Later, around eleven, Kelly washed the pots and listened to Ted reading a story to Lizzie. Occasionally, the two-year-old would butt in and finish a word or a sentence. Her chatter was non-stop, and Ted had the patience of a saint. Lizzie was bathed and ready for bed and Kelly saw her eyes closing as her grandfather read to her about fire engines and unicorns. Finally, her daughter’s muttering grew less and less until Ted stopped reading, and Kelly saw that Lizzie was asleep in his arms. They took her upstairs and settled her into her cot and closed the door to her room gently.
Back downstairs, Ted finished off the pots from their supper. At first, after Johnny left, Kelly noticed his absence keenly whenever they might have shared time together late at night after Lizzie went to bed. It had been one of the only times of the day when they’d been able to be a couple again. Now, she faced the loneliness of not having a partner to chat to at the end of a hard day, but she also had a new type of freedom which released her from some of the unwelcome boundaries that had crept into their romance.
Secrecy.
His unusual behaviour towards the end of their relationship, mainly over his wife, Carrie, had begun to seep into her psyche and make her feel uncomfortable at home. It was as if there was no place for her to be herself. It had never been like that with him. Now, when she missed the practical stuff, like him helping to bathe their daughter, fixing broken cupboards, doing the shopping, or collecting wood for the fire, she caught herselffalling into the habit of pining for what once was, just in time to remind herself that they’d been heading for inevitable disaster.
He’d lied to her, plain and simple, and no matter how comfortable she was in his arms, she couldn’t allow herself to continue to lie to herself. Accepting Carrie was still his wife would have been a betrayal of everything they’d built their trust on.
But she missed him.
She’d spent time with Fin, in hotels, here in her house, walking in the national park, getting to know one another, and she’d felt herself wanting to like him more. It was as if she’d forced herself to make another relationship work. But it was too soon. She wanted to experience life selfishly, without picking up the pieces for somebody else. After Fin, she’d promised herself that.
Besides, Fin Maguire didn’t like kids. Lizzie irritated him.
It had been awkward at first when she’d suggested they call it a day. Her mother would have called their relationship ‘flogging a dead horse’. He took it better than she thought he might, and their working relationship never suffered, and only Kate Umshaw knew the truth.
‘I have no idea why anyone would want to hurt a child,’ she said to Ted out of the blue. They dried pots together in the kitchen.
‘What brought that on?’ he asked her.
‘I have no idea,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m suddenly philosophical.’
‘Be careful, a philosophical copper is an unhappy one.’
‘Why? Because we never make a difference?’
‘Something like that. If you stop too long to ponder all the pain out there, you’d never be able to do your job.’
‘I get that. I see it all the time. Do you think people go through stages?’
‘In their careers?’ he asked.
She nodded.
He took a sip of red wine. They finished drying up and went into the lounge. There was no fire needed between May and August. Her terrace doors were flung open, even though it was terribly late, and the light of the moon flooded through onto the wooden floor. Shadows of purple and silver changed the walls into a kaleidoscope of mystery.
They sat down.
‘I think some cases always come along that affect you more than others.’
‘Does it get to you too?’
‘Of course. I’m not immune. I look at each one of the people on my slab and see the life they lived. It’s an ending to one life and a gateway to the next. That’s the way I see it.’
‘Like religion?’
‘Not necessarily, I just don’t buy it that the end of our biological existence is the end of us. We are more than just our organisms. I see signs of people with superhuman strength fighting back in the face of unspeakable danger, and I just believe there’s something else to us. A force that lives inside us that can’t be destroyed.’
‘Gosh, I like that,’ Kelly said. She sighed. ‘This country is so small. You would think there’s nowhere to hide. Yet thousands of people simply vanish into thin air. They get erased from the face of the earth.’
‘Is it a good time to suggest finishing that Netflix show?’ he half-joked.
‘The true crime one?’
He nodded.
They’d got into a show about serial killers in the USA and they critiqued it from the standpoint of their respective experiences. It was almost like a game for them, each bringing somethingdifferent to the investigation in question. This was their Risk, their Monopoly.
