“No, no wife. And no girlfriend, either, as far as I know. He’s all about the job, is Ben.”
He could see her considering that. He wondered if she was interested. She didn’t look as starry-eyed as they usually did. Either way, the interest would wane when she realized that the pretty sergeant’s veneer of cool never rubbed off or broke down. When she realized that flirtation and lingering gazes and striking eye makeup did nothing.
A moment later, Hanson’s phone buzzed where she’d stuffed it into a cup holder. He saw her eyes cut sideways to it and then back, and it didn’t surprise him when she paused at the next junction and picked it up.
“Sorry,” she said as she unlocked it and read.
“No problem,” he answered, wondering if he was keeping her from a boyfriend. Whoever it was, she didn’t answer. She shoved the phone back into its place, and Jonah could see a tension in her that hadn’t been there before.
* * *
—
HE WAS UP until two, eyes going in and out of focus as he went over the Intelligence report. He climbed into bed irritable at the thought of five hours’ sleep, and dreamed off and on about searing hot weather, and a faceless girl being in danger.
His phone rang intrusively at just before seven. His sleep-fuzzy mind went to his ex. His eyes tricked him for a moment into reading Michelle’s name, until he realized that it read Mum.
When was it going to stop, the instinctive assumption that everything was Michelle? When he threw himself into the next doomed relationship? Or would Michelle be the one he could never quite get over, the one he regretted for the rest of his life?
His voice was croaky as he answered. “Everything all right?”
“There’s someone…I recognize them.” Her voice was choked and incoherent, and he felt a familiar wave of depression. “They’ve been outside all night. They’re friends of his. They want me dead.”
“Mum,” he said as patiently as he could. “Nobody wants you dead. You need to take some breaths. It’s a long time ago, Mum. They don’t care about you, or us. Not anymore.”
“Stop it! You always try to say…” She made a choked sound. “Why aren’t you here? You’re supposed to protect me!”
A rush of rage in her that, as always, ended in an equally swift flood of tears.
“Where are you, Jonah?” she sobbed. “I’m so lonely. It’s been days. I’ve seen no one.”
“I’ll be over this evening or tomorrow,” he said. He’d become pretty good at soothing her over the last few years. There were tears almost every time they spoke. “You aren’t on your own. You have Deborah popping in at lunchtime. You can talk to her.”
“No, I can’t.”
She sounded like a toddler. Petulant and tearful.
“But you like her.”
“She never stays anymore. She just does my lunch and then she goes.”
Jonah started to argue, and then realized this might be true. The funding situation had changed, and that might well mean less time. He needed to call up the care company and find out.
“OK. Well, I’ll be over later. And I’ll arrange for Barb to visit, too. OK? She likes coming to see you. We’ll invite her for lunch or something.”
He was always careful when he talked about Barb. He always tried hard to make it sound like she was a friend, and not someone he paid as a companion to keep up the facade that his mother still had friends and a normal life.
“She should have come yesterday. I wanted her to.”
Jonah felt tripped up for a moment. “Did you ask her to? Did you call her up?”
“No. I thought you would.” She was sulky, self-pitying. It was difficult not to find it infuriating. “It’s just the two of us now. I need you to look after me.”
Jonah sighed. He’d been looking after her for decades. Ever since she’d fled from Tommy Sheens and started a new life in Lyndhurst.
Even at ten years old, his relief had been profound. Tommy had only occasionally been physically violent, which he supposed was what had made it so hard for his mother to leave. His abuse was verbal, emotional. He had controlled and manipulated until his mother had doubted her own thoughts. Until Jonah had possessed no shred of self-confidence, and begun to believe his father when he claimed that obeying his every whim was what a loving family should do.
“I was working all day yesterday, I’m afraid, Mum,” Jonah said lightly. “But I’ll call her.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bother. Maybe she doesn’t like me anymore.”
“Of course she does,” he said. “I’ll ring her in a bit. See you this evening, all right?”
He ended the call and stayed lying there for a moment, feeling frustration in all the muscles of his head and arms. He could gladly have thrown his phone across the room. But instead he rose, finding Barb’s number and sending her a message instead of calling. He wasn’t willing to wake her up early, and he would forget if he left it till later.
He picked up a towel from the radiator and went to the bathroom. He stood for too long in the shower thinking the same circular thoughts about his mother that he always did. That he somehow needed to save her from herself, but that he didn’t know how. That it wasn’t his fault that she was like this. That it had been Tommy Sheens who’d caused it all, from the moment she’d married him.
By the time Jonah had dressed in his charcoal suit and pale-blue tie, his standard media-facing outfit, he had shelved thoughts of his family. He had forty-five minutes to prepare himself to face the press.
He opened his front door on to a misty day full of drizzle, which seemed like an unfair letdown after the day before. He checked his phone before climbing into his Mondeo. No messages or emails from McCullough. He would be giving the briefing without a tox report. Which in some ways was better. He didn’t have anything to hide. He just had to stand up there and tell them it was Aurora, and that they were pursuing new lines of investigation.
Hopefully, by the end of the day, they’d actually have a few lines of investigation to pursue.
* * *
—
TOPAZ HATED BEING in her parents’ house. She hated the clutter and the unchanging nature of it; the way it made her feel her life draining away while they sat in the tired kitchen and drank tea out of stained cups. More than that, she hated the fact that coming here made her a child again. It made her remember the person she had been.
And then there was Aurora’s room, which was still so very much her younger sister’s. It was dusty and tired-looking now, but it was still festooned with butterflies and flowers, from bedspread to ceiling.