bopping along through a minefield where all you had to do was break up with your girlfriend or mow your lawn and boom, curtains for you.
“What about since you two got together? Anyone been giving you the eye? Anyone you had to knock back?”
“Not really.” There had been an artist a few months back, a very pretty hippie-type from Galway, who kept finding reasons why she needed to discuss the publicity campaign for her show in person; I had enjoyed the attention, obviously, but once she started touching my arm too much I had moved things to email, and she had got the message straightaway. “I mean, people flirt, sometimes. Nothing serious.”
“Who flirts?”
I wasn’t about to sic these guys on the artist, when she had clearly had nothing to do with this and the embarrassment factor would have been sky-high all round. “Just, like, random girls. At parties or wherever. In shops. No one in particular.”
Martin left that there for a few seconds, but I drank my water and looked back at him. My eyes still weren’t always tracking right; every now and then part of Martin’s head would disappear, or there would be two of him, until I managed to blink hard enough to reset my focus. I felt a small pathetic rush of gratitude towards these guys for taking up my attention, leaving no room for the terror to take hold.
“Fair enough,” Martin said, in the end. “Ever followed through with any of them?”
“What?”
“Ever cheated on Melissa?” And before I could answer: “Listen, man, we’re not here to get you in hassle. Whatever you tell us, if we can keep it to ourselves, we will. But anything that might have pissed anyone off, we need to know.”
“I get that,” I said. “But I haven’t cheated on her. Ever.”
“Good man.” Martin gave me a nod. “She’s a keeper. Mad about you, too.”
“I’m mad about her.”
“Aah,” said Flashy Suit, scratching his head with his pen and giving me a grin. “Young love.”
“Anyone else mad about her?” Martin asked. “Anyone been hanging around her that you didn’t like the cut of?”
I was so used to saying no to every question that I was about to say it again, automatically, when I remembered. “Actually, there was. Back, um, before Christmas? This guy, he came into her shop and got chatting to her, and then he kept coming back and not leaving for ages. And trying to get her to go for a drink. Even after she said no. It made her pretty—” Un-something, unhappy, no— “She didn’t like it. His name was Niall Something, he’s in finance at the—”
Martin was nodding. “Melissa told us about him, all right. We’ll be checking him out, don’t you worry. Give him a bit of a scare while we’re at it, wha’?” He winked at me. “Do him good, even if he’s not our fella. Did you have any run-ins with him? Warn him off?”
“Not a run-in, exactly. But yeah, after a few goes of this, I told Melissa to text me next time he came in. And then I ran down from work and told him to get lost.”
“How’d he take it?”
“I mean, he wasn’t pleased. There wasn’t any, we weren’t shouting or shoving or . . . but he got pretty stroppy with both of us. He left, though. And he didn’t come back.” I had no compunction about siccing the Guards on Niall Whatever. He had been a ridiculous, puffy-faced wanker who informed me that if Melissa had actually wanted to get rid of him, she would have done it, ergo the fact that he was there meant that she wanted him to be. I would have laughed—he obviously wasn’t dangerous, he was all hot air—if it weren’t for Melissa’s tense white face, the hunted strain in her voice when she’d told me about him. The fierce surge of protectiveness had been so strong that I didn’t care if she was overreacting; I was actually disappointed that I hadn’t needed to punch the little prick.
“Sounds like you handled it. Fair play to you.” Martin resettled himself more comfortably, one ankle propped on the other knee. “You said you went down from work to run him off. You work in an art gallery, am I right?”
“Yeah. I do the PR.” The mention of the gallery made my stomach do a small sideslip. If they had talked to Melissa, they might have talked to Richard—maybe I should just come clean, before they sprang something on