‘I’ll just put out some extra cushions to raise that leg of yours,’ he said, playing along with her mood. ‘Actually, the wind’s changed – it’s quite balmy tonight.’
What was she up to? It was only a matter of minutes to pile the cushions and to find the champagne – it was her preferred tipple, so there was always a bottle in the fridge. He was surprised she hadn’t heaved herself to her feet in her usual independent way, but she was waiting for him to pass her the crutches and to support her back.
‘In its own quiet way, the muscle’s as bad as the break,’ she admitted as he settled her again. ‘Another pillow under my head, please, unless you can find a straw for the bubbly. That’s lovely. Thank you.’ She squeezed his hand.
‘Come on, Fran – time to stop winding me up. All the excitement of receiving Wren into our home has eroded my patience to a quite marked degree.’
‘I’m sure it has. He wasn’t a very happy little birdie when he left, was he? You might say he flew off in a rage. We could tweet it.’
‘You wouldn’t be so disrespectful of your boss, surely.’
‘What if he’s not going to be my boss much longer?’
His smile froze: what if she was going after that Essex-Kent MIT job after all?
‘I’ve told him I’m taking every minute of my sick leave entitlement, you see, and that then – whichever way I do it, either with redundancy or with straightforward retirement – I’m quitting my job. I can’t do this any more, Mark. I forget names, I can’t stop someone breaking through a cordon and risking people’s lives, I get injuries. I can’t be an operational police officer any more. So let’s give the irritating little man the bird.’ She raised her glass to his. She spoiled the gesture a little by slopping a few drops – he had to raise her head to prevent a further mishap.
‘What if he leaves?’
‘Oh, he mentioned that. He certainly wants to go onwards and upwards. Today Kent, tomorrow Europol. That’s why he made me an offer he really can’t imagine me turning down. I played along a bit, told him I wanted to see the terms in black and white. As if that would make it any more attractive. He wants me for your old job. ACC.’
He felt his face going stiff again. ‘What did you say?’
‘I told him to put his offer in writing and that when my medical adviser said I was in a fit condition to make such a decision I’d consider it in due course.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose I should put him out of his misery and tell him tomorrow not to bother. After all, if I delay it’s not just him I’m messing up, it’s Kent Police, and after all these years … It’s well over thirty, Mark. I just feel this huge loyalty.’
‘Is it enough to make you take the job?’
‘After what it did to you? And you’re a good manager. I’m crap. No, the only thing I have to decide tonight is when I tell him. Is champagne fattening? You know they were going to bring me choccies and Alice stopped them?’
‘Good for her. But to hell with calories tonight: once your physio starts you’ll be walking miles and using the exercise bike and shedding inches left, right and centre.’
‘You’re OK with the prospect of my cluttering up the place all the time?’ she prompted him. He’d not responded to her announcement, after all.
‘More than OK. Fran, when I saw you keel over … I had this dreadful fear … You remember you once said you didn’t want to try living without me. I sure as hell don’t want to try now.’ He managed his old grin. ‘Not until we’re properly married, at least.’
‘So I won’t pop my clogs for another few weeks. And after that? You didn’t quite answer my question. What’ll we find to do?’
‘You want to help Adam reorganize Mali’s police?’
‘Heavens, no! You know me and organizing: the words piss-up and brewery come to mind. But you’ve got a really good life going, with your gardening and your tennis and your grandchildren. I don’t know how I’ll fit in,’ she added, with a hint of a crack in her voice.
‘Is that why you’ve stayed on so long?’
‘To be honest, sort of. When you retired, apart from it looking really bad if so many senior officers disappeared all at once, I wanted to let you … find your level, as it were. And now somehow I’ve got to find mine without messing up yours. God knows, looking after a temporary cripple again is going to cramp your style. I’m sorry.’ She gripped his hand.
Raising hers to his lips he said, ‘Leaving something you’ve committed all your working life to is terrifying. It’s OK, as my therapist says, to be scared. But if I can do it, you can do it. And more to the point we’ll find things we can do together. First up is to find a short-term project we can share.’
