gaseous air.
'Nothing was stolen, right?' Vanessa said. 'Missing?'
Maddy shook her head.
'But things had been moved around, you said? Disturbed?'
'One or two. I think so. I'm not sure.'
'And the doors out into the garden, you couldn't have left them unlocked?'
'No.'
'You're positive?'
'Yes. No. I mean, I'm always careful about things like that. But, no, I can't swear to it, no.'
Vanessa angled her head to one side. 'You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out?'
'It's all very well for you,' Maddy said. 'Taking the piss.'
'I'm not,' Vanessa said. 'Here, have a piece of my chicken tikka. Cheer yourself up.'
'It's not funny.' Maddy surprised herself with the force of her voice. 'It's not some bloody joke.'
'Then report it,' Vanessa said.
'There's no point.'
'Why not?'
'Because whoever I reported it to, their reaction would be just like yours.'
'I'm sorry.'
'It's okay.' Forcing a smile, Maddy took some of Vanessa's chicken tikka anyway. 'It's just with this other business as well, the inquiry. They had me in this afternoon.'
'How was it?'
'Like I was in the dock for something I didn't know I'd done.'
'Bastards.'
'Doing their job, I suppose.'
'That it now, though?'
Maddy shook her head. 'More than likely want to talk to me again.'
They were on to the coffee – almost certainly instant, but it did come with After Eights – when Maddy said, 'That other night, the karaoke, remember? When it all went wrong. There was something I didn't tell you.'
Vanessa stopped stirring her two sugars. 'Go on.'
'I thought I saw someone I knew.'
'In the pub?'
'Yes. Standing near the back, watching.'
'Who?'
'My ex-husband, Terry.'
'And was it?'
'No, I don't think so. Someone who looked like him, that's all. Far as I know Terry's in North Wales and good riddance.'
Vanessa smiled. 'You've not forgiven him then?'
'What for?'
'I don't know, do I? Last time I asked about him, you practically jumped down my throat.'
'I'm sorry.'
Vanessa shrugged. 'Your business, not mine.'
'It's not that, it's just… you know…'
'Not still nursing a crush for him, are you?'
'Christ, no!'
'Then what's the big mystery?'
'There's no mystery.'
'You just don't want to confide in your best friend, that's all.'
Maddy laughed. 'You don't give up, do you?'
'Not usually, no.'
'All right, but I'm going to need a drink.'
'Here, or the pub?'
'The pub.'
Vanessa turned around and signalled to the young waiter who was leaning back against the wall, texting someone on his mobile, to bring them the bill.
It was quite dark outside, a few people walking by, cars, the occasional bus. The pub was quiet, mostly regulars, one pool table, a television above the bar. They took their drinks to a quiet corner near the window. When Maddy started telling her story, she thought how mundane it sounded, how everyday.
Terry had been working just up the street from where she'd been living with her parents when she first met him, a builder, plasterer to be more exact, most of the houses in that part of Stevenage being renovated, made good. Maddy had taken a shine right off. Cheeky bugger, Terry, but not as bad as some of them, not crude. Nice body without his shirt, she'd noticed that. Nice hands, considering the work he did, not too rough.
After a week of hints and innuendo, he'd come out with it, asked her to meet him for a drink Friday night and she'd thought yes, why not? She'd been working in London then, Capital Radio, in reception, taking the train in every day to King's Cross, then the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square. Exciting at first, all that buzz and noise.
They'd gone on holiday together, that first summer, Majorca, and he'd proposed, not down on one knee but as good as, rolling around on the sand outside their hotel, six days' half board. She'd thought it was the drink talking, that he'd try to pass it off next day as some kind of a joke, but that wasn't the way of it at all. Three months later there they were outside the registry office, Maddy in a nice little suit from Next, new shoes that were killing her, the look on her mum's face sour enough to turn milk. Whatever expectations she'd been nurturing about a future son-in-law it was clear Terry didn't live up to them.
What she did say: 'You watch out, my girl, he'll have you pregnant this side of Christmas and where's your independence then? Where's your bloody life?'
It hadn't worked out like that, but not for lack of trying.
Maddy had thought the problem might lie with Terry, but it turned out it was with her. Terry had one kid already, a boy, four years old, living in Milton Keynes with his mother, a part-time hair stylist called Bethan. Maddy found out quite by chance.
It turned out that when she'd thought Terry was away working on some housing project in Northampton, he was in a two-bed flat in Milton Keynes with Bethan and the boy, playing happy families.
'None of your fucking business, is it?' Terry said when she confronted him.
Maddy told him he had to choose, her or Bethan, and he began packing his bag.
'What the hell did you marry me for?' Maddy asked.
'Fuck knows!'
When she said she wanted a divorce he said fine.
When she got home from work that evening he'd gone. She'd not been married much more than two years and, in retrospect, she was amazed it had held together that long.
'Was that when you joined the police?' Vanessa asked, as Maddy reached for her glass.
Maddy nodded. 'I was bored, wanted to get away. The look on my mum's face whenever I came in, a mixture of pity and I-told-you-so.' She laughed. 'We'd been to Lincoln a few times, when we were up in Skegness on holiday, driven over to look at the cathedral, mooch around. I thought it was a nice enough place.' She laughed again. 'At least it wasn't Stevenage.'
'What made you leave Lincoln and come down here, to the Met?'
'Bored again, I suppose.'
'And now this Grant business, the inquiry. It's getting you all stressed out. No wonder you're seeing things.'
'Thank you, doctor.'
