Trowchester Blues 01 - Trowchester Blues (32 page)

As Finn was putting her plate down before her, she fixed him with a grey glare reminiscent of the point of a fencing foil. “I’m sure I can trust you both.”

He had to laugh. He’d watched his own friends do the same thing to Michael over and over at the book club party—the ritual warning that they were watching, that they expected good behaviour. He was glad Michael had this strong-faced woman to defend him, and that someone official, someone in charge of records and investigations was looking out for his ghost. His ghost, who was, it seemed, a ghost no more. Fully relaunched into the land of the living, and sitting close by his chair as though she had adopted him.

“I am the epitome of everything trustworthy,” he agreed. “Just ask the local magistrate. I’m a man of honour nowadays, I assure you. Now what will you have? I have turkey or nut roast, and I have white wine or red.”

Later, after they had decamped to the living room to open presents and eat unnecessary cake among the glitter of the tinsel and the twinkling of the Christmas tree lights, Jenny’s mobile phone went off.

“Damn.” She frowned at the lighted screen, unfolding herself from the hearth rug reluctantly. “They want me in tomorrow. Suspected triple homicide with a missing eight-year-old.”

He wouldn’t have noticed Michael’s flinch had he not been leaning back against the man, both of them sharing one sofa cushion so that Sarah could spread out on the other.

“I’ll walk you home.” Michael untangled himself from Finn at once. No argument, like he knew there was no point in protesting, and with Sarah scrambling up after him, her bright face dimmed, Finn thought he understood finally what kind of a despair Michael had been carrying these last months. How far he’d come.

Finn was not going to be leaving him alone tonight.

Night had fallen outside, and the snow had grown thicker and heavier, spiralling down in silent feathers. He crammed in the last corner of his cake and stood, heading for his coat. “Well, a walk would be good. I’ll come with you.”

Everyone was indoors on Christmas evening, the streets silent. The river rolled black as the sky between banks where the snow was two inches deep. The towpath crunched beneath their feet as they walked, Jenny and Sarah ahead, Finn holding on to Michael’s elbow and leaning into the warmth of him. Their breath clouded the night, and every tree they passed shone with outdoor lights, gold and green and scarlet, blue and silver and amber as distant fire.

Sarah hugged him again as she came to her boat, and he realised that was it. She was going to sit in there alone for the rest of the evening while the world celebrated without her. “Are you all right on your own in there?” he asked, looking at it bobbing forlornly on the death-coloured water.

“I have to go.” Jenny gave them both a wave as she hurried to her car, Michael following to grab her bags from inside and say a better good-bye in private.

Sarah waited until they’d gone far enough that their footsteps could no longer be heard. “I got Tyson, haven’t I? Little Ty’ll be wondering where I am already. Besides, it’s all right if Mr. May’s in the house. It’s like you in the window. I know he’s up there, and I’m down here, and it’s good. But he goes away a lot to see you, and I don’t like it when he’s not there. I don’t like it when it’s empty, and there’s just me in the boat.”

“Have you told him this?”

“No.” She toyed with her keys. “He’s done too much already. I don’t want to ask for more.”

“But you’ll ask me?” He found himself incredibly flattered by that.

“You never wanted my name. You never even made me show my face to you. I’ve always known I was safe with you.”

Well. He shook his thoughts together and they fell out in a new arrangement. A child was not something he had ever envisaged in his future, but if he had to be honest, this awkward, distant, independent relationship, with a daughter already grown and mostly no trouble at all, was close to his ideal.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He found Michael in the front garden, gazing out after the departing lights of Jenny’s car. Snow had turned the uninviting shrubs and overhanging pines into a glittery frosting all around him. He turned at Finn’s footfall, his face relaxed, wiped clean of lines of stress and pain, and he looked a good decade younger than he had seemed when he first arrived.

“It’s just us, then.” He smiled. “You want to go back to your place? Or . . .?”

“Show me the house again. Let me see what you’ve been up to these past months.”

Inside, it was warm. The kitchen had an old deal table Finn recognised from the charity shop on King’s Hedges Street, on which was piled a kettle and the makings of coffee. A half-empty bottle and unwashed saucepan of mulled wine scented the air with nutmeg and brown sugar.

Finn took off his coat and wandered into the sitting room, with Michael following him like a student artist following his examiner through a debut exhibition, waiting for judgement.

This time, he felt nothing in the living room. The white-painted walls were blank. A very temporary-looking futon sofa bed sat on the bare floorboards, and a few books dotted the edges of the room. He opened the curtains, so that the light shone down the back garden, and Sarah in her distant boat could see them both.

He ventured further. Dining room, absolutely blank as though the house was newly built. Upstairs, inflatable mattresses in two bedrooms just as empty. A bathroom clean of any imprint, and another featureless corner room that would make a lovely space for an office.

“You’ve exorcised it,” he said, with a feeling of almost savage satisfaction, as he found Michael again, standing silently in the centre of the potentiality, waiting for his verdict.

“Yes.” Michael pulled him close and rested his forehead on Finn’s shoulder. “I was thinking I could sell it and move in with you.”

“Were you now?” Finn tried for indignant. He should have been able to manage indignant, since Michael’s assumption that he could move in whenever it pleased him was so presumptuous. But it was also right. Finn had got used to having Michael around the place. He liked the warmth in his bed and the warmth in his heart, and he didn’t want to start another year without having it full-time.

“I don’t think I have the space for that,” he said, and joy came twisting up out of his contrary heart at the thought that he refused to do the expected even in this. “You see, I was thinking I would move in here. Expand the bookshop into the flat. Start selling a selection of modern works, and maybe a little of that electronic stuff. D’you think you could live with that?”

Michael looked him in the face like he’d never seen him before. Then slowly he turned full circle, Finn still in his arm coming with him.

“It’s . . . It’s all new.” Michael frowned, as though he was trying to place a hard concept, but Finn could feel his body tremble faintly from where it was pressed so closely against him. “I took everything out.”

“You see, my flat—” Michael had understood his meaning, that was clear enough. It just needed gently coaxing into words. “My flat is very much
my
flat. But this. We could both bring something to this. This could be
ours
. D’you think you could do that? In this place where I don’t think you were very happy for a very long time, d’you think I could make you happy in the future?”

He was pretty damn sure he could, but he wanted Michael to be sure too, wanted him to have faith that the bad times were over, that he would never be so cold, so alone, or so broken ever again.

Michael gathered him close, gentle but inexorably strong, and kissed him, deep and thorough and sweet. “You idiot,” he said at last, after the deal had been sealed a thousand times over. “You already do.”

Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where she worked for a number of years. Now a stay-at-home mum and full-time author, Alex lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has spent many years as an Anglo-Saxon and eighteenth-century reenactor. She has lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, and toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid. For the past five years she has been taken up with the serious business of morris dancing, which has been going on in the UK for at least 500 years. But she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

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