Her hand now at rest in his, she smiled thoughtfully. ‘There’s one I’d love to do. If ever two people were meant for each other it’s Caffy and Tom.’
‘Pity she’s so smitten with this Alistair,’ he said, laughing. ‘That may have to wait a while. But the first one, the really big one, is to get you walking again: agreed? With no limp?’
‘Agreed,’ she said, pulling his head down so that she could kiss him.
If either of them regretted they couldn’t celebrate a major decision in their usual way, neither mentioned it. They sat hand in hand until it was time for him to help her back into the house.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Mark would have bet his pension that the wedding wouldn’t go entirely without hitches, but so far the pluses outweighed the minuses. Adam, the former chief constable who’d demanded to lead Fran down the aisle, was stuck in Mali, having the time of his administrator’s life at a top level international security meeting: what was it with managers and meetings? Fran could scarcely conceal her delight. Secretly Mark hoped his son Dave would offer to take Adam’s place. After all, Marco and Phoebe, augmented by Livvie, who cared not a jot for the pink bear Fran had organized for her, were going to be Fran’s attendants. But Fran had other ideas. And Mark couldn’t argue with her choice: it was young Tom Arkwright whom Fran asked to do the honours. He accepted with obvious pleasure.
What was meant to be a small wedding had grown. Once Fran had known that a lot of tennis club folk would be coming to the church, she’d spread her hands expansively. ‘Why not invite them to the reception too? After all, they’ll all know Zac and – by now – Livvie. And they’ve got all the improvements to talk about.’
‘Are you sure? You wanted it all small and intimate.’
‘Look, all this work you’ve done on the garden deserves the widest audience.’
‘You too, don’t forget.’ Mowing the lawn had become her speciality, as part of her muscle-strengthening therapy.
‘Your work,’ she insisted. ‘The marquee will hold another forty, if needs be, and the weather forecast’s wonderful. Just tell the caterers how many more mouths to feed.’
He smiled, raising his cup of coffee in a toast. What Fran didn’t know, of course, was that the Golden Oldies proposed to form a guard of honour, with raised racquets – he hadn’t had the heart to veto the idea.
And so here he was, walking gently down into the village, his best woman beside him. The sun shone brightly, but not so hard people would squint at the myriad cameras, and the wind was almost non-existent. He and Caffy weren’t alone in enjoying the day: it seemed to him that every bird in Kent was yelling its sweet heart out. He dawdled to a halt.
‘Are you all right?’ Caffy asked. ‘Good God, you’re not getting cold feet or anything?’
‘Absolutely not. Just enjoying – all this. It’s the first time I’ve heard the birds for ten years, give or take. The audiologist was right: the aids aren’t as good as having nice young ears, and he said that it can take a year or more to get the full benefit. But even this – this is a minor, no, quite a major miracle. A good omen.’
She chuckled. ‘Well done you for being so brave.’
‘What’s brave about seeing sense?’ he countered, not entirely honestly. It had felt like a very big step at the time, but now wearing the aids
was no more of a deal than putting on his reading glasses. Less of a deal. They went in first thing in the morning, and came out last thing at night, which meant that unlike the specs they didn’t get hidden under the newspapers or under the day’s post. ‘Not brave. Just getting sensible. And please don’t add, “In your old age!”’
‘As if I’d dare. Can you hear the bells?’
‘Imagine if I’d missed them. You know, there are some incomers who wanted them silenced. I won’t say they got run out of town, but it was damned near it. And here the bells are, welcoming us. This is so special, Caffy, all this.’ He spread his hands, as if embracing the whole day. ‘You have – you have got the rings?’
‘Of course I have.’ She patted her bag, small enough to hide behind the posy she carried, which matched Fran’s attendants’. She’d chosen not a mannish suit, as some best women might, but a simple, extremely elegant dress. She and Fran had chosen it together, when they’d picked out the little girls’ outfits. They looked as pretty as pictures; Caffy looked stunning. So what had gone wrong between her and the young man she’d been so infatuated with, Alistair?
