By the time they’dfinished their drinks, they were both well aware they’d made somekind of pact. Gemma felt pretty turned on by how it had all pannedout. She’d leave it for the time being though.
‘Come on Mark, let’sget home, I don’t know why but thinking about all this has made mebloody horny.’
It wasonly about fourteen miles from Hindhead back to Petworth and Gemmaput her foot down. She looked over at Mark. He deserves it and so do I. It can be a little bit ofadvance payment for him, and he’s good at it too.Taking the left fork at Fernland, she pulledhard over into one of the off road tracks heading up toward CastleCopse. She jerked the MG to a halt at the first availablegateway.
‘Come on Mark, Ican’t wait.’
She almost dragged himround to the back of the car to a patch of grass by the side of afour bar gate enclosing a field heavily populated with a herd ofrich, red-brown Sussex cattle. Mark didn’t need much persuadinganyway. By the time she’d unbuttoned his jeans and reached into hisboxers he was more than hard enough. It was convenient she hadchosen a short enough skirt that morning. The grass, weeds and evenodd thistle felt good as he pulled her knickers off and rocked inand out of her.
She kissedhim.
‘Anyway, those cowsdon’t look as if they care too much.’
Part Two:
Autumn 1981 – January 1982
Friday 11 September1981
It wasn’t asstraightforward as him ‘reverting to type’, to use that somewhathackneyed psychological concept. If he wanted to rationalise it,then perhaps just ‘making up for lost time’ was nearer the mark,along with facing up to the frustrations consequent on his having acriminal record and life-sentence for murder. Generally speaking,Mark appreciated structure and clear planning over spontaneity andimpulsivity; however, he was well aware that it wasn’t always easyto categorise everything that neatly, and sometimes structuresneeded circumventing. The circumstances had been different when hehad to do everything himself and keep Justine out of it. For onething, Gemma was more reliable: she wasn’t just a fling or even aparamour, they were a proper couple, they’d been living togetherfor the best part of a year. More to the point, they were doingthis together, she was right behind him – almost encouraging him,when he thought about it. In fact, it was unlikely he would bewhere he was today if Gemma hadn’t sowed the seeds.
Mark wassitting in the oak panelled reading room of Chichester Library.He’d decided to spend the day doing some research and planning.They had driven down from Petworth that morning and he had droppedGemma off at her office in Littlehampton just under fifteen milesaway, arranging to pick her up later. Even though she had beengetting increasingly fed up with her job, Gemma had decided tocarry on for a few more months at least, to see how things pannedout with Mark and her mother before making any final decisions.Mark’s intention was to read up on suspicious deaths and inparticular poisonings that had taken place over the years sincehe’d been given his prison sentence. Even though they hadn’t reallythought things through in any great detail, he felt the need topush on with what he now felt of as their plan. Amongst other thingshe wanted to check out what advances there might have been inforensics and detection. However, for the last hour or so he hadbeen side-tracked by the daily papers.
Ever since hewas growing up in Brighton, libraries had held a difficult toexplain fascination for Mark, and particularly the reading roomswith the daily national and local papers spread out on massivedesks and an array of sensible sounding magazines and journalscovering all kinds of interests and hobbies arranged on displaystands around the room. He remembered having done a lot of hisschool work in Brighton Library, walking up from the Seven Dialsafter school and then meandering down North Road, past thenewsagents, second hand shops and record stores that gave that partof Brighton a special feel in the early 1960s. He’d feltcomfortable sitting amongst the motley collection of people who hadfrequented the reading room there. At the time, Mark hadn’trealised that a good few of the regulars who seemed to sit therefor most of the day were using it as their second, and sometimesonly, home. However, they were only a part of the clientele; therewere also what he had liked to think of as intellectuals doingimportant research and then there were other teenagers, some fromhis grammar school but also girls from Varndean. One year, it musthave been around nineteen sixty-two or three, there’d been a girlcalled Grace, he’d only found out her name after months of sittingaround the same table, usually between half four and half five andbefore going home for tea. She had long brown hair that reachedalmost to her waist and somehow managed to make her school uniformlook cool. He remembered thinking that her skirt must have beenwell more than the regulation two inches or so over the knee. Andshe had smelled nice. They’d smiled at each other most days andoften left the library at the same time before going on theirdifferent routes home. Perhaps typical of his early forays into theworld of male-female relationships, just as he was plucking up thecourage to ask if she’d like to go out with him, she stoppedcoming. He wondered what had become of her. He’d never seen hersince her library visits had ended. Probably she had been seen by amore confident, doubtless older, boy and hadn’t realised thepotential of the fourteen-year-old budding intellectual she hadexchanged all those smiles with. So just one of a series ofnear-misses and maybes; strange how every decision, or lack ofsuch, shaped one’s future – he remembered having read somewherethat it was called the butterfly effect.
Almosttwenty years on, and further along the Sussex coast in Chichester,the library there retained a similar feel and clientele; there werepeople filling time, or getting essays done, or finding out thingsas usual. He
