Singled Out (4 page)

‘No, thanks.'

‘What – don't think you'd be up to it?' Rob called across waspishly.

‘No. Just don't want to. My career's still moving. Only people who're totally washed up and finished end up teaching.'

‘Ooh, what a tongue you've got on you! You can be so cruel sometimes,' sighed Rob, wiping an imagined tear from the corner of his eye.

‘Other message was from your brother.'

Laura turned slowly to face Esther. ‘What?'

‘Kent. He
said
he was your brother.'

‘Yes. Yes, my brother's name is Kent.'

‘He said he'd meet you here at seven after the show comes off the air.'

‘I'm not sure that that'd be … Was there a number I could call him back on?'

‘No, he was going to be out all day.'

‘Oh.'

‘Why? It's not a problem, is it?'

‘What? No, not a problem.'

But it was. There was something uncomfortable about the idea of Kent coming to her workplace. He didn't fit in. Here at the television company she was the Laura Fisher she had created for herself. Kent brought back memories of an earlier Laura Fisher. One she tried passionately hard not to think about.

The day's programme went well by
Newsviews
standards. In other words, there was a varied mix of untaxing items, the presenters smiled a lot, and very few words were spoken unsupported by pictures.

Laura was pleased with her contribution. Lumbered with doing
vox pops
rather than anything more creative, she had produced
vox pops
that stood out. She thought laterally, avoided predictable locations and found unpredictable people to give their opinions on make-up for men. The result, after long and arduous editing through the afternoon, was a very slick little package. The message to Dennis Parker was clear. You give me the boring jobs to do if you like, but I'll still demonstrate my superiority.

In the rush of meeting her deadline and the excitement of the live transmission, Laura had no time to think of the evening ahead. When the
Newsviews
closing credits rolled, it took her a moment to locate the reason for the slight unease within her. Kent. Of course. She rang Reception to see if he was waiting for her. No. She said she could be contacted in the bar, and if they let her know when he arrived, she'd come down to the foyer to meet him. That way she wouldn't have to introduce him to any of her colleagues. She put down the phone and joined the rest of the production team for the usual after-show drinks.

Needless to say, she ended up with Rob. She felt closer to him than anyone else on
Newsviews
. He was more intelligent than the others, for a start. More entertaining, too. And, she had to admit to herself, his sexual orientation lowered the stakes, enabled her to relax with him more than she could with any of the other men on the team.

‘So where's Mr Plod?' Rob asked.

‘My brother hasn't arrived yet,' Laura replied formally.

‘Off investigating a murder perhaps …?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Wonder if he's doing this Melanie Harris case …?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I'll be fascinated to meet him.'

‘I'm not sure that he'll be fascinated to meet you.'

‘No, of course not.' Rob dropped into a thick copper's voice. ‘“I don't want to mix with bloody perverts, me. I'm a straight copper, not a bent copper.”' He chuckled. ‘Not that they're all like that, you know. Oh, by no means. I met a
very
interesting Detective Inspector up in a little cottage in Kentish Town … and fortunately … he'd brought his truncheon with him!'

Rob giggled, covering his face with a hand in mockery of his own outrageousness. Laura smiled. She never failed to succumb to his awkward childlike charm.

‘You're an idiot, Rob. Anyway, I don't think I'll give you the chance to find out what you think of Kent. Soon as they let me know he's arrived, I'll go and meet him at Reception.'

‘Don't be such a mean cow. I want to meet him. You say he's not married, don't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘We-ell …' Rob spread his hands wide in a gesture that seemed to encompass all possibilities. ‘You never know, I could be what he's been searching for all these years.'

‘I somehow doubt it.'

‘Stranger things have happened, dear. Look, you and me get on so well together … just a pity we're the wrong sex for each other. But if Kent's the male version of you … wowee, thunderbolts and lightning
at the very least
.'

‘Kent isn't the male version of me. We're very different. We don't have the same …' Her words trickled away as she followed Rob's eyeline. Walking towards them, aloof, as if risking contagion from the chattering crowds in the bar, was a tall, solid, rectangular figure in a grey suit and striped tie.

