Five-year-old Aiden. If he’s this sweet-natured now, after all the childhood baggage of his disappearing sister, and all the crap that adulthood throws at everyone, he must have been a complete dote back then. A rush of tenderness ripples through me. I want to be back in that hospital, telling him it doesn’t matter about the game because he’s the most precious thing in the world. I want to make him laugh. Kiss it better.
And I guess it’s never too late.
‘Which arm?’ I ask, taking both his hands in mine.
He wiggles his left. ‘This one. Hairline fracture of the radius. There was nothing “hairline” about the pain, I tell you. Mam reckoned they heard me screaming in Mogadishu.’
I kiss it better, then Aiden kisses me better. Those cushiony Doyle lips soothing away bones and Belmarsh and the bacteria of my family.
Eventually I pull away, exhaustion settling over me. While Aiden fetches glasses of water, I walk into the bedroom and brush my teeth in the en suite, splashing my face, then smearing something called a ‘skin souffle’ across my forehead, nose and cheeks.
The bedroom’s cool, the fan whirring at breakneck speed.
‘Here.’
Aiden hands me my water and, bladder be damned, I slug it down in three noisy gulps.
‘So how’d you do it then?’ I ask, wiping my mouth. ‘Your arm?’
I need more soothing before I sleep. I need a bedtime story, tales of the old country.
‘Ah sure, acting the eijit, what else?’ He sprawls back on the bed, arms flung the entire width. ‘Fell off a haystack in this oul fella’s field. A contrary old bastard called Pat Hannon.’
I laugh, a desperate cover for the fact that I remember Pat Hannon. I remember that field. Noel promising he’d buy me a Push Pop if I touched the electric fence for five seconds. Me like a gormless fool complying.
Dad telling Noel he’d ‘wipe him off the face of the earth’ if he ever pulled a stunt like that again.
‘I should have a shower, really,’ I say, letting my new suit fall to the floor. ‘I got rained on this morning and burnt alive this afternoon. Not good.’
He holds his nose, pulling a face. ‘Well, go on, then, stinker. But for the love of God, pull the cord afterwards. You cost me a fortune in electricity.’
Lights, shower switches, hairdryers, phones. There’s no end to the list of things I apparently don’t turn off. Aiden says my only saving grace is the fact that I turn him on. That, and the fact he loves me. Unequivocally.
Naïvely.
‘Ah no, I can’t be bothered.’ I pointedly turn off the fan, taking a small bow. ‘Anyway, I had a shower this morning. We’re supposed to be saving water.’
‘Top marks.’ He pulls me onto the bed. ‘I’ll make a friend of the earth out of you yet.’
I nuzzle into him, enjoying a few minutes of closeness before we decamp to opposite sides of the bed – heatwaves aren’t exactly great for your sex life. ‘So, we’re good, then?’ I murmur. ‘You’re not in a mood with me about the picnic.’ I have to check, despite his arms around me. Aiden’s moods are light and infrequent. So light, you’d hardly notice them at all if it wasn’t for the stream of kisses missing from his texts. ‘I mean, I haven’t properly explained about earlier – about the abrupt text, why I left you hanging. I was flustered, you see. I’d just come out of a meeting in prison, and I was miles from the hospital and I just wanted to get going because I didn’t know exactly what was happening. And then when I got to the hospital, I was wrapped up in Dad, and . . .’
He turns on his side to face me, his cheek smudged into his offensively soft pillow. ‘Jesus, take a breath, stress-head. I’m not in a mood. Will you promise me something, though?’
‘I’m gonna say yes.’ I prod him on the nose. ‘Although it’s actually impossible to promise something until you know what you’re promising. Just saying.’
He ignores the technicality. ‘Promise me that whatever happens, if you have a meeting on the moon, or your dad’s decapitated in a freak chainsaw accident, you’ll make dinner with The Americans on Thursday.’
The Americans. A visit from Aiden’s Head Office that feels papal in scope.
I adopt a pompous tone. ‘I hereby swear on my honour and conscience that I, Catrina Anne Kinsella, will make dinner with The Americans on Thursday.’
‘And you’ll laugh at their jokes and not go on too much about bloated bodies and severed feet?’
‘They might like a bit of morgue chat.’
‘Actually, Kyle, our Chief Ops guy, might. He’s a bit of a dark fucker. Did I ever tell you about the time he . . .’
I turn my back and curl into him, half-listening and ‘uh-huh-ing’ periodically, but mainly trying, and failing, to imagine a life without this. Without us. No picnics in the fridge. No spooning in the bed. No laughing until I can’t breathe at his take on something utterly mundane that happened in the day.
Then again, no lies.
5
‘Well, his arm’s still broken, if that’s what you mean?’
That’s been my stock response to ‘How’s your dad?’ all morning, because while the team’s concern has been nothing short of lovely, on the freak-out scale, I’m a little north of ten. With just one fractured humerus, Dad’s gone from being someone I never talk about to everyone’s favourite topic of conversation. Advice doled out. Comparisons made. Even a full-scale re-enactment of Ben Swaines thundering down the black run at St Moritz, two French girls ploughing into him and his wrist cracking in two places.
We’re only getting away with this, of course, because Steele’s ‘in with Blake’ – a euphemism for ‘the shit’s hit the fan’ and the main reason we’re all cancelling weekend plans before we even know why his polished black brogues have deigned to grace our humble floor.
‘Something’s up,’ insists Parnell, buttering toast in our store-cupboard-cum-kitchen. ‘I haven’t heard her fake-laugh once, and she didn’t send out for pastries either.’
‘Christ, if it’s not a pastry kind of catch-up, we’re definitely doomed.’
I’m not joking either.
I steal a slice of toast and take myself over to the incident board, where Christopher Masters stares back at me with dark, impassive eyes. There are two photos, actually: his official mugshot and a casual snap taken on holiday or just a sunny day out. Skinny white legs poking out of green cargo shorts. Pipe-cleaner arms. A jaunty thumbs-up to the camera.
A reminder that the worst monsters are real.
‘Hard to believe all the fuss,’ I say, taking in his middle-aged ordinariness. ‘He looks like a geography teacher on a field trip.’
‘Not my geography teacher,’ grins Swaines. ‘Miss Fenwick, or Jules once we got into sixth form. I’m telling you, Megan Fox wouldn’t have got a look in . . .’
The creak of Steele’s door brings a halt to Swaines’ drooling. Out she motors with Chief Superintendent Blake trailing behind. There might be a foot and £25K in salary between them, but for all his self-importance, Blake always looks nervy next to Steele. Like a teenager with his mum, waiting in the queue at parents’ evening.