When I Wasn't Watching (5 page)

‘What were you thinking?'

Danielle Wyatt dropped the paper onto the table as if it were a particularly smelly diaper, her fingers curling away from it even before she had let it go.

Lucy had no time to defend herself before Ricky did it for her, glaring at his usually beloved grandmother.

‘I think it's awesome. It's about time Mum stuck up for herself. Maybe now they'll lock that piece of shit back up.'

‘Stop swearing,' both women said simultaneously, before Lucy straightened her back and looked her mother in the eye.

‘It needs saying, Mum, and it needed saying now. Okay, I was angry, but don't I have a right to be?'

Danielle's face softened. Even she had to admit to herself that it was better Lucy was like this, fired up by righteous ire, than retreating further into the shell she had built around herself since Jack died. Even before that, she had often thought privately. Remembering Lucy's attempt to be the perfect wife to Ethan, to conform to what he and his family wanted, as if she wasn't good enough. Even seeming to accept it when Ethan ran off with someone else. It was good to see a glimpse of the old Lucy, of the spunky young woman she had been before Ethan, before Jack, but this was a step too far. This was dangerous.

‘It's inflammatory, Lucy, it could stir up no end of trouble. There have already been protests; I saw them on the news.' Danielle saw everything on the news, or through her twitching living-room curtains. If she didn't know everything that was going on in the world around her, she didn't feel safe.

‘Good,' Lucy said defiantly, but her eyes strayed towards the newspaper lying like a time bomb on her mother's Cath Kidston tablecloth. The picture of her took up most of the front page and the nervous-looking photographer had managed to capture the anger in her eyes, the firm set to the jaw, so that she looked like a crusading Amazon, with her light brown hair tumbling around her face. It was a good picture, she thought with a touch of pride.

There was no doubting that the headline the
Sun
had chosen to run above it, however, was nothing short of incendiary. ‘If the government won't do something I will.' Not that Lucy had any real idea what, if anything, she could do, but it had felt good to sound off to the whippet of a reporter with the greedy eyes who had so eagerly spurred Lucy on.

The interview took up five pages; mostly Lucy talking about the toll Jack's death had taken on her life, but then at the end, when the reporter had asked her if she had a message for the hundreds of people currently hurling abuse outside the City Hall, Lucy's reply had been a flippant ‘Tell them to shout louder.' In front of her in black and white, she could see her mother's point.

And yet, that newly awakened angry voice inside her whispered, why shouldn't they carry on? Why shouldn't taxpayers and voters and any citizen in fact have the right to raise their voices against such a gross miscarriage of justice? Parents who feared for their own children knowing there was a vicious child killer on the loose? Lucy felt something burning in her that had lain dormant for too long. She had needed to speak out. If that caused trouble, well whose fault was that?
She
hadn't released Terry Prince. The hot wave of hatred that came over her at the shape of his name in her mind made her bow her head and clasp her hands together as if to contain it.

Under the table Ricky reached for her hand and squeezed it and Lucy smiled at him, grateful. Sometimes Ricky was older than his years, and she drank him in for a moment; his handsome face and lanky body, growing too fast but with the promise of filling out one day. A shame he insisted on covering the bloom of youth with a too-big baseball cap perched on his head and jeans that hung nearly to his crotch.

‘I'm going out,' he announced, breaking the tense silence, ‘I'm going to play Xbox at Tyler's.'

Lucy nodded. ‘Ring me…'

‘…when I get there and before I leave, yeah I know.'

‘Do you want me to drive you?'

Ricky scowled, his face showing exactly what he thought of that suggestion.

‘No! It's only round the corner.'

He kissed her on the cheek and left, leaving Lucy staring after him until her mother's words cut through the unease that would linger around her until Ricky returned.

‘Don't smother him, Lucy. He's a young man now, in his own mind at least.'

Lucy turned a stricken face to her mother, her blue eyes seeming to take over her whole face.

‘Mum,' she said matter of factly, ‘I lost a child.'

