Playing James (39 page)

'Morning,' he says.

'Morning, how's the nose?'

'Sore. How's your head?'

'Fine.'

'And the toe?'

'Fine.'

'Have we covered everything?'

I pause for a second; 'I think so.' I cany on tapping away as he gets us some coffee from the machine and then goes through his in-tray.

'Anything?' I ask after a while.

'A rape, unfortunately. I just need to get hold of a WPC and then we can go and interview her.' He makes a few calls and then gets up. 'Come on, Colshannon, time to g°-'

We meander down to the car pool, a journey we must have made at least fifty times over the last five weeks. I decide against calling Vince and asking him to join us on this one as I think the case might be too sensitive. The last thing this poor girl needs is Vince snapping away at her and saying, 'Could you do the crying thing again, ducks?' We're just going to have to use some library photos. Once in our familiar grey Vauxhall, we zoom round to the front of the building where a WPC is waiting on the steps. Conversation thus avoided between the two of us, I spend the twenty-minute journey talking to the young female officer about rape cases and dig up some fascinating facts for today's diary edition. The morning passes quickly and I am horrified by the rape case, so much so that James repeatedly asks me if I'm all right. We all return to the station and I busy myself by writing up my notes. At about four o'clock I have finished for the day, so as James is still busy on the phone and with paperwork I decide to play devil's advocate and wander down to see Robin.

I pop my head around her door and she looks up from her desk.

'Hi! Fancy a cup of something?' We meander down to the canteen. We chat about this and that on the way and it's not until we are sitting down with our drinks that I ask, 'Robin, do you remember you once said I didn't know the whole story about you?' She looks at me hesitantly but I continue regardless. 'Do you think you could tell me it now?'

She looks at me a while longer and then nods. 'I suppose if I can't trust you by now,' she sighs. 'It's really hard to know where to start. But do you remember, when you first came to the station, I was quite new?' I nod. I remember it well. 'Well …"

Oh my God. Poor Robin. Poor, poor Robin. When I first met her, I wondered how on earth someone as glamorous as her had ended up working in the PR department of a police station. Well, all is revealed. Basically, she has been poo-ed on from a very great height. Possibly rivalling that of the Eiffel Tower. She came down from London to be with her boyfriend, Mark. Apparently he had been begging and pleading for her to join him here in Bristol for months. You know the stuff. He called her every day, told her of his plans for them, the great stuff they could do at weekends instead of commuting between here and London, blah, blah. And then one day she watched a programme on old people and what they wished they had done with their lives and she said the whole thing was so poignant, so powerful, that she went back to her incredibly high-powered and successful job the next day and gave in her notice. Just like that. Apparently they were furious because they were in the middle of a campaign or something, but Robin said that she was afraid if she didn't do it then, she would never do it at all. But when she arrived down here a day early to surprise Mark with her news, she found him in bed with another woman.

Can you imagine that? Literally caught in the act! Practical old me instantly wondered what happens then. I mean, does he get dressed first and then the shouting starts? And what happens with the other woman? Do you address her or ignore her? Anyway, Robin then immediately (well, not immediately, obviously; the shouting bit came first) rang up her boss to ask for her old job back and he was so narked with her for leaving in the first place that he refused.

'Why didn't you go back to London and just get another job?' I queried.

'It would have meant I had failed. Failed with Mark, failed with my big, bold move to Bristol. I'd already sublet my flat as well. I had nowhere to go.'

'What about your friends? Couldn't you have stayed with them?'

Robin looked sheepishly into her coffee. 'I haven't actually told them yet.' She must have looked up and seen my horrified expression – I couldn't go and buy a bagel without telling my friends – because she hastily added, 'I just couldn't. I mean, I'd given in my notice at my glamorous, highly paid job to be with the supposed love of my life, only to find out he had been cheating on me for God knows how long. And then I couldn't even get my old job back! I felt stupid. I couldn't return to London and say, "Hey everyone! You know that momentous, life-changing decision I made? Well, it was the wrong one. And you know that wonderful, gorgeous boyfriend I was always going on about? Well, he was shagging someone behind my back." My friends have always looked up to me and they thought everything had turned out perfectly for me. I didn't want to drop in their opinion.' She shrugged. 'So I stayed here and tried to make a go of it. I found the most challenging job I could. I knew that if I turned this place around, leaving London would just look like a diverse career move on paper.'

