Not Dead Yet

43

Apart from one night here during happier times with Ari, when they’d toured around Wales before Sammy was born, Glenn Branson did not really know Cardiff at all, and he wasn’t sure of his exact whereabouts in the city right now. Except it was a nice, swanky hotel, and the bar was still open and busy. He sat at the counter with Bella Moy next to him. He was buzzing, on a high from having been in the TV studio, feeling a faint sense of anticlimax that it was all over.

He grabbed a handful of nuts in exotically coloured coatings and crunched them, then lifted his pint glass. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

Bella raised her Cosmopolitan and they clinked glasses.

‘Well done, star!’ he said.

‘You were the star,’ she returned with a sweet smile.

She was dressed in a navy trouser suit with an open-necked white blouse and elegant high-heels. He wanted to tell her how lovely she looked, but he didn’t quite have the courage, unsure how she might react, knowing from past experience that she had a very brittle side to her. And besides, he thought regretfully, in today’s politically correct police world, the slightest innuendo taken the wrong way could have you up before a disciplinary tribunal for sexual harassment.

But what a transformation, he thought, from the normally drab attire she wore at work, and her messy mousy hair. She’d had it done especially for tonight, an elegantly layered cut, and for the first time since he had known her, he was looking at her as an attractive woman. He noticed the fine gold chain with a tiny cross around her neck, and wondered how religious she was. He realized, despite having worked closely with her for the past two years, how little he knew her. ‘Must be tough with your mum being in hospital,’ he said.

She nodded sadly. ‘Yes.’ She shrugged, and in that gesture he saw, through that sadness, what might have been a hint of relief.

‘How long have you been looking after her?’

‘Ten years. I lived away from home for a few years, then my dad was sick with Parkinson’s and Mum had a minor stroke and wasn’t able to look after him, so I moved back in with them. He died and I – I sort of stayed on, looking after her.’

‘That’s dedication.’

‘I suppose.’ She smiled wistfully and he sensed even more strongly her deep inner sadness.

She drained her glass and he ordered her another, downing his own too and getting a pleasant buzz from the alcohol. He was enjoying himself. It was good having some company. And he had to admit it, he’d really, really enjoyed being on television. Live television! Roy Grace had called him twenty minutes ago telling him he’d just watched the recording and congratulating him on giving a command performance – even if he had stolen his line about cold cases and the identifying of the victim!

There had been a flurry of calls but no positive leads so far. They’d agreed Grace would take the morning briefing so that he and Bella didn’t have to rush back at dawn.

Which meant he could enjoy himself for a while longer. Away from Brighton and for the first time in a long while not feeling all chewed up inside about Ari and his kids. And suddenly he found himself staring at Bella not as a colleague, but as a guy out on a date would. He didn’t want this evening to end just yet. Instead he found himself wondering what it might be like to sleep with her.

Their eyes met. She had big, soulful eyes. A pretty nose. He liked her slender neck, although that crucifix bothered him some. Was she a prude? Why had she got divorced? He needed to know more about her. ‘Do you have – you know – like – a fella?’

She smiled evasively. ‘Not really. No one – you know – that I’m an item with.’

‘Oh?’ His hopes rose. There had been several times in the past when he had looked at the DS in briefings, munching away almost obsessively on her Maltesers as if they were a Freudian substitute for something else, and thought to himself that with a makeover she could be really attractive. And now here she was, smelling of an alluring scent, and with just that makeover. Although he could improve on her further, if she gave him the chance. And, he decided, emboldened and increasingly amorous from the drink, he was going to try to persuade her to give him that chance.

Roy Grace had told him, on a couple of occasions recently, that he needed to accept that his marriage was over – had been, in reality, for a long time – and that he should start seriously considering a new relationship. Well, he thought, this just might be it.

They chatted on for a while, and she finished her second Cosmopolitan.

‘Have another!’ he said, draining his second beer – or was it his third? A cheesy song was playing in the background, ‘Lady In Red’. Not normally his kind of music, but it was doing it for him at this moment.

‘I have to go to bed,’ she said, slipping off her bar stool, suddenly, surprising him with her abruptness. ‘It’s been a great evening!’ She gave him a quick, damp peck on the cheek and was gone.

He sat there, reflectively nursing his empty glass, then ordered another pint. He listened to more cheesy songs, savouring that soft, wet touch of her lips, and thinking, for the first time since Ari had told him their marriage was over, that maybe it was possible to find a new life.

And that he might have found the person to start it with.