Hour Of Darkness

Sixty-Three

It made Alexis Skinner very sad that she had no memory of her mother, only a vision in her mind put together on the basis of photographs, stories her father had told her, and the shockingly self-revealing diaries that had been discovered after her early death in a car accident that she would probably have survived in a modern vehicle.

Alex was under no illusion that Myra Graham Skinner had been an angel, but her dad had loved her. More than that, he had liked her; he had told her when she was old enough for mature discussion that when she had died, it was as if he had lost three people, his wife, his lover and his best friend.

It was only as an adult that she had come to appreciate what a sad and lonely man her father had been through her childhood. He hadn’t been monastic, not at all; there had been women, for sure, and even a semi-domestic relationship with another detective called Alison that had lasted for a couple of years, until it dwindled to nothing.

The Mia Sparkles thing. . she always thought of her by her radio name. . had been very short-lived. . if it had ever lived at all, for maybe she’d been wrong about a strange phone conversation she’d had with her father after he’d been away overnight. . but it had made an impression on her.

He had met Mia in the course of an investigation, and somehow, after he’d told her she had a big fan in Gullane, he had wound up bringing her home. While Alex had been impressed as any thirteen-year-old would have been by a star figure twice her age, and had taken to her, she had known instinctively that she was not stepmother material, and so she had not been heartbroken when she had gone, as surprisingly as she had arrived.

She thought of the years between her mother’s death and the arrival of Sarah as her father’s Dark Ages. She believed firmly that they should stay unlit, and so, when Andy had brought up Mia’s name, she had been unusually uncommunicative.

She and he had been a couple on, off and then on again for a decade, and they had a ‘no secrets’ policy. However, if Mia was a secret, she was her father’s, not hers, and not one to be shared with anyone. He hadn’t pressed her on it; indeed, he hadn’t discussed it further, and that was good.

As she watched Andy’s daughter running through the first few fallen leaves of autumn in the Royal Botanic Gardens, with her younger brother staggering after her, she wondered what her mother would have thought about her lack of desire for children of her own.

She and Andy had broken off their engagement over his discovery that she had terminated a pregnancy without his knowledge. She had done so because she had believed that having a child at that point would have disrupted the formative years of her legal career.

She stood by her decision; it had worked out for her. She had become a partner in her firm, Curle Anthony and Jarvis, in almost record time, and was one of its key earners. She had reached a position where if she chose, she could take a couple of years out to start a family, then step back in exactly where she had been before.

But she felt no urge to make that move, and with no pressure from Andy, she was beginning to doubt that she ever would. They might marry, they might not. Either way they would be happy. . just like her father and Sarah, who seemed more content and confident the second time around than they had ever been before.

She was smiling at the thought, as she ran to retrieve a ball that Danielle had kicked down a sloping path, smiling as her mobile rang.

She reached the ball, stood on it to stop its progress, and checked the phone. She saw her own number on screen; her position in her firm meant weekend calls and because of that she put her landline on divert every time she went out.

‘This is Alex,’ she said, cheerily.

‘I think I would have known that,’ a woman replied. ‘You had a mature voice for a thirteen-year-old. This is Mia, Mia Watson, Mia Sparkles, if you remember that name.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes I do. What do you want?’

‘I need to speak to your father. I’m sorry to be calling you, but his number is ex-directory and probably monitored, so this is the only way I could think of to contact him.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she snapped. ‘I won’t forward this call, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’ll be his choice whether he speaks to you or not.’

‘Understood.’ Alex was struck by the change in her voice. There was none of the old vivacity; instead there was a coolness, and an underlying tension. ‘I’d like you to ask him to call this number. It’s a Spanish mobile.’ She recited nine digits, then repeated them. ‘Have you got that?’

‘Yes; I’ve noted it. Okay, I’ll do it, but I warn you, he may not want to know you. It’s been a long time, and his life’s a lot different now.’

‘So’s mine,’ the woman said, ‘believe me. Tell him it’s very much in his interests to call me. . to call me, and nobody else, that is. It has to be between us, and us alone.’

The line went dead. She found herself staring at the phone.

‘Who was that?’ Andy asked, approaching, with Robert riding on his shoulders. ‘The ghost of Christmas yet to come, by the look on your face.’

‘Business,’ she answered, sharply. She kicked Danielle’s ball back towards him. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ she said. ‘I have to make a call.’