She stared back down into her coffee. 'And then I made the mistake of getting involved with someone from work.'

'Did that start after Mark?'

She nodded. 'I was at a really low ebb. We went out with the rest of the department for drinks after work but we got on so well together that things progressed, well, to the bedroom, I suppose.' I felt my insides lurch. 'It was just so nice to be with someone but then even he dumped me.'

'So that's why you want to go back to London?'

'Yeah,' she shrugged again. 'I've had enough of it down here. I want to go home.'

'Are you coming to the wedding at the weekend?'

'James insists.' I reached over and patted her hand and we both stared into our cups, lost in our own thoughts.

At the end of the day, James and I say our respective goodbyes and I make my way over to the paper. Joe, for once, is the bearer of glad tidings!

'Congratulations! Judging from the number of calls, e-mails and faxes we have had over the last few days, it seems your diary is a big hit! People are wanting to know what your next diary is going to be about! Any ideas?'

'What for?'

'Another diary, of course! I want to start trailing your new one by the end of the week!'

'You're not sending me back to covering pet funerals?' I say in surprise.

'Of course not! Also' – he leaves a dramatic pause – 'someone from the Express has called. Wants to serialise this diary in the national press.'

'You're kidding?'

'No!' A broad grin covers his face and he shakes his head from side to side. 'And when I explained you had another diary idea up your sleeve they wanted an option on that too!'

'Oh God!'

'So you need to come up with an idea quickly! I'll give you two weeks to set it up after this one has finished. Come up with some thoughts and pop over tomorrow after work to discuss them.'

I smile all the way back to Tristan. Who would believe it? The
Express
, too! I can't wait to tell my parents and Lizzie. I put Tristan into first gear and zoom off to do just that.

I
've been home less than twenty minutes when the intercom buzzes angrily. I pick it up.

'Hello?'

'Holly! It's me!' Lizzie's voice crackles. I buzz her up and wait at the top of the stairs. I don't have to wait long until she bounds energetically into view. She exudes happiness and excitement. She grins widely at me and exclaims, 'We're engaged!'

I give a gasp of excitement and lead her by the hand into the warmth of my flat, asking on the way, 'So how did it happen?'

'Lizzie's engaged!' I announce to my parents before she even has time to answer. Amid the cries of congratulations, I go through to unearth a bottle of champagne I won in a raffle a few months ago. I stick it in the freezer to chill for a while and then eagerly run back into the sitting room to hear the story. Lizzie is half laughing and half crying.

'You see, I concocted a little plan that I would send myself some flowers and pretend to receive calls from a suitor in order to make him a bit jealous!' she says by way of explanation to my parents. My father looks a little mystified at this apparent recipe for disaster but my mother nods understandingly. 'We were going through a bit of a bad patch and I thought the relationship needed some help to move it along. The result being he was so jealous he refused to talk to me! He somehow got it into his head that I was seeing Holly's detective! So he followed me that day we all went to the drinks party. He said he caught sight of James when he came into the room and just saw red, so he punched him! Anyway, he proposed last night. Said he never realised until then how much he loved me.' Lizzie has the grace to blush and together we go through to the kitchen to get the champagne and some glasses.

'So it worked after all, Holly!' She is standing in the kitchen with me as I twist the foil off the bottle. 'What worked?'

'The plan. OPERATION ALTAR worked! He was mad with jealousy all along!'

'He punched James, Lizzie. I don't think that was part of the plan,' I protest.