‘Mm, now that is
chunky
,' Rob murmured.

Laura rose to her feet. ‘Kent. How did you get in? I told Reception to give me a call and I'd come down to meet you.'

Kent Fisher shrugged awkwardly. ‘They directed me straight up here.'

‘God, the security in this place is so hopeless.'

Sister and brother stood facing each other. There wasn't that much likeness, except in their colouring. His hair was cropped short, and the heavy shadow on his chin suggested his day had started early. They didn't kiss or even hug. Kent would have regarded such gestures as embarrassing showbiz affectation. Besides, theirs wasn't that kind of relationship. They hadn't grown up in an environment where touching was encouraged.

‘Well, Laura dear …' Rob fluted into the silence, ‘aren't you going to introduce me?'

Kent took one look. He noted the tight, long-collared shirt, the velvet trousers, the small diamond finger-ring, and Rob was instantly pigeonholed.

‘This is my brother Kent. Rob Sinclair.'

Rob held out – or rather flourished – a hand. Without enthusiasm, Kent reached across and gave it a perfunctory shake.

‘
Do
join us for a drink.
Please
. Laura's told me
so
much about you.' Rob sat down and patted the seat beside him. ‘
Do
sit down and tell me all about what it's like being at the
sharp end
of the battle against crime.'

Laura couldn't decide whether Rob was being more camp than usual or whether he just seemed so in Kent's awkward and forbidding presence.

‘Get you a bijou drinkette, Kent?' Rob enquired.

‘Well …'

‘Oh,
go on
. We're going to have another,
aren't
we, Laura darling?'

‘Well –'

‘
Course
we are.' Rob sprang up again from his seat and asked in a self-consciously butch way, ‘What's your poison, Kent old man?'

‘Erm, a light ale, thank you.'

Before Laura had time to stop him, Rob scampered away to the bar. She sat down. Kent lowered himself heavily on to the seat beside Rob's, then pointedly moved it away.

‘So who's he, Laura?'

‘A researcher. Someone I work with on the show.'

‘Uhuh.'

Again there was silence between them. Laura felt, as she always did in Kent's presence, younger, immature. She felt she had to justify herself. ‘Today's programme went very well,' she said.

‘Did it? Ah.'

‘You have a good day?'

‘Busy.' He didn't volunteer any more.

Laura looked at her brother, and felt a familiar irritation. It was his slowness that always infuriated her, his unwillingness to initiate a conversation. She felt something for him, affection maybe – her upbringing had made her cautious about ever using the word ‘love' – but Kent's doggedness had always driven her mad.

Presumably, at work, as a Detective Sergeant, he had to be more forceful, to take the initiative more often. Perhaps it was only she who brought out the reticence in him. But, whatever the reasons for his slowness, it always made her disproportionately angry. She found herself demanding, with more brusqueness than she intended, ‘Well, what is it, Kent? Is there some particular reason why you thought it necessary to come and see me here?'

‘Yes,' he replied ponderously. ‘Yes, there is a reason.' He let one of his aggravating pauses hang in the air, then opened his mouth to continue, but was silenced by the return of Rob sashaying across the bar with one uplifted hand supporting a tray of drinks and the other balanced balletically on his hips.

‘Drinkies,' he trilled. ‘Drai whaite waine for the lady – and for you, sir, a light ale. I always think light ale's such a
masculine
drink – positively
butch
, don't you agree?'

Kent was totally unqualified to deal with this kind of posturing. His natural instinct – probably to hit its perpetrator – was restrained by the knowledge that Rob was his sister's friend. But he didn't have any other appropriate behaviour to fall back on. With a gruff ‘Thank you', he edged further away from the seat into which Rob sank like a wilting lily.

‘Oooh, I certainly need this after the day we've had.' Rob held his glass up to the light and swirled around the red fluid with its clinking ice. ‘Always Campari for me – with the emphasis on the “Camp”.' He brought his knees together and leant forward to Kent in a parody of fascination. ‘Tell me,' he said with a flutter of eyelashes, ‘have you ever worn make-up?'