Danielle said nothing, just watched her daughter, a moment ago so full of wrath, now anxiously worrying at her nails, and remembered how in the aftermath of Jack's murder Lucy had seemed to fold in on herself over and over until there was nothing left.
So did I
, she thought,
I lost my child too
.

Matt jogged up the stairs to Carla's apartment, a bunch of lilies in one hand. A poor peace offering no doubt, but after two days of the silent treatment Matt knew he had to make some kind of gesture. He had never known Carla to be silent for two hours, never mind days, and when she had failed to even answer her mobile to him that morning he had begun to wonder if there was something seriously wrong. Having seen the interview with Lucy Randall in the paper the day before, he guessed Carla would be seriously put out that another reporter had pipped her to the post, but even so three whole days of sulking seemed excessive.

As he reached the doors and passed the flowers from one hand to the other to press Carla's number, he felt a gnawing sense of dread at seeing her that in turn made him feel sad. What had happened to the days when they had looked forward to seeing each other, when they had actually enjoyed each other's company? They seemed a lifetime away.

Matt shook off his nostalgia as Carla's voice rang out a hello through the intercom.

‘Can I come in? I want to talk.' There was a silence that even through the intercom system managed to convey frostiness. ‘I've missed you,' he added, even though the nature of his job – and his own regular need for solitude – meant that going three days or even weeks without seeing each other wasn't unusual. She didn't answer, but the buzzer went and the door in front of him clicked to signify his welcome.

Carla, as he expected, curled her nose up at the lilies but took them anyway, and bustled around putting them in water and arranging them without saying a word to him as he stood awkwardly waiting.

‘Carla, I'm sorry,' he began, though as usual he wasn't quite sure what he had to apologise for. She straightened and looked at him, her full mouth pursed. She was wearing a ridiculously tight, low-cut top and Matt had to tear his eyes away from her breasts, his cock twitching at the thought of burying his head in them. It had been a while.

As if reading his thoughts, Carla crossed her arms across her chest. She looked lovely, her hair curled and face carefully made up, as if she had pre-empted his arrival.

‘No, Matt, I'm sorry. This clearly isn't working. You're selfish, egotistical, and clearly don't appreciate what you've got.' She uncrossed her arms and motioned towards herself, displaying again what he was apparently not appreciating. Matt sighed.

‘Carla, we've been over all this before. I've always made it clear how I feel. If that's not enough for you, then I'm sorry.' He realised that he was sorry. For all her faults Carla was a good woman, and certainly did deserve better than a short-on-time, commitment-shy cop. Even so, her next words weren't what he was expecting.

‘Well, it's not enough. So I've found someone who is.'

Matt gaped at her. In two days? Even by Carla's standards, that was pretty quick. It dawned on him that the display of cleavage and shiny hair weren't meant for him after all.

‘Okay,' he nodded, determined to be grown up about this. ‘Well, I hope we can be friends.' Did anyone even say that any more? The phrase sounded false even to him.

He didn't ask the question Carla obviously expected – or wanted – him to ask, but she answered it for him anyway.

‘It's Jacob. The new editor from work. You've met him before.'

Matt remembered him, a stuck-up, pretentious public schoolboy type who looked vaguely like Brad Pitt and was all too aware of that fact. Perfect for Carla.

Carla stepped away, her arms folded again but an anxious expression on her face. She expected him to be angry. It dawned on him that Carla had probably lined Jacob up as his replacement long before their current clash. Had maybe been sleeping with him all along. Matt waited for a rage of jealousy or sadness to overtake him, but it didn't come. In fact, the only emotion slowly creeping up inside him was relief.

‘I'm happy for you,' he offered, realising he meant it. It wasn't the reaction Carla expected – or perhaps wanted – as she glared at him with her eyes narrowed.

‘You mean that don't you? You really don't care.'

Matt took the raising of her pitch to be his cue to leave. He walked over and kissed her on the cheek before she had time to react then turned to leave. Carla darted in front of him.

‘That's it? You don't have anything to say?'

He looked down at her, seeing how sharp her features were, how in the overhead light her thick make-up looked like a mask across her face, and thought that no, he had nothing to say to her. In fact, he felt strangely empty of either feeling or words.

‘What do you want from me, Carla?'

She looked genuinely puzzled.

‘A reaction at least would be nice. We've been seeing each other for three years, you could show some emotion. Or do you just save that for missing kids?'

Her barb hit home, evoking in him the reaction that her dismissal of their relationship had not. Angry and hurt, Matt went to step past her but she stepped in front of him, spoiling for a fight he didn't want to have. She reached up as if she were about to slap him, or perhaps she meant to caress his cheek, but Matt caught her slender wrist in his hand. Anger radiated off him now, causing Carla to cower a little under his gaze.

‘Do you know why I didn't want kids with you?' he said, his words measured yet throbbing with a quiet rage. ‘Because children aren't a fashion statement or something you have because you're the right age and all your friends are doing it. Because once you have a child they should become your whole world.
And you have to keep them safe
. I wouldn't leave you in charge of a fucking hamster.'

He dropped her wrist and pushed past her. This time Carla let him go. Matt drove off in a blind fury which the congested traffic did nothing to ease. He realised he was heading not for home but for the station, naturally gravitating towards it even on his day off. Perhaps it was taking over his life, but Matt had to concede, with a desolate misery that dampened his anger, that he didn't really have anything else in his life. Carla had been a foil, the prerequisite trophy girlfriend that showed he was successful without being married to his career. That even a hard-bitten murder detective could hold down a normal relationship, and with a beautiful woman no less.

It was all bollocks, he thought as he swung the car away from the station and headed who-knew-where. His whole life was becoming a bad joke; give him a few years and he would have a drink problem and a mangy cat. He drove without any particular destination for a while, reaching a suburb of town that felt familiar before pulling up outside a newsagents. He was thirsty and tired. A can of energy drink should do it; he might be headed for clichéville, but he wasn't going to succumb just yet.

Ricky looked into the smug features of his friend and shrugged.

‘There's cameras,' he said by way of explanation, cutting his eyes towards the corner of the shop. The shopkeeper could be heard humming away to herself in the back. There were two types of shopkeepers, Ricky had found: those who instinctively distrusted teenagers and who followed them through the aisles like a hawk, with their eyes if not their actual bodies; and then those who trusted everyone in their local community. Who would steal from their friendly local newsagent, who always gave credit and slipped extra sweets in for the little ones?

Which of course was exactly why Tyler had dared him to steal something right now, right here. Ricky was becoming adept at pinching things; he was naturally quick and nimble-fingered, a talent he had previously employed in sports and craft classes but had now found a much more interesting use for. Just not here. This wasn't the local supermarket or even the Asian shop, whose owners were definitely of the former variety of shopkeeper. This was Mrs McKellar. She knew his mum. The last thing Ricky needed, right now was his mum turning those worried and always slightly disappointed eyes on him and making him feel guilty.

He always felt guilty around her, although he was never sure quite what for. Being born maybe. Or just not being Jack. He wondered if Jack would have had nimble fingers too. No one would notice a sweet little kid pinching stuff, not with two surly-looking teenagers looking naturally suspicious in the next aisle.

Tyler gave him a none-too-gentle push in the arm, bringing him sharply back to reality.

‘Told you you wouldn't do it,' he sneered, sounding a lot younger than his fourteen years.

‘It's not even worth it,' Ricky said under his breath as Mrs McKellar's humming got closer.

The door tinkled and a well-built man walked in, his eyes sweeping over them without interest as he headed to the fridge which held the soft drinks. Tyler raised his eyebrows at him. The guy was standing in the direct view of the aforementioned cameras. Not that they were even real; they were empty, put there by Mr McKellar as a deterrent, which his wife had pooh-poohed but then left up to keep him happy. Of course, Tyler didn't know that.

He thrust the bottle of Budweiser towards him and Ricky took it, tucking it into the inner pockets of his hooded jacket with impressive speed. Maybe he could be a magician when he was older, one of those sleight-of hand-ones.