She airily sweeps James' haemorrhaging nose aside with a brush of her hand. 'He said he was trying to work out who I was seeing and the only person he kept coming back to was your detective. He said every time he walked into my office I was reading your paper!' 'Did he not know James was engaged?' 'Well, you never mentioned it in the diary.' 'Why did he follow you that day we went to the party?' 'He kept popping round to see if I was back at the flat and of course that was the one day I went home to change. So when he saw me emerge in my red dress he presumed I was on my way to meet someone and he trailed me!' She giggles to herself. 'He had to wait ages at the front gate of Fleur's house to follow someone in!'

'Pity he didn't have to wait longer. He might have cooled down a bit.'

'You will say sorry to James, won't you?'

'I'll try.'

I put four glasses on to a tray along with the bottle. 'Alastair must love you an awful lot, Lizzie, to go through all that caper,' I say, a touch wistfully. 'Waiting outside your house, following you to parties, smacking other men on the nose.' Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely thrilled for her. It's just more lonely being broken-hearted by yourself. We walk through to the sitting room together and I place the tray on to a small table and hand the bottle to my father.

'He promises he won't work so hard from now on. We're to spend lots of time together! That, after all, was the problem to begin with!' She hugs herself with happiness. The bottle bursts open and, when poured and duly handed out, we make the appropriate toasts.

I sit cross-legged on the floor. 'Actually, I have some news too!'

'What is it?'

'They want me to do another diary! And the
Express
has bought the rights to serialise this one and an option on the next one!'

Lizzie stares at me open-mouthed. 'Fantastic! Let's drink to that!' We all raise our glasses.

'To Holly's diary!' proclaims my father.

'To Holly's diary!' my mother and Lizzie echo.

'So what's the next diary going to be about?' asks Lizzie, settling into the sofa.

'We were just talking about it before you arrived.' I pause, wondering how to break the news. 'I actually thought I might go away somewhere,' I say casually.

'Where?' says Lizzie in horror. 'What about my wedding?'

'You haven't even set a date yet! Besides, it won't be for long. Just a few months – I think I want to get out of Bristol for a while after James' wedding.'

'Do you promise it won't be for too long?'

'I promise.'

Lizzie nods understandingly. 'What do you think you'll be doing?'

I lean forward enthusiastically, anxious to share my new idea. 'Well, I thought …'

'Mountain rescue?! Are you mad?' James cries. We are driving to a veterinary practice to investigate a suspected arson attack on the surgery.

'I think it will make a great diary,' I say defensively.

'I'm sure it will! Posthumously!'

T'm not going to die,' I say dismissively.

'You. Have. To. Go. Up. Mountains!'

'I know that. I can go up mountains, you know. People do go up mountains. That's the whole point of mountain rescue,' I explain impatiently.

'Holly, you have trouble making it down to the car pool without a packed lunch. How do you think you'll manage twenty thousand feet up in the freezing cold? It will get painful!'

'Oh, I'm getting used to pain,' I mutter. Actually, the physical fitness side had crossed my mind, and the pain side also. But I think it will go some small way to driving out the other pain, the one that can't be alleviated by a hot bath and a plate of pasta. Sheer physical exhaustion might also help me to sleep at night. I can only have had about four hours so far this week and I would rather be on a mountaintop faced with a yeti and with only a torch and ajar of lip balm for protection than have to go through that every night.

There is a slight pause as we both stare grumpily out of our respective windows.

'Where are you going to go to do that?' he asks suddenly. I'm starting to get cross. He has completely cabbage-ed up (inadvertently, I'll give him that) half of my life and now he's rowing with me and doing his best to wreck the other bit.

'Somewhere with mountains,' I say sarcastically.

'Why? WHY would you want to do that?'

'Because I am absolutely and completely in love with you and have no wish to remain in this town after your marriage as every single little thing I see reminds me of you and the fact that the closest I ever got to you was when I was knocked out and not even conscious to appreciate it.'

OK. I don't say that. I wanted to, but what I actually say is, 'Why not?'

'We could think of plenty of things to report on around here. What about …'

He flounders.

'… the sherry-making industry!' he finishes triumphantly, picking on one of the only things that Bristol is famous for.