never presume.'
Anna laughed, but it was aggressive, like a slap. 'You presume all the bloody time!' She smacked down her glass, splashing wine across the tabletop. 'You presume that I'm scared and out of my depth and that I'll screw things up. You presume to take work away from me, then sit there like some… authority, when you're clearly as much of a fuck-up as anyone.' She stood up, shaking her head, then bent to dab at the spillage with a napkin while scrabbling for her bag and jacket with the other hand. 'And worst of all, stupidest of all, you presume that I like you enough to let you get away with it.'
Thorne watched her leave, pushing past a couple in the doorway, searching for a gap in the traffic then running across the road. Her hair was flying and her bag bounced against her hip as she went.
Unpleasant as it had been, Thorne presumed he'd done what he came for.
TWENTY-SIX
Louise's basement flat in Pimlico was very different from Thorne's place in Kentish Town. Bigger and more modern, with clean lines and furniture that looked and felt less lived-in than Thorne's ten-year-old Ikea collection. It was also considerably less tidy than Thorne's, a fact that surprised nobody more than Thorne himself. He had become rather more house-proud since Louise had started staying with him, but the same could not be said of her. Thorne could never equate the ruthlessly efficient Kidnap Unit DI with the woman who kept a large cupboard entirely stuffed with plastic bags and whose bathroom – though it smelled nicer than his – looked like an explosion in a cosmetics factory.
It seemed to Thorne that they always reacted differently to each other when they were staying in Pimlico, that the dynamic between them was subtly altered. He guessed that he was the same way when the situation was reversed, but recently Louise had seemed a lot more comfortable whenever they were staying at her place; more at home, in every sense.
Or maybe he had simply never noticed it before.
With both of them now so at ease in their own places, Thorne wondered if the idea of them getting somewhere together would – or should – ever be discussed again. They had talked about selling one flat and renting out the other, as Thorne still had money left from the sale of his father's house a couple of years before, then buying a place further north, in Hertfordshire maybe. But perhaps the moment for all that had gone.
Louise cooked pasta, added a tin of tuna and some black olives to a Sainsbury's arrabiata sauce, and they ate at the small table in the kitchen.
'I meant to say, Elvis was sick again this morning.'
'Shit,' Thorne said.
'You need to get her to the vet.'
'Did you leave her plenty of food?'
'A couple of bowls of the dry stuff,' Louise said. 'For tonight and tomorrow morning.'
'She's probably just picked up a bug or something.'
Thorne had inherited the cat from a murder victim many years before, a woman who had named the cat without realising she was a female. He had no real idea how old Elvis was, but she must have been pushing twelve or thirteen, and while she had never been a big cat, Thorne had noticed, picking her up a day or two before, that she was feeling skinnier than usual.
'If nothing kicks off at work, I'll try to take her in at the weekend,' he said.
They continued to eat. Louise told Thorne that she had put the rubbish out before she'd left his flat that morning and that he was almost out of milk. Thorne told Louise how good the meal was, and thought that this was what couples who had been together for a year or two talked about: bin collections and cat sick.
Tried to convince himself that it could be a whole lot worse.
When they had cleared away the plates, they took glasses of wine through to the living room. There was a Champions League match that Thorne fancied watching, but he said nothing as Louise exercised home advantage and put on a CD: some woman from the West Country who thought she was Dusty Springfield. Thorne made himself comfortable on the sofa, but when Louise came across and sat facing him on the matching footstool it was clear that she wanted to talk about more than taking out the rubbish.
'Hypothetically,' she said, 'what would you think about me getting out of the Job?'
Thorne sat back and puffed out his cheeks. Said, 'Bloody hell.'
'I said 'hypothetically'.'
'Where's this come from?'
'I think we need to do something.'
' We? '
'Change something, I mean.'
'But you love the Job,' Thorne said. 'More than I do, anyway. You can probably make DCI this year.'
'I think maybe the Job had something to do with losing the baby.'
'You don't know that.'
'I'm damn sure it didn't help. Come on, you know how stressful it is…'
Thorne could hear something in her voice: anger, urgency. He just nodded and took a drink.
'And it's probably got something to do with the fact that it hasn't happened again.'
'Well, maybe if we actually had sex a bit more.'
'Right, if the sodding Job didn't wear us both out quite so much, and if our shifts didn't mean that we're like ships in the night most of the bloody time.'
There was not too much Thorne could argue with. He sat back. The West Country Dusty was getting worked up, bleating about her lover being drunk and faithless.
'It just seems a bit… radical,' Thorne said.
'We need to do something, Tom. If we want this to go anywhere-'
' Go anywhere?'
'Maybe we both need to get out of the Job.'
' What? '
They had talked about it once before, their fantasy future. But that had been when there was a baby on the way.
'Are you really going to sit there and tell me everything's fine?'
'You're the one with all the opinions.'
'That's part of the problem.'
'Everyone has ups and downs, whatever, but you're talking like everything's fucked.'
'I'm trying to be realistic.'
'You're being ridiculous,' Thorne said. 'And melodramatic.'
Louise shook her head and laughed, just once, exasperated. 'It's so typical.'
'What is?' Thorne had been careful to say whatever was necessary, in whatever way was necessary, to keep Louise from losing her temper. Now, he was in danger of losing his own.
She swallowed a mouthful of wine, still shaking her head. 'When it comes to work, you'll do whatever it takes to get the right result. You'll go the extra mile, take stupid risks. You'll push it. With other people, other people's lives and problems, you do what needs to be done without even thinking about it. But with your own life, our life, it's a different story.'
'This isn't fair, Lou…'
'With us, it's just about the path of least resistance, about doing as little as possible. It's like the Job's taken all the fight out of you or something, and when it comes to personal stuff, to this , you'd rather just bumble along and settle for a quiet life, no matter how bad it is.' She was sitting on the edge of the stool, her knees pressed against his shins. 'Well, I think you've got it arse about face. I reckon your priorities are wrong, and if you really give a toss about how things are going to work out between us, you need to think about what's more important. Decide what you want.' She emptied her glass, looked at him. 'Well?'
Thorne stared at the carpet, wanting more than anything at that moment to turn off the music. To pull out
