“It’s more than I deserve.” She smiled at him hesitantly, but he didn’t return it.
Inside, the flat was tiny and about as untidy as his car, but in Heather’s eyes it was the good kind of untidy: books strewn all over the place, papers stacked randomly on corners, empty coffee cups left abandoned like beacons on every surface. The living room shared space with an open kitchen, and there were lots of interesting food gadgets crammed on the sideboard—this was a man who enjoyed cooking. Heather felt another pang of regret. I’ve really fucked up here. He’s perfect.
“Tea? Coffee?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
He shrugged off his coat and chucked it on the sofa. Heather didn’t bother taking hers off. After a couple of minutes, he handed her a steaming mug of tea, which she curled her fingers around gratefully.
“So. Right.” She sipped at the tea even though it was too hot. Parker leaned against the kitchen top, his own tea untouched. “You know this wasn’t some big scheme, okay? Yes, I did go to my old editor and tell her that I might have a story she would be interested in, but I told her I wanted full control over it, that I wanted to write it once this bastard was caught. I’d never have willingly put the investigation back in any way. Diane fucked me over, printed what I’d told her without my permission. And what happened the other night …”
“I asked you what you did for a living,” said Parker, evenly. “And you told me you were a writer.”
“Which isn’t untrue.”
He half laughed and shook his head, but there was no humor in it at all. Heather felt her heart sink.
“I suppose that makes it okay then. I know what happened at your old job, too.” He looked at her, his hazel eyes steady. “I should have looked more closely at your background before now, of course, but I’ve had a lot on my plate.”
She steadied herself against a kitchen stool. “What happened at the newspaper … You don’t know how I was provoked.”
“I guess not.”
“I got into a fight with a colleague.”
“A fight normally suggests two people attempting to do physical harm to each other.”
“Do you have any idea how much you sound like a police officer sometimes?” Heather sighed. “Look, journalism is still crawling with the sort of men who are in shock that women have ventured out of the kitchens. It was, you know, a fractious environment.”
Parker said nothing.
“There was this man, his name was Tristan. We were covering one of those stories, a model claiming she had been assaulted by a football player, and Tristan was all over it—raving on about what a gold-digger she was, how the man’s career was ruined, blah blah. He said she was losing her looks, of course she was going to pull this. How else would she get column inches?”
“Right.” Parker had put his tea down. As far as she could tell, he still hadn’t touched it.
“He was always saying shit like that, usually to get a reaction from me, and, idiot that I am, I almost always rose to it. This time I told him I’d call him a cunt, except he didn’t have the warmth or depth.”
Parker turned his head away, but not before she caught the half smile on his face.
“Well. He came over to my desk and leaned on it, smirking. He opened his mouth to say something else and … I just lost it.”
Heather paused, looking down at her mug of tea.
“You don’t have to tell me any of this, you know.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe I do.” Heather took a sip of tea, remembering. “You have to put up with a lot of shit in that job, it’s the only way to survive it. I hate that term “being one of the lads” but that’s part of it—pretending you’re not bothered by their crap, that it could never reach you or make you react. But just then, it all boiled up. How unfair it was that this little prick stain could strut about saying whatever he liked and I just had to eat it all up, and that no one would ever tell him he couldn’t do it. I … I picked up my pen and I rammed it through his hand into the table.”
Parker cleared his throat.
“It was pretty bad. Blood everywhere. He screamed blue murder, and while he did, I threw my hot coffee in his face.” She looked away from Ben, not wanting to see the expression on his face just then. She didn’t mention the shroud of cold that had settled over her just before she’d done it, or the pure, beautiful sensation that this little man did not matter, and that she could hurt him if she wanted to—the pleasure his pain had brought her. She did not mention the satisfaction of hearing him holler, or how the sight of his blood on her desk had pleased her. The image of it was still very vivid. “All hell broke loose, of course. Ultimately, though, I just got the sack. I could have made it very difficult for them, you see. Bringing up institutionalized sexism in the current climate would have gone down like a giant sack of shit, so they talked him into not pressing charges and I just left.”
Outside, an ambulance wailed its way down the road, throwing up a brief flash of blue light across rain spattered windows.
“Listen, Ben, I’m a shit person, okay? I’m a mess, always have been. God,” she swallowed past the bitter laughter that was bubbling up her throat. “Yeah, I wanted to get my career back, I wanted to try and understand a serial killer, maybe stop something dreadful from happening, but I can also stand here and say, yes, I also wanted you, and I didn’t make that up. I was glad you turned up on my doorstep, and
