‘It’s great to be home,’ he whispered into her ear, gazing at the side of her face, unable to prevent himself noticing how much of a toll the last two years had taken on her appearance. Her skin had a permanent greyish tinge that never used to be there, and her dark brown hair, once so shiny and buoyant, was flat and dull.
They needed a holiday, he thought. All three of them.
He felt her shoulder relax a little under his hand and saw the side of her cheek curve up into a smile. ‘This is our new start, right?’
She nodded again, but she didn’t seem overly enthusiastic either.
‘How do you feel about it, Gill?’ he ventured. ‘Are we OK?’ He realised he was asking himself that question as much as her.
In reply, she turned to kiss him. It was the first time they had properly kissed for two years, and initially it was clumsy, teeth clashing, tongues out of synch. Patrick felt like he was fourteen again. That thought in turn led him to have an unwelcome flash of Jessica McMasters’ disfigured body spread-eagled on the dustsheet of the makeshift studio floor earlier that day, with the trappings of a real photo shoot around her, lights and reflectors, making a mockery of a studio portrait. Stupid girl, he thought. How could she have been taken in like that? He would make sure he brought Bonnie up to be far more street-smart.
He banished the thoughts immediately and pulled Gill’s warm body closer to him. She responded, pressing her breasts into his side, and gradually the kiss became more comfortable and erotic. For the first time, Patrick felt that he had his wife back.
‘I’ve missed this so much,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ve missed you.’
Gill put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him again. ‘I’ve missed you too, Pat.’
After a few minutes, Gill’s hand slid down his torso and inside his jeans. He groaned with pleasure. He was so turned on that he thought he would come then and there, as soon as Gill’s probing fingers touched his flesh.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ he whispered, standing up with difficulty and holding out his hand to her.
She smiled properly at him then and he was reminded again how beautiful she was. He had forgotten how her nose crinkled when she smiled; how her eyes magnetised him when she looked at him like this. He hadn’t looked at her properly for two years, had averted his gaze since that terrible day when he came home and found her sobbing – here on the stairs.
He froze, plunged back in time for a moment, his ardour ebbing away.
‘What’s wrong?’ Gill whispered, but he shook his head, unable to answer. He led her up the narrow stairs, stepping over the step where she’d sat, shoving away the memories. As they reached the landing, Gill stumbled and ricocheted off Bonnie’s bedroom door. They both froze as they heard Bonnie stir and mumble in her toddler bed, but after a few moments all fell silent again and they tiptoed into their bedroom.
Patrick was glad it was dark. It felt too weird being back in this intimate space together. Trying to bring himself back to the moment, he gently pushed Gill onto the bed on her back, and lay down on top of her, pressing himself into her as they kissed again. He relaxed again, lost in the moment, trying not to think about how long it had been since he’d had sex, fighting back the urge to crack a joke about having forgotten what to do.
He worked Gill’s skirt and knickers down over her hips and, as she unbuttoned her shirt, breathing hard, he kissed her there, between her legs, the smell and taste of her and the way she gasped so familiar but so strange. He moved back up the bed, trailing kisses across her belly. She pushed him onto his back and straddled his thighs, unbuckling his belt and helping him pull his T-shirt over his head, tracing his tattoos with trembling fingers.
‘Oh God, Pat, you don’t know how much I thought about this when I was . . . away . . . I used to construct this fantasy about what you’d do to me in bed; it was all that would keep me going. I dreamed about you all the time. Shall I tell you what my fantasy was?’
Her voice snapped him out of the zone. No. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to talk, to listen to the desperate, strained note in Gill’s voice, like she was only saying all this to please him. He shook his head, said, ‘Just kiss me,’ and she did, leaning forwards, bare breasts pressing against his chest. It felt good; she felt good; so why couldn’t he fully relax?
Because when she ran her hands over his torso, he saw them shaking Bonnie.
When she wrapped her fingers around him, he pictured those fingers encircling their daughter’s throat.
He must have made a noise in his throat because Gill stopped kissing him and sat up, staring at him. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
He tried to smile, to say, ‘Nothing.’ He was still hard, his body so starved of this, so desperate for fulfilment that nothing, no images, no doubts, could stop him. He rolled Gill over onto her back and, with eyes closed, entered her, concentrating on the feeling, the pleasure. Pushing away the pictures in his head.
‘I love you,’ Gill said, and he was sure he said it in return. Because he did. He still did. And this had to get easier, didn’t it? They just needed time.
Chapter 16
Day 4 – Wendy
Wendy sat at her desk in the half-deserted office, one of the strip lights flickering in a way that made her glad she wasn’t epileptic, and wondered what DI Lennon was doing right now. Snuggling up on the sofa with his wife, probably. Or reading his little girl a bedtime story. She knew all about Lennon’s wife and her heart went out to the poor cow. She hoped he was kind to her . . . Actually, she couldn’t imagine him being anything but. Despite the tattoos, the hair that needed cutting and that serious face, he was, well, he was lovely.
Lovely and gorgeous. The kind of man who was sensitive and empathetic but strong enough to be protective and sexy.
Jesus, listen to her! Sexy? She laughed, drawing a curious look from Martin two desks down, and reminded herself that it was a bad idea – a bloody terrible idea – to have a crush on her superior officer. Especially one who was married. Wendy’s dad left them after a younger woman he worked with tempted him away, moving to the other side of Wolverhampton, and Wendy would never, ever be a homewrecker. Never be like that scutter who made her mum bawl her eyes out for months. Not that she was the type that men left their wives for. She hadn’t even had a boyfriend for three years. Not for the first time, she cursed the fact that she had the body of a teenage gymnast – flat as a pancake, straight up and down, like an ironing board, and only five foot two. Twenty-five years old and she still got ID’d any time she tried to get into a club, and pretty much every time she bought drinks in a pub. It was deeply irritating. Unless she wore a ton of make-up – and often even then – she looked younger than her fourteen-year-old sister, Lucy.
Her latest attempt to appear her age was to have all her dark hair chopped into the shortest of pixie cuts because most teenage girls had the obligatory long, artificially straightened curtain of hair, but it hadn’t made a lot of difference. Pat – as she’d heard Carmella call him, not that Wendy would dare to herself – hadn’t appeared to even notice that anything was different about her.
Wendy really wanted to impress him, and the best way she could possibly do that, she thought, would be to find the bastard who had killed those two poor girls.
She gazed again at the photo of Rose Sharp on the whiteboard across the office. Even if it wasn’t about gaining Pat’s admiration and respect, she’d do anything to get the scumbag murderer off the streets. This was her chance!