She was still warm—and yeah, I knew who it was the minute I touched her. Had known all along, really—so I made myself feel for a pulse, for signs of breathing, anything. Just because the vibes had felt like death didn’t mean she was actually dead, right?
Right?
Wrong. There was something around her neck, making it hard to find a pulse point, but her slender wrists were bare, and neither of ’em had a pulse. Should I try to loosen the thing round her neck, give her a bit more room to breathe? Yeah, I know, messing with the evidence—but what if she was still saveable?
I scrabbled at the stuff round her neck, gagging when it came away bloody from where it’d sunk into the skin. I recoiled again when I realised what it was.
There was no sign of movement or life from the body I’d just been manhandling.
Woman-handling? Corpse-handling?
I shuddered. Should I try CPR? You weren’t supposed to do mouth-to-mouth anymore, were you? Vinnie Jones said so in that TV ad.
“Staying Alive” thudded through my brain, and I wished I’d been paying more attention to the telly at the time rather than having a quick grope with Phil.
Christ, what I wouldn’t give to be back on my sofa with my bloke right now.
Then again, I imagined the woman I’d just fallen over might have felt pretty much the same.
These days, when my big sister phones me, I don’t expect anything worse than an invite to lunch and the latest gossip, so I hit Accept Call that night without even a hint of a suspicion of foreboding.
Just goes to show, this being-psychic lark really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“’Lo, Sis. What’s up?” I held the phone to my ear with my left hand while I stirred the pasta sauce with my right. Phil was coming round for tea but wasn’t sure when, so I was doing something I could leave on a low heat to keep warm if need be.
“Oh, hello, Tom.” Cherry paused. “Um, how are you?”
I sighed. The only time she ever opens with How are you? is when she’s desperate to ask for a favour but thinks it’d be rude to launch straight in without a bit of chitchat. “What is it?” I asked, resigned to doing another job for mates’ rates for someone who was no mate of mine.
At least, I hoped it was a job, not anything family related. Especially seeing as my family had recently got a bit more complicated.
“Amelia Fenchurch-Majors,” Cherry said. “She asked me to ask you to do a job for her. She’s based in St. Leonards—I know it’s a bit further afield than you’d usually go, but honestly, you’d be doing me a huge favour if you could go over and see her. At your earliest convenience.”
From the sharp tone in Cherry’s voice, I guessed (a) she was hoping I’d focus on earliest rather than convenience, and (b) she’d been getting her ear bent by Mrs. Double-Barrelled Shotgun. “Friend of yours, is she?”
“She’s not a friend. We just happen to know one another.”
“Let me guess—through Greg?”
Greg is my big sister’s unfeasibly reverend fiancé, canon of St. Leonards cathedral. Mrs. Fenchurch-Majors sounded like the sort of person he had over for sherry all the time. She was probably a drill sergeant in his army of grey-haired old dears who’d outlived their husbands by twenty years or more and now seemed to worship the ground under Greg’s unusually large feet. I could see her now, barking orders at the twinset and pearls brigade to Crochet faster and Don’t put those flowers there, put them THERE.
“Not exactly. The bishop held a garden party over the summer, and we were introduced there. Amelia was very interested to hear about you. Well, of course she heard all about your heroics at the Dyke.”
I winced. Not only was all this well embarrassing—they’d put a picture of me in the paper and everything—but several months down the line, I was still having nightmares about that night. Only in my dreams, I didn’t get there in time. So I wasn’t too chuffed to be reminded about it.
“Oh yeah? So exactly what did you tell her?”
“Nothing.” Cherry sounded hurt. “Although I don’t see why you’re so keen to have everyone forget about it all. It’s hardly something to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed. Course I’m not. It’s just, well, you know they put that bit in the paper about me having psychic powers, yeah?” I wasn’t sure who’d blabbed—hopefully not one of my mates, but then I hadn’t exactly sworn anyone to secrecy, which was beginning to look a bit short-sighted of me. Then again, it wasn’t beyond the bounds some disgruntled copper had made an off-the-cuff remark about me being DI Southgate’s tame psychic.
“So?”
“So, I’ve had everyone and his bloody dog asking me all kinds of crap ever since, up to and including ‘Will it rain tomorrow?’ and ‘Can you just fill in this lottery form for me?’ ta very much.”
“That’s just silly. You can’t do anything like that.” She paused. “Can you?”
“Sis, I live in a two-bed semi in Fleetville. What do you think? But try telling them that. Everyone seems to think ‘psychic’ means whatever they bloody well want it to mean.”