Miraculously she had had no lingering damage from being trapped under the collapsing ruin, apart from a foot so wild in hue she’d taken photos of it. But there might be damage of another sort. Unlike her he wasn’t good at probing emotions, his or other people’s, but if Caffy needed a shoulder to cry on, he must put his at her disposal.
‘And how are you? Not the foot – there’s no sign of a limp, is there? I mean, over Alistair?’
She shrugged. ‘You win some, you lose some. It would have to be a very special relationship to survive working together. I don’t think we’d ever have got to the stage you and Fran have reached. Anyway, that won’t stop me dancing tonight. Point me to a handsome tennis player and you’ll see. Or,’ she added with a slight change in tone, ‘to Fran’s protégé, that nice Yorkshireman. They might be mother and son, mightn’t they?’
‘Tom? Yes, a lovely lad. She always insists that she’d have been a dreadful mother, always putting work first, and that the young people she mentors are her substitute kids. Tom certainly tells her home truths no one else would dare. Even me. Especially me.’
‘What does he think of her decision?’
‘To retire completely?’
‘As completely as Fran ever will retire,’ she said with a grin. ‘How will she cope?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine her without some project or other, can you? She’s not missed work too much these last few weeks because her task was to get well. And she had a lot of visitors popping in to tie up loose ends in the cases she’d been working on. CEOP have taken the lion’s share in the Livvie case, and I know she likes working with the two guys in charge.’
‘Ray and Ed? Good, old-fashioned, decent cops like you – the sort you’d stop to ask the time!’
‘Time! That’s one thing the poor buggers don’t have now. She’s not had so much to do with the skeletons case: they had to parachute in a woman from another MIT until the original SIO came back from sick leave. Meanwhile, the shrinks are still working on the man who went AWOL. But that’s between you and me. At least he’s back at the Met and no longer cluttering up our corridors.’
‘Mark, I have to say that that’s not a very kind sentiment from someone who had a breakdown himself.’
He couldn’t imagine anyone else being as forthright as that without being offensive. ‘Sorry. You’re right. But it seems so strange to me for a man to refuse to let anyone tell his parents he’s still alive. What sort of limbo …’ He coughed, and deliberately tweaked the subject. ‘You know Fran went to every single funeral for those kids? Spoke to every set of parents? That’s what policing should be. That’s what she expects of herself, and all who work for her. Sorry, that should be past tense. At least people like Tom will carry on the tradition.’ He was conscious that the reference to Tom was rather dragged in, as his next comment would be. ‘He’s been well taught. And I can’t imagine he won’t be popping round here from time to time to use Fran as a sounding board.’ And if he and Fran had anything to do with it, Tom and Caffy would pop round at the same time.
Whatever Caffy might have thought of his change of gear, she didn’t have the chance to tell him. Their priest for the day had wandered out of the church, which was picturesque to the point of being tourist bait, but was the place where they worshipped every week. Seeing them, Janey moved into the sun, raising her arms as if not just to greet them but to give further thanks for being declared free of cancer. She was vicar of an ugly church in a run-down part of Canterbury, and though they both loved her dearly, neither of them had wanted to marry there. The sadness, the suffering of the regular congregation had seeped into the fabric. It was Janey herself who’d suggested they ask their own rector if she might officiate in their church. Even deafer than Mark, and without trendy new aids, he had been happy to let her.
‘Come your ways inside: it’s quieter in there,’ she said. ‘The bells are deafening, aren’t they?’
‘They are indeed,’ Mark agreed gratefully, but looking behind him, wondering if he’d catch a glimpse of Fran.
‘It’s not that Fran’s late,’ Janey said reassuringly, leading the way down the aisle, ‘but that you’re early. Is she over her accidents? Truly?’
‘She’d never admit it if she wasn’t. But I’d say she is: she walks a couple of hours each day, uses an exercise bike someone in the village pressed on her, and we’ve hired a fancy rowing machine. She’s having acupuncture and doing Pilates and goodness knows what else. She was determined to get into her dress without having to have it let out.’
