Nine Ten Begin Again: A Grasshopper Lawns affair (13 page)

‘Janet. You and Brad—a week, you said.’

He dropped his voice and leaned back in his chair, hunching his shoulder to cut out the others, and she eyed him warily.

‘Yes. And friends before that.’

‘Friends.’ He flipped a hand crossly. ‘We’ve been friends since he was
fifteen
. If I hadn’t been a gentleman then, you’d not be here tonight. He’s had affairs before. He can be very charming and say very pretty things. Did he warn you?’

‘Yes, Seb, he did. He told me everything about his life. And my name is Edge. Not Corner, not Janet, and he’s pretty besotted about me too. I’m not just an affair. I don’t know if it will last, although I hope it does, but right now I’m important to him, and you’re important, and we both love him. So let’s cut the sniping and try to get on? You’re a very beautiful man and you’ve got a good guy of your own, and I’m not taking anything you ever had. I’d like a truce, if only for his birthday.’

Seb stared at her, expressions chasing each other on his mobile face, then took her neck again in the same hold with which he’d greeted her, and briefly put his mouth to hers as conversation stopped awkwardly at the table. She sat patiently, her hands quiet in her lap.

‘Kiss of truce.
Edge
.’ He pulled her head toward him so he could murmur into her ear, ’But if you ever, ever hurt him, I
will
hunt you down.’

‘Now when I do that, she crackles with electricity and her hair stands on end. You’re simply not wired right,’ Donald remarked, his hand dropping onto hers under the table and squeezing it briefly as Seb released her and smiled wