There was a card. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening. Could you bear to do it again sometime?’
Could I bear it? The man was either deluded or bluffing.
I knew he should already be back on Abri and I called him there to thank him for the flowers. We chatted inconsequentially for a few minutes, and then, to my joy, he asked me out again.
‘I’m in Bristol much more than usual at the moment on business, talking to bankers mostly,’ he said, sounding rather weary. ‘I’m inclined to need cheering up after a day of those sort of meetings, and another dinner with you would do that admirably, I’m sure.’
I said it sounded good to me.
‘Same place, same time, on Thursday then?’ he suggested.
I agreed.
This time it was different. The awkwardness of that first dinner was no longer with us. And we did not talk about Natasha or the inquest or Jason Tucker, or, indeed, any of that at all. Instead he coaxed me to tell him about my life.
‘You already know so much about me, and I know so little about you,’ he said.
I began hesitantly. ‘Yes, you do,’ I fibbed. ‘I’ve been in the police force since I was eighteen. There’s not a lot more to tell.’
‘I suspect there is,’ he said. And he gently but persistently prodded away at my tightly coiled reserve until I began to open up as never before. It was a relief really, a kind of therapy. I was in the habit of revealing so little, and certainly since the break-up of my marriage I had kept my feelings strictly to myself. I still had the feelings though.
I found myself talking to Robin Davey as I had not done even with Julia. And certainly not with Simon. But then there was a lot more to tell now than when I had met my ex-husband. In my job and in my life I had seen so much since then, experienced so much, and a great deal of it I would have liked to forget. Or, better still, preferred never to have known about.
For starters I told Robin Davey about my upbringing in Weston-super-Mare and my desperately social-climbing mother. Then I gave him the story of how I had first met Simon on an intercity train and had virtually fallen on top of him and poured coffee down his trousers, and how we had fallen almost instantly in love, had married and stayed together for twelve years. I even tried to explain how it felt when that marriage, born of so much passion and promise, began to fall apart, not because either of us had found someone else, not for any reasons I could easily relate. Perhaps because of my job, that was what Simon always blamed, but more perhaps because we grew apart and the rift that came between us was inevitable.
I told him about my work in Child Protection, and the big serial murder case I had worked on previously, and the way something like that takes over your whole existence, eroding all thoughts of a personal life and coming back to haunt you in the middle of long lonely nights for ever more.
I told him what I had not even admitted to Julia — how I had been so disturbed by that case and the effect it had had on me and on my marriage that I had not just considered leaving the police force, I actually wrote a letter of resignation. And I told him about the days when I still didn’t quite know why I had never posted it.
‘You see, when I realised that my marriage was over, there was nothing else for me except my work,’ I said. ‘And yet, ironically, the job has never been quite the same since...’
Robin Davey was a good listener. I talked for a long time, and when I had finished I could not believe that I had said so much, nor did I understand why I had done so. If he thought my frankness was anything other than completely normal and ordinary he certainly gave no sign, although still he did not speak. A thought occurred to me.
‘I don’t know why I’m going on like this, I’m supposed to be a professional,’ I said. ‘I have been lucky, I’ve never had any personal experience of tragedy. A broken marriage is nothing compared with what you have been through. You have had far more than your share of tragedy.’
His slow smile tugged at my heart.
‘You know my story,’ he said. ‘You know about my wife and son, it seems like everybody in the world does, and, on top of everything else, Natasha’s death has brought all that back to me very vividly. There can’t be anything much worse in life than watching those you love die of AIDS.’
He paused and I remained silent, not knowing what to say.
‘There was guilt in that too,’ he went on. ‘Sometimes I was as afraid for myself as I was for them, you see. At first it seemed inevitable that I must have the disease too...’
I was startled. I suppose because he looked so fit and well and it had all been so long ago I hadn’t even thought of that. He read my mind and managed another small smile.
‘No, I didn’t get it,’ he said. ‘Had all the tests and that was a nightmare too, but I eventually was given the all clear. God knows how I escaped. There were times when I half wished...’
I spoke before he could finish the sentence. I didn’t want to hear what I was sure he was going to say.
‘Don’t,’ I instructed firmly. ‘Don’t even think it.’
He grinned then, and straightened in his chair.
‘Not thinking is how I cope, actually,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want to even speak about any of it any more, to be honest. I want to look forward not back. That’s the only way I know to survive now.’
He shrugged his big shoulders as if trying to shrug off his memories. His deep blue eyes were very serious again. Yet very gentle. It had been just five months since Natasha had died. Could he really put her out of his mind like that, I wondered, as well as all that had gone before. But, shamelessly, by the time I heard him suggest that we leave, all I could really think about was how good it would be to have him hold me close.
He took me home in a taxi this time, and he paid off the driver making no pretence of keeping the cab waiting. I think we both knew what was going to happen. But once again I did not get the chance to invite him in for coffee. He invited himself. And if he hadn’t done so, and followed me straight into the lift, I think I’d probably have dragged him into it. To hell with decorum and playing hard to get and being sensible. I didn’t think I had ever wanted anyone so much in my life — not even Simon.
We got as far as the living room. That was pretty good. The hallway would have done as far as I was concerned. I had never been quite so eager. Talking to Robin Davey the way I had at San Carlos had already created a rare intimacy between us, as far as I was concerned anyway. And I had been more or less celibate for what seemed like for ever. There had been only the handful of one-night stands that hadn’t really counted since Simon. This one was going to count, I was damn sure of that somehow. And I was right.
Robin half pushed me onto the sofa. He dropped to his knees before me and lowered his head. As a rule I could put up with several days of that, but somehow with him I couldn’t wait. There was suddenly a sense of desperation about it. I was consumed by my need for him. I found a strength I did not know I had. I pulled him on top of me and nearly ripped his trousers off. When he was inside me I came almost at once, and that’s not like me at all either. As I came I started to cry. When all my emotions and the height of physical sensation get mixed up and explode at once I’m inclined to do that, but I hadn’t since Simon. That first time with Robin was just spectacular. My desire for him was on many levels, and it was a bonus that he turned out to be something of a superstud. The urgent somewhat scrambled coupling on my new cream sofa was merely the start of an imaginative sex session lasting well into the early hours, and I hadn’t realised just how much I had needed a night like that.
There was more of course. It was the closeness I felt for the man, the emotional bond I believed to be already between us, which had heightened my physical responses to him, every bit as much as his considerable sexual prowess. By the time I stepped rather weakly under my state-of-the-art American power shower in the morning I was aware that my feelings for him were probably already more intense in every way than anything I had known before — even though I was still trying not to admit that to myself.