‘Have you seen it?’
‘What do you think? She insisted it would be bad luck.’
Caffy smiled. ‘It’s a cracker. Take it from me. And more than that I will not say. I’ll tell you this, though: you both look as if you’ve got lights switched on inside you today. Even if you weren’t kitted out in posh clothes, everyone would be looking at you and knowing what you’re about to do.’
‘You know Dizzy wanted to drive you down to the church?’ Tom said, checking she’d fastened her seat belt.
‘Come on, you’ve done a couple of pursuit driving courses yourself. You could still get us down in less than no time and stop with a great spurt of gravel. If you were in a police vehicle, of course,’ she added in her most ma’amish voice.
‘And if it were a bona fide emergency,’ he said, picking up her tone and grinning. ‘You heard they bust a police driver up in Brum for using blues and twos so he could pick up his kid from nursery? Which reminds me, why no kids in the back?’
‘Because Livvie’s still very clingy, and her mum’s driving her and Mark’s grandchildren down. She’s better at supervising kids than I am – she’ll stop them howling and might persuade them not to eat their flowers.’
‘And why should you have to get snot on that nice frock of yours? OK, Fran, are you ready?’
‘More than ready. Let’s hit the road. I feel such a fraud, you know, using a car. I’ve been walking ten times this distance against the clock every day.’
‘It’s not so much getting to the church, remember, it’s getting back. You’ll both need to be ready to greet your guests. I was wondering,’ he continued ultra-casually, ‘if I should give the best woman a lift back too? So we could compare notes for our speeches.’
Speeches? She’d never even considered there might be speeches. But that wasn’t what Tom was interested in, was it? It was Caffy, and why ever not? She was looking totally beautiful; perhaps her heart wasn’t broken by the break-up with whatshisname. And if it was, who better than Tom to mend it?
‘Here we are.’ He pulled on the handbrake. ‘And I am going to help you out, whatever you say, because you seriously do not want to tear your dress. Silk, isn’t it?’
She waited obediently, and, taking his arm, walked solemnly into the church. The kids fell into step behind.
Mark
turned towards her, and smiled.
Bother the slow march the organist was playing, bother her injured legs: she hitched up her skirt and ran towards him, arms outstretched.
EPILOGUE
She comes here every year, the anniversary of the day she saw him for the last time. No flowers, of course. If he was the victim of a car crash, she could leave a bouquet on the spot. But there was nothing dramatic like that. He just walked away, hands in pockets, not even turning to wave.
All she can do is peer down the road. Most times she’s had to cover her mouth to stop herself calling out because she thinks she’s seen him there. But it’s another lad in the same jeans and hoodie uniform walking away. In any case, he won’t be a kid now. He’ll be a man.
One last stare, one last sigh. She hunches away. She tells herself she’d know if he’d died – if he was one of the kids behind that wall. Is it wicked to envy their parents? At least they know, even if it is the worst that they know. At least there’s been a service for each one; at each she’s been part of the congregation, standing slightly apart at the back, not wishing to crowd the family or friends who were lucky enough to be able to say a last goodbye.
She even made a bit of a scene at one of them, when someone pointed out that the tall woman on crutches was one of the detectives. She grabbed her arm: ‘Are you sure,’ she wailed, ‘that there weren’t any other bodies? Are you sure you’ve identified them properly?’
The tall woman didn’t flinch. ‘The scientists promised me that each child – because they were no more than children, were they? – was properly identified. Promised me. There are no mistakes.’
‘At least they can bury theirs!’ she said, knowing her voice was carrying more than it should. ‘And my son – when will I know what’s happened to him?’
‘I wish I knew, Mrs—?’ the detective’s eyes had dropped to her ring finger.
‘I’m Ms now. It broke us up, losing him. We blamed each other. And I went back to my maiden name. Years ago. Oh, when will someone find him? When will I know what happened?’
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