know, because Evi called me this afternoon, that the coroner is concerned. These people between them will find anything there is to find and they’ll deal with it. It’s not your problem.’
Now he was starting to sound like Joesbury. Which probably went more towards convincing me he was genuine than anything I’d learned so far. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I get a bit intense at times.’
‘I think Laura Farrow is probably the loveliest name I’ve ever come across,’ he said.
Oh, this was getting a little beyond my comfort zone. If this man wasn’t playing me, trying to find out what I knew, then it was starting to look as though he actually liked me. And I’d been going along with it, letting him think the two of us had a chance at a relationship. Loveliest name he’d ever … Laura Farrow didn’t even exist.
‘Do you realize that if you drink any more of that wine, you won’t be able to drive home?’ he asked me. ‘And I can’t leave the dogs at night to drive you. They panic.’
I looked down. The glass was large and it was my third of the evening. What Nick didn’t know was that most of the previous two had been poured down the kitchen sink when he’d been out of the room. I may indulge in casual sex but I never do it drunk. As though it belonged to someone else, I watched my hand reach out towards the glass and raise it to my lips.
Monday 21 January (one day earlier)
I WOKE IN darkness, with no idea where I was. Blue cotton sheets. A man’s bed.
‘Laura,’ said a voice behind my head. I turned. Nick was in the doorway, a mug of steaming liquid in each hand. He was dressed in a shirt and tie, neatly creased black trousers, ready for work.
‘I forgot to ask whether you drink tea or coffee in the morning,’ he said. ‘So I brought both.’
He put both mugs down on a bedside table that rocked dangerously under their weight. ‘It’s almost eight,’ he said. ‘I have surgery at nine and I expect you have lectures.’
It was Monday morning. ‘The good news is that there’s lots of hot water in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘The bad being that the rest of the house is freezing. See you downstairs.’ He stood up and turned to the door. Then he stopped and came back to squat down beside the bed. He leaned forward and kissed me. ‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘Morning,’ I replied, conscious of smudged make-up and seriously bad breath.
‘So for future reference,’ he said, ‘which is it? Tea or coffee?’
‘Both,’ I replied. He grinned at me and left the room.
I sat up. Oh boy, he hadn’t been kidding. The room was so cold it felt as though my face and shoulders were being slapped. I took a deep breath and pulled the covers back, swinging my legs over the side before I could change my mind.
My clothes were scattered around the thick sheepskin rug in front of the fire. I knelt on the rug, hoping some warmth might have survived the night, and found underwear, socks and my sweater.
Last night the fire had blazed as Nick had kissed me. I’d watched bold, darting flames licking over the logs as he’d slowly unbuttoned my blouse. He’d pulled off his own shirt and then both his skin and mine had glowed in the firelight. Sparks had shot into the air like fireworks when the heat found a damp piece of wood. And I’d known I couldn’t go through with it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I’d said, stepping back and bracing myself for a fight, even if just a verbal one. ‘I guess I’m just not ready. I’ll go.’
Looking round now, I found my jeans slung over an old-fashioned CD player. I hadn’t been allowed to drive home. Nick still thought I’d drunk more than I really had and I could hardly disillusion him. Gallantly, he’d left me in his own room and taken himself off to a spare.
As the flames had died down and the embers began to gleam like fire opals, I’d fallen asleep. I’d dreamed of gently stroking hands, probing fingers, soft kisses running the length of my spine. And when, in my dream, I’d opened my eyes, the ones looking back into mine hadn’t been russet brown.
My boots would be downstairs.
Pulling the bedcovers straight, I stepped out into the corridor. The first door I tried was locked. The second was the bathroom. The mirror told me my eye make-up had smudged but not appallingly so. My hair was a mess but I told myself in a sexy sort of way. The water was hot but I wasn’t getting undressed again in this icebox Nick called home so I splashed some over my face and used the loo. I would sort myself out when I got back to St John’s.
Sipping on the tea, holding the coffee in my other hand, I made my way downstairs. I’d never woken up in a man’s bedroom before. It was more my style to go home with a man, have sex with him, say goodbye and leave. I had no idea how to handle a morning after. Could I just go? Dump the mugs down, slip out of the door and drive away without seeing him?
Apparently not. Because to do that I’d have to cross the kitchen and he was in it, slicing bread that smelled like it had been baked that morning. I could hear the gurgle of a coffee machine. This room, thank God, was pleasantly warm, most of the heat coming from an ancient-looking Aga against one wall. Both pointers were curled on a rug in front of it. They both looked up as I came in. One of them gave me a merry wag of the tail. The other sighed heavily and settled down again, uninterested. A woman in the house in the morning wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before.
Nick had set the table for two. There was a glass of orange juice at the place that I guessed must be mine. As I sat down, he ran the bread knife through the brown loaf in the middle of the table again. The yeasty smell intensified. As did the feeling that I’d woken up on Mars.
‘Were you up at five baking?’ I asked.
‘I was up at five mucking out the horse, walking the dogs and checking the birds,’ he told me. ‘The bread is courtesy of the bread machine. I set the timer before we went up.’
The butter practically sizzled when it made contact with the warm slice of bread he’d offered me. I didn’t have to spread, it was just going to ooze its way across the surface.
‘Liz Notley’s hedgerow jam,’ he said, pushing a jar of red stuff towards me. ‘Excellent.’
‘Do I want to know what’s in hedgerow jam?’ I took a bite by way of experiment and, in fairness, it was excellent.
‘Mainly blackberries,’ he replied. ‘Some wild apples, sloes, hips and haws.’
Hips and haws? I wasn’t going to ask. ‘So, you’re gorgeous, you’re a GP and you bake your own bread,’ I said. ‘I guess the catch must be your embarrassing taste in music. Were we listening to Billy Joel last night?’
He made a sheepish face. ‘You got me,’ he said. ‘We used to play it around the house a lot when I was a kid. I guess it reminds me of Mum. Another one?’
And he’d loved his mother! I let him cut me another slice of bread. I felt as though I could eat the whole loaf if it was offered. If this was what mornings after were like – blimey, they were quite nice.
‘Lucky for me you were snoring before Neil Diamond came on,’ he said.
That took a second to register. ‘I don’t snore.’
‘You do,’ he said. ‘I could hear you from the corridor. But only in a cute, snuffly, dormouse sort of way.’ He raised his wrist and looked at the slim, elegant man’s watch he wore. ‘We have to hustle,’ he said. ‘Can I call you tonight?’
He found my coat and boots and ushered me out of the house and into my car. The two pointers went with him, jumping into the back of his Range Rover. He set off along the pothole-strewn path and I followed more slowly, not sure how much punishment my suspension could cope with, or how I was going to deal with the turn events had taken. I’d started this investigation with no real idea of what it had in store for me, but what I really hadn’t expected was that I’d find myself with a boyfriend.
Or, at nearly twenty-eight years old, with the knowledge that I snore.
