let him sleep in her bed. Was that a good idea or a bad idea? Tide in or tide out? He didn’t know.
He offered to drop Vince off at his flat, but somewhere in a wasteland of back streets he said, ‘No, leave me here. This’ll do.’ He laughed grimly and Jackson wondered what the joke was.
Jackson had phoned Julia from outside the Crown but her groggy response hadn’t been exactly encouraging (‘Sod off, Jackson’), and he was about to wend his weary way back when his phone lit up. He thought she had changed her mind, but it was only to tell him that Nathan had decamped to stay with a school friend for the night whose family was camping near by, but would he still take Dido?
‘I’ll come up,’ he said, but Julia said, ‘No, I’ll come down,’ and he had to wonder at that. Did she have someone up there with her? Or was she worried that she would be so overwhelmed by lust at his proximity to her bed that she would swoon into his arms? Fat chance of that.
She appeared in the hushed reception area barefoot, her hair all over the place and wearing a pair of pyjamas so old that he recognized them from when they had been together. She was not in the mood for seduction. ‘Here,’ she said, handing him the dog lead, the dog at the other end of it. Then she turned tail and said, ‘Night,’ sleepily and padded back up the stairs. (‘When you last sleep with woman?’ Tatiana demanded of him a few evenings ago. ‘With real woman?’ He took the Fifth on that.)
‘Tails between our legs, eh?’ he said to Dido in the rear-view mirror as they drove away, but she was already asleep.
So now he had the dog but not the boy, and surprised himself with how disappointed he felt about the absence of the latter.
He drained his coffee and checked his phone and found that Sam Tilling had got back to him with that number plate for the Peugeot. It was nice and readable and Jackson got an email off to DVLA, applying for the owner’s details. He wasn’t expecting a swift response. He phoned Sam and thanked him. ‘How’s Gary and Kirsty?’ he asked.
‘Same old, same old,’ Sam replied. ‘Chicken burritos in All Bar One in Greek Street yesterday.’
‘Photos?’
‘Yep. Sent them to Mrs Trotter. She says to say hello to you.’
‘Keep up the good work. There’ll be a sherbet fountain in this for you when you finish.’
‘Ha, ha.’
Penny Trotter had amassed an enormous dossier of evidence proving Gary’s adultery. Is this What Jesus Wanted her to Do? Seemed unlikely, but his not to reason why. Wronged wives were a law unto themselves. And they paid the bills and kept the wolf from his door. (‘Have you ever considered that you might be the wolf?’ Julia said. ‘Yeah, the lone wolf,’ he said. ‘I know you like to think so, but there’s nothing heroic about a lone wolf, Jackson. A lone wolf is just lonely.’)
More photos popped up on his phone. He had a shared album with Sam Tilling specially dedicated to Gary and Kirsty. They were all over each other in public places – ‘Canoodling,’ Julia would have called it. (‘I love that word,’ she said.) It seemed Julia wasn’t prepared to canoodle with him any more in either public or private. Perhaps she wanted commitment. Perhaps he should ask her to marry him. (Did he really just think that?)
He finished his coffee. He had a lot of time on his hands until his tryst with Ewan and was wondering what to do with it – a run? He regarded Dido doubtfully, snoring gently in the sun at his feet. A slow stroll was probably the best they would manage together.
His phone buzzed. He wondered if it might be Julia, apologizing for being offhand last night. It wasn’t. It was a client. A new one.
Girls, Girls, Girls
‘Did you hear the news?’ Rhoda asked when Andy entered the Seashell’s kitchen the next morning. She was busy with the breakfasts, juggling pans and spatulas in a way that looked surprisingly threatening. She was ruthlessly efficient in the morning. Well, every hour of the day, really. He supposed she was annoyed with him for not coming straight home from Newcastle last night. He had taken a detour via the Belvedere instead, where he had indulged in some solitary drinking. Better to drink than think sometimes. Often, in