‘What?' This time it looked as though Kent really would follow his instinct and hit the researcher.

Laura intervened quickly. ‘Just we've been doing a feature on it today.'

‘On what?'

‘Make-up for men.'

Kent snorted and took a long swallow from his drink.

‘Apparently it is going to come,' Laura explained. ‘And in our feature today a surprising number of the interviewees seemed quite attracted to the idea. Lots of men in the States use it already.'

‘Yes, and I can just imagine what kind of men,' said Kent, with an unequivocal look at Rob.

‘What, people like
moi
, you mean?' Rob's hands fluttered coyly to his chest. ‘True, I'm not quite the Adonis I was a few years back. Anno Domini has taken its cruel toll, I'm not ashamed to admit it. Are you suggesting I might benefit from a dab of the old Max Factor and a flick of mascara? Well … I think you could be right.' Rob's face formed into a mask of wistful tragedy. ‘Blunt, Kent, cruel perhaps, but – I'm horribly afraid – right.'

The atmosphere didn't improve. Laura kept pleading with her eyes to Rob, but the researcher was enjoying himself far too much and her unspoken entreaties seemed only to goad him to further outrage. Kent became more and more silent, his shoulders more and more rigid.

After a while Laura gave up. She hurried down the rest of her wine and rose to her feet. ‘Better be on our way. Are you free for dinner, Kent? We can talk then.'

Kent grunted that he was free.

‘I'm free for dinner too,' Rob cooed winsomely.

‘Well, bad luck. You're not coming with us.'

A flicker of hurt crossed the researcher's eye, and Laura felt guilty for the brutality of her words. She knew the emptiness of Rob's evenings when he hadn't got anything arranged. But this evening she had to be pitiless. ‘I'll talk to you tomorrow,' she hissed at him as they got their coats. ‘You're absolutely incorrigible.'

‘I know,' the researcher sighed with a defeated gesture. ‘I've spent all my life looking for someone to “corrige” me, but have I had any luck? Need you ask?'

As Laura and Kent left the bar, she looked round. Rob lingered, a model of indecision, weighing the options of diving back into the boisterous derision of the
Newsviews
team, or returning to his solitary bedsitter in Kentish Town.

Her brother's body language recoiled from the pastel decor and tall potted plants of the restaurant, but Laura was damned if she was going to change her lifestyle to accommodate his tastes. She knew he would have preferred some honest, traditional place with an English menu and soggy vegetables, but she felt again the perverse desire to antagonize him.

He looked askance at the slim black-clad waiter who flourished menus at them, and his thick eyebrows rose when he saw the contents. ‘It's all right,' said Laura. ‘My idea – my treat.'

Kent shrugged. He didn't need to say, ‘Well, if you choose to waste your money on overpriced Frenchified stuff like this, that's up to you.' His body said it for him.

They ordered. Kent, with a perverseness matching Laura's, insisted on a plain steak without any of the sauces which had helped bring the restaurant and its chef into
The Good Food Guide
for the first time that year. The manner of his insistence contrived – probably as he intended – to put the waiter's back up.

The waiter flounced away and Kent looked at his sister with defiance. Then a great weariness seemed to assail him. His shoulders slumped, tension seeping out of his body, and with the back of his hand he stifled a yawn.

‘Long day?' asked Laura, solicitude apologizing for her earlier brusqueness.

Kent nodded. ‘Called out at three o'clock this morning.'

‘What for?'

‘Someone had found a body in a car park.'

‘Melanie Harris?'

He nodded.

‘She'd been strangled, hadn't she?'

‘I don't want to talk about it,' he said with sudden roughness. More gently, he continued. ‘I'm not allowed to talk about it, apart from anything else.'

‘No. No, obviously not.'

Kent looked down at his cutlery. He ran a finger slowly along the line of his steak knife. Laura once again felt the irritation well up in her. Why couldn't he just get on with it? Say what he had to say? Why all this bloody preamble every time? But she buttoned her lip and let him make his revelation at his own pace.