They avoided the Yard canteen, with its unavoidable shop talk, and made for the pub down Wilfred Street. Kincaid elbowed his way to the bar and returned to their usual corner table with drinks, wine for himself and lager and lime for Gemma. “Ugh.” He made a face. “Don’t know how you drink that stuff.” Kincaid always criticized, and Gemma never changed her order, probably, he thought, out of pure cantankerousness.
“Practice.” Gemma took a good swallow of her drink and grinned. They sat quietly for a few minutes, the pub’s Saturday night clamor eddying around them, until Gemma pushed her chair back a bit and sighed. “I do need to be getting home, though. Toby will be missing his mum.”
“Yes.” Kincaid imagined the welcome awaiting Gemma, and for an instant envy ran through him. He shook it off and forced a smile. “I wish…” What did he wish? That he hadn’t gone to Followdale at all, in which case Hannah might have died, too?
Gemma thumped her glass down on the table and he raised his eyes to find an unexpected understanding in hers. The corner of her mouth twitched. “If wishes were horses, my old mum used to say-”
“Right.” They smiled at each other companionably.
“Better luck next time?” Gemma suggested.
Kincaid raised his glass. “Cheers.”
Deborah Crombie
DEBORAH CROMBIE is a native Texan who has done graduate studies in medieval literature. She has lived in Scotland and England and is married to a Scot. She and her husband and nine-year-old daughter live near Dallas.
