Wearing Purple

Chapter 14

‘Would you be interested in a bit more undercover work?’

I looked at her incredulously. She lay on her front on top of the duvet, propped up on her elbows, with one foot raised in the air. The summer tan still showed on her body, or at least was pointed up by the whiteness of her round, firm bum. God, she was gorgeous, was my wife.

‘Again?’ I gasped. ‘What do you think I am? The Parish bull?’

Her breasts bounced lightly as she chortled. ‘I know very well what you are, my love.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not expecting the impossible all of a sudden. No, I meant business-type undercover work; the same as you’re doing for Everett. Remember that discussion with Susie last night? We may well have to make plans to put watchers into her pubs.’

I sat upright, and shook my head, as hard as I could. ‘No. Definitely not. That’s not what I do: I am a private enquiry agent, non-matrimonial, and that’s the way I like it. I work for lawyers, not for publicans. The only reason I’m involved with this wrestling carry-on is because Greg McPhillips put me in the frame for it, and because he’s a good client.’

Even when she was a wee girl, Jan’s dismissive laugh was one of her trademarks. I had heard it thousands of times, usually directed at me. ‘Aye sure, that’s the only reason,’ she drawled. ‘Your mother was the only person I ever knew who could make you do anything you didn’t want to. . apart from me, that is.

‘You’re into the cloak and dagger stuff, and you know it. I remember when you and Thingy were off on the trail of that missing money, and on the run from Ricky Ross at the same time. You loved every minute of it. Even at the time I reckoned. .’

She stopped suddenly; but I knew her as well as she knew me.

‘You reckoned that it was excitement I fell for, as much as Primavera. I guess you were right, too.’

‘No, I’m sorry: I was just being bitchy. I was in a relationship at that time as well, remember. We were ex’s then, you and I, and she brought something different into your life. Prim’s a great girl, and a powerhouse as well. I might have been secretly jealous of her, and secretly afraid that she was taking you away from me for good, but I’ve never disliked her.’

She smiled at me, in an intimate, gleaming way. ‘Mind you, I can afford to be magnanimous, the way it’s all turned out.’

‘Maybe so,’ I said. Since the morning of my return from Spain, Jan and I had never discussed Primavera Phillips, nor my relationship with her. Now that the subject had come up, it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. ‘But you’re still not going to talk me into acting as a snooper in Susie Gantry’s pubs.’

‘Why not? We’ll need someone we can trust.’

‘Which reason would you like? I’m too busy? Or will you settle for the fact that I just don’t like wearing a dirty raincoat?’

She grabbed a handful of my chest hair. ‘Daft bugger.You don’t have a dirty raincoat.You don’t have a raincoat, period.’

And then she paused, and gave me the Look. Although we’d been together for most of our lives, I’d seen it only a few times before: for example, on Jan’s sixteenth birthday when we made love for the first time, on my eighteenth when she gave me a signet ring, one time in Jan’s flat, with our respective partners present but happily unaware, and a few months before, when she said, ‘Okay, I’ll marry you.’

I looked back at her, and I waited. ‘Speaking of periods,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t had one for a while.’

I gulped, so hard that I almost choked. ‘How long?’

‘Seven weeks. I bought a tester kit yesterday. You’re going to be a Daddy, Oz Blackstone.’

Sometimes your brain just cuts out. Know what I mean? I think I might have gulped a few more times, but otherwise I just sprawled there and stared at her. I don’t know why I was surprised; Jan had been off the pill for a couple of months. Mind you over the years, and even when she was living with Noosh, we had taken a few chances, so maybe I had just assumed that making a baby was something we’d have to work at for a while, and hope that we got lucky.

There are times that live for ever, during which everything done and said burns itself into your brain. In such moments, you’d imagine that everyone would choose words which were weighed, meaningful and appropriate to the occasion. Not us Blackstones.

I stared at my amazing, pregnant wife, open-mouthed. ‘Fuck me!’ I whispered.

She beamed, and pulled herself towards me, across the bed. ‘How could I refuse such a generous and spontaneous offer?’ she said.