But Toshiko didn’t want to think about that. She forced a smile. ‘You’re a bundle of joy today.’
Owen fought down the urge to tell her that he didn’t get the opportunity for much joy these days. He wondered whether he should also remind her that they were at SkyPoint to do a job, and that they were not there playing House.
Owen’s heart may have stopped beating; it didn’t mean he didn’t have one any more.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
And he was sorry. If he hadn’t been dead, playing man and wife with Toshiko for a couple of nights could have been fun. He was also sorry because he liked Toshiko (strangely he had grown to like her so much more since there had been no chance of – and no point in – bedding her) and he knew that a big part of her was looking forward to their stay here. She had feelings for him that he could never return, and she knew that, but this SkyPoint job was the closest she was ever going to get to playing husband and wife – probably, with anyone.
This was her dream job, he thought. It would have made his stomach turn over, had it still been able to.
He should tell her now, he thought, that this was a mission – that they had a job to do – and anything else going on inside her head was just pure fantasy, and she should quit it right now. The trouble was, he didn’t have the heart to do that. How could he do that to a woman that loved him even though he was a walking corpse.
If you loved her, you would.
Christ, he hoped they could clear this business up fast.
The doorbell went.
They looked at each other. They had agreed that Jack and the others should stay away while Owen and Toshiko got settled in at SkyPoint. No one else knew they were there.
‘Maybe it’s the milkman come to sign us up,’ Owen theorised with a frown. He headed for the door. ‘What do you like on your cornflakes in a morning?’
He opened the door to a tall woman with cascading blonde hair in a white dress. If she’d had wings coming off her shoulder blades, he’d have believed in angels. Beside her stood an economy copy. Same golden hair, same finely sculpted cheekbones, same blue-green eyes. Just in jeans and a T-shirt with a kitten face on it.
The little girl smiled up at Owen. ‘Hello, I’m Alison. What’s your name?’
Kids were about as alien as it got for Owen. Some guys couldn’t talk to women. He never had a problem there. But kids…
The mother spoke before he had to. ‘I’m Wendy, this is Alison. Sorry, my daughter always likes to get in first.’
‘What did you do to your hand?’
Alison had noticed Owen’s bandaged fingers.
‘I had an accident,’ he told her.
Behind him, he felt Toshiko come to the door. He felt her hand slip around his waist, the way a wife might squeeze her husband’s waist when she found him at the door talking to a cute blonde stranger.
‘Hello?’ she smiled.
‘Wendy Lloyd. This is my daughter Alison. We live just there,’ she said, indicating the half-open door across the passageway. Number forty-four.
‘Just wanted to welcome you to the block.’
Toshiko leaned forward to shake Wendy’s hand. ‘Toshiko,’ she said. ‘And Owen.’
‘Hi,’ said Owen.
Toshiko looked down at the little girl and tugged playfully on her kitten-face T-shirt. ‘I like your kitty cat.’
‘Mummy says I can have a real one when I’m six.’
‘And how old are you now?’ Toshiko asked.
‘Five and three-quarters.’
‘Not long to wait then,’ said Toshiko.
See, thought Owen, that’s what he couldn’t do – find something to talk about with kids. Largely because all you could talk to them about was kitty cats and puppy dogs and dolls and toy cars. And, quite frankly, he didn’t give a shit.
Toshiko straightened up and asked Wendy if she and Alison wanted to come in. Owen, she said, had just put some coffee on. Maybe Wendy caught the look of horror that flashed across Owen’s face.
‘No, it’s all right, you’re probably up to your necks in packing cases. I know what it’s like on moving-in day. But if you want, why not come over later for dinner? You’ll probably be too tired to cook, and we’re just sending out for an Indian. You can meet my husband, and I can bring you up to speed on all the SkyPoint gossip.’
Owen was forming a polite decline when Toshiko said they would love to.
Wendy’s smile shone, and Owen had another vision of angels.
‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘Come round about seven and we’ll dig out the take-away menu.’
‘See you then,’ said Toshiko.
And Wendy led Alison away by the hand. The little girl was still watching them as Wendy closed the door of their apartment behind them.
Toshiko slipped back through their door. ‘At least the neighbours seem nice.’
Owen followed her back into the apartment and kicked the door shut with his heel. The Dave Brubeck Quartet had moved on to ‘Cassandra’. Maybe that would have chilled out his mum and dad, but right now it didn’t do anything for him.
‘What are you playing at, Tosh?’
She looked back at him, genuinely puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Going around the neighbours for dinner. Look, this isn’t for real, you know. Whatever’s going on inside your head, Tosh, this isn’t us living happily ever after. I’m here to find out what’s making people disappear around here, not to fulfil some warped fantasy of yours.’
Toshiko’s eyes burned with a moist rage. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Oh, come on, Tosh. This is your dream come true.’
‘Actually, Owen, no it isn’t! This is nothing like my dream come true!’
She couldn’t look at him any more. She crossed to the window, stared out across the water and wished she could throw herself into it.
Owen stood still, watching her. He could see her trembling with pent-up rage. He felt like an idiot. How the hell could this be anyone’s idea of a dream come true – pretending you were married to a bloody corpse!
Still staring out of the window, determined to keep at least some control of her emotions, Toshiko said, ‘I know what we’re doing here, Owen. It’s my job, too. And that’s all I’ve got, my job.
‘But the instruments have drawn a blank. There’s not the first sign of Rift activity. And that means the only way we’re going to find anything out is from the people that live here. I’m sorry if that means we have to make it look like we love each other, but believe me, Owen, that is no dream-come-true for me. It doesn’t even come close.’
Owen stood at the window and looked out over the Bay with her. He wanted to touch her, wanted to tell her that he was a prick, and that he was sorry. But he thought she would tell him to shove it, and he didn’t blame her.
Instead he said, ‘I suppose we should count that as our first marital.’
TEN
Toshiko didn’t want Owen to think a joke was going to get him off the hook just like that.
With barely a word she had gone into the bedroom and grabbed the messenger bag that carried her equipment then told him she was going to take a look around as she went through the front door.
‘I’m getting on with the job,’ she said as the door closed.
It didn’t hit her until she got into the elevator that she was following the ritual of domestic politics she had grown up watching her mother employ on her dad.
Never let a man know you’ve accepted his apology. Let him sweat a little more first.
Her mother had never actually tutored her in the fine art of male-female power games, but it was the sort of thing she would have said. And the young Toshiko had seen her employ the gambit so many times, she had come to understand its mechanics the way a lion cub learns to hunt.