‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, slumping back in her chair. ‘So that’s it? You two are finished?’
‘As a couple? Yes. As friends? I hope not.’
‘So it’s not salvageable? At all?’
‘I think the crux of the matter, Pen, is that we both decided there was nothing to salvage.’
‘So after you had your talk, she just upped and left?’
Bliss gave a wistful smile. ‘Yes and no. That was the odd thing about the whole experience. She left, I went out for a drive. When I got back home, she was there again. Waiting for me in her car, not wanting to use her key. I made us a drink and we talked some more, though we mostly seemed to go around in circles. She ended up staying. She came up to bed with me. We didn’t… nothing happened. She lay in my arms, her back to me, until we fell asleep. She went off first. When I woke up just after five, she’d already left.’
‘Did she leave a note?’
‘She did. You know Emily.’
‘What did it say?’
‘What if it was personal?’
‘Oh, just tell me, you tosspot!’
Bliss smiled at her impatience. ‘She said she loved me. That she probably always would. But she also said that no matter how we feel about each other, we want different things from life. She was glad we’d been honest enough to talk about whether we could make it as a couple, and that neither of us is to blame that we don’t have it in us to succeed. She wished me love and happiness in the future, and hoped I wished the same for her.’
Chandler put a hand to her chest. ‘Aw, really? That’s so… so…’
‘So Emily. I know. She uses few words, but they say everything.’
‘What brought all this on, Jimmy? Did you see it coming?’
‘I did. And as usual it’s mostly my doing. But I’d rather not discuss it right now.’
‘Okay. I understand. I’ll call her later, see how she’s doing. Probably get more sense out of her, too. How are you? How do you feel about it all?’
‘I’m torn. Part of me thinks I ought to wallow, another part of me is grateful for the time she and I had together but accepts it simply ran its course. And most of me realises I have an investigation to run.’
‘Not any more you don’t. It’s Bish’s investigation. Remember?’
He nodded. ‘Of course. But still our investigation to work. My head is too much in the game to think outside it. Maybe that’s why my conversation with Emily went so pear-shaped.’
‘You can’t blame it on that. Whatever your issues, it didn’t go wrong because your mind was suddenly elsewhere.’
‘It didn’t?’
Chandler raised her eyebrows. ‘No. It went wrong because your heart wasn’t there. Not enough of it, at least.’
‘And you know this based on what I just told you? You’re a better detective than I give you credit for.’
‘That’s true. But I know because I’m a woman, not because I’m a pretty shit-hot detective.’
‘Are you claiming to be pretty and shit-hot, or pretty shit-hot?’
‘The first one, of course. You had to ask?’
Bliss let out a long sigh. ‘Ah, I don’t know what I’m doing any more, Pen. The moment I take a step forward, I’m taking another back again. I’m going nowhere fast, but I don’t seem to be able to slow down enough to make proper decisions. There’s never enough time in the day.’
Chandler winced. ‘I feel responsible somehow. I forced the relationship with Emily on you at a time when you weren’t prepared.’
‘No, it’s not your fault. I said it was mostly my fault, but in truth I agree with Em when she says nobody is to blame. You’re right to say I wasn’t ready. I always knew what we had together suited me more than it did her. I thought it might last longer than a couple of months, but if you think about it, it’s the most time we’ve ever spent together despite knowing each other for fifteen years. We put an awful lot of faith in what we had at the beginning, hoping to resurrect it somehow. She was both married and widowed during those intervening years, whereas I… I’d hardly moved on at all.’
‘Not in the way she needed you to, perhaps. You’re a different man in many other ways, Jimmy. And though I won’t say you’re stuck in the past when it comes to your personal life, neither have you moved on a great deal; I probably should have realised. I think I was hoping you’d finally found someone. You and Em felt like the perfect couple.’
Bliss nodded. ‘I know what you mean. Thing is, I’ve got maybe twenty to twenty-five years left, and most of that is going to be spent not working. You know better than most what the job means to me, so when I thought about the future I realised I hadn’t yet reached the point where I could see Emily as being part of it right to the end. She saw it differently. And she didn’t have any confidence in me ever to reach that stage.’
‘Is she wrong?’ Chandler asked. ‘Because if she is, it’s not too late.’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But it is for the best. I think it tells us everything we need to know when I say I’m not even remotely sad about it.’
‘Tell your face that, then.’
Bliss raised a fist. ‘You want a mouthful of teeth?’ It was a line from an old Steve Martin and John Candy film. It always made them chuckle. Chandler gave him a playful punch on the arm, and they moved on.
***
Encountering virtually the entire team in the major incident room came as no surprise to Bliss; only John Hunt had failed to show, which also came as no surprise. He immediately informed the team about the discovery of their potential new lead, Sara,
