blended bottle of Bell’s, which might make it seem he undervalued his team, but nor could he be bothered to spend a quid or two extra on the twelve-year-old Aberlour. No point in splashing out more than was absolutely necessary, he would say. A diplomat to the bone, was Fogarty —no wonder he’d gone far in the force.

Not that Fogarty was a bad copper, as much as it sometimes galled Babcock to admit it. He was just a better politician, and that was what up- to-date policing required. Fogarty played golf regularly with the right county officials; he lived in a detached bungalow in the toniest part of suburban Crewe; his unfortunately bucktoothed wife appeared often in the pages of Cheshire Life.

The Fogartys’ life had, in fact, been Peggy Babcock’s ideal, and she’d told Ronnie often enough what a fool he was not to emulate it.

Babcock had sneered at that, and look where it had got him.

Alone in a sedate semidetached house on the Crewe Road outside Nantwich, a house he had hated from the day the estate agent had shown it to them. And Peggy, who had insisted they buy the place, had packed her bag and walked out, straight into the arms—and the flat—of the same estate agent.

He gave a convulsive shiver as the cold began to seep through the thin fabric of his suit jacket. The central- heating boiler had been wonky the past few days, but he hadn’t mustered the time or energy to have a look at it, and tonight it seemed to have gone out altogether. Now there was no chance in hell of getting the heating man to come, which meant it was going to be a long, cold Christmas.

Slipping back into his overcoat, Babcock tore the bow off the bottle of Aberlour, but stopped short of breaking the seal. The question was, did he put himself out of his misery now and suffer the hangover on Christmas morning, when he had to pay a courtesy call on his aged aunt, or did he put it off until he’d discharged his one social obligation and could sink as deep as he liked into alcohol-induced self- pity?

There were a couple of beers in the fridge, if not much else—he could make himself a sandwich and drink them while he watched Christmas Eve rubbish on the telly. Either choice was pathetic.

He’d volunteered for the holiday-call rota rather than face the evening on his own, but the citizenry of South Cheshire seemed remarkably well- behaved this Christmas Eve, more’s the pity, and he had finally given up a hope of action and left a stultifyingly quiet station.