‘I’m glad you’re my mum,’ she said impulsively, leaning over her cereal bowl to kiss her, which prompted another sob before her mum blew her nose and straightened up.
‘Sorry, darling, I’m just being over-emotional. You just turned sixteen, and jumped out of a plane – how could I not be! Either that or I’m getting the menopause.’
She switched the radio back on, indicating that the chat was over, and started clearing up the breakfast things.
Chloe slid her phone out of her dressing gown pocket. She re-read the message – a PM sent from the OnTarget forum – for about the thirtieth time since she’d got it.
She still couldn’t believe it. She was dying to tell her mum, or Jess – how jealous would Jess have been! Another visceral pang of guilt shot through her, a little spear of actual pain in her belly. Jess was probably lying in a stainless steel drawer in a mortuary, like on CSI Miami.
Hey Chloe! It’s Shawn Barrett here. I’ve got something TOP SECRET I want to ask you about.
Even though Chloe was almost paralysed by the sheer excitement of getting a message from Shawn, she also found it too good to be true. She had watched Catfish. She knew all about people posing as others online.
Sorry Shawn, she wrote back. But how do I know it’s really you?
The reply came back almost immediately.
Remember when I came to see you in hospital, when you had cancer ? I asked you what your favourite OnT song was. You said that you tell everyone it’s Forever Together but actually you like Small Victory better.
‘Small Victory’ was a bonus track on OnT’s first album and generally considered a bit cringe. But it was true! It was her favourite. And she had never told anyone that except Shawn.
OMG! she replied. It IS you!!!
Yeah, it’s me all right. TOP SECRET yeah, but I’m funding a new kids’ cancer charity and want YOU to be my main girl, cos we go back, right? Can we meet up to discuss? Want you + me to be filmed, I’ll hand you the massive cheque, it’ll be on the news and that. But seriously, babe, please tell no-one, not even ur best mate or family. Need to know I have ur absolute discretion. DM me back and let me know if your up for it! Hope so! X ps., and I’m glad you’re better now.
He hadn’t used the correct version of ‘you’re’, Chloe couldn’t help thinking. But that was OK. He didn’t need to be academically clever. He’d told her in the hospital not to let her studies slip like he had, and she was determined not to, retaking a whole academic year. That had been so tough. She ought to be doing her own GCSEs now, but as it was, she had another whole year to go . . . ugh.
Anyway, what did that matter now? In the car on the way back from the jump, her fingers trembling, she had typed a message, finding it hard to believe that she was sending words that his fingertips would touch on his own phone screen . . . his long slim fingers with their heavy silver rings, the same fingers that had stroked her fringe in hospital.
Hi Shawn! she typed. I’d love to. Half-term ATM so I can meet anytime – just say when and where! I’m so excited!!!! Xxxxxx
Chloe hesitated, then deleted all but the biggest of the kisses. Shawn needed to know that she was a mature woman, not some stupid little fan.
She couldn’t wait to see him. After all the suffering she’d been through, all the bad luck and the pain of her losing her friend, this was just the tonic she needed. The jump had been the start. From this point on, she was going to embrace life. She wasn’t going to be afraid of anything or anyone.
Chapter 44
Day 14 – Patrick
As soon as Patrick entered the station, he detected something new in the atmosphere, a charge of excitement – the kind that sizzled in the corridors, the incident rooms and offices whenever a big case had been cracked, a suspect arrested and charged. He felt immediately wary. What was going on? Martin and Gareth were chatting by the vending machine, big grins on their faces. Gareth looked over and gave Patrick a look he couldn’t read, somehow mixing satisfaction, embarrassment and, what else? It looked like pity.
Patrick strode past them and headed straight towards Suzanne’s office.
He had been up half the night trawling through the StoryPad website, following his visit to Chelsea Fox’s flat and the revelation that Rose and Jess had collaborated on a piece of fiction on that site. It hadn’t taken long to find a few solo stories written by Rose (MissTargetHeart) and Jess (YOLOSWAG), all of which featured members of OnTarget in clichéd romantic scenarios. Patrick didn’t get much time to read fiction these days – in fact, the last novel he’d read had been Camus’ The Outsider when he was eighteen – but he recognised bad writing when he saw it, and the girls’ stories managed to combine purple prose with cringeworthy poetry. None of the stories contained any clues, as far as he could tell; nothing that told him anything at all about Rose’s and Jess’s lives.
More crucially, and frustratingly, he couldn’t find any stories that Rose and Jess wrote together; nor were there any stories that either of them had written with other people. He had combed through the comments on Rose’s and Jess’s stories, but most of the ‘reviews’ were one or two words long. Convinced there must be something on the site that would help him, refusing to accept that this was another dead end, he spent the next few hours reading through fan fiction, finding himself drawn into a world where OnTarget were like the gods in Greek and Roman myths, mixing with mortal girls who were almost always flame-haired, milky-skinned virgins who found themselves swept into a world of excitement, danger and blood-sucking. It was amazing how often Shawn was depicted as a vampire overlord in these tales. What was it with young women and the undead?
This morning Gill had woken him up at 10 a.m. He’d fallen asleep at his desk at home and as soon as she shook him awake and he saw the time, he ran into the shower, shouting at her for not waking him earlier, then regretting it. As he soaped himself he castigated himself for being such a bastard to her recently. She was trying, really trying, and his response was to be grumpy, withdrawn and passive-aggressive.
‘You need to make a decision,’ she said when he emerged from the shower. She stood in the bathroom doorway, arms folded, trembling with the courage it took to say these words. ‘Because we can’t go on like this, Patrick. If you want me to leave, if you can’t ever forgive me, you need to say.’
Then she had walked away, tears in her eyes, leaving him feeling wretched – but as confused as ever.
He followed her into the kitchen, where he found her standing by the sink, gazing out of the window. He went up and hugged her, feeling her respond, tentatively at first, before putting her arms fully around him and squeezing him, pulling him against her with a rare display of strength. He was still hot and a little damp from the shower and, emotionally charged from the scene in the bathroom, he found himself becoming aroused. Gill noticed it and pushed herself against him, tilting her face and kissing him.
‘Where’s Bonnie?’ he whispered into her mouth.
‘Watching Ben and Holly in the living room.’
‘How long does an episode last?’
‘About ten minutes.’
‘Plenty of time.’
He took her by the wrist and pulled her gently out of the kitchen and into the utility room, shutting the door behind him. Gill’s eyes widened as he lifted her onto the washing machine, no more words exchanged as she unbuckled his belt and he reached beneath her skirt and pulled down her knickers, tossing them onto the floor, kissing her hard as she shuffled forwards a few inches so he could push into her. He felt himself heading straight towards orgasm. He tried to slow down, but she urged him on, biting his lip and pulling at his hair as he thrust into her, his wife, the taste and feel and smell of her so familiar but so strange, almost forgotten, and as he came he gasped her name, his face pressed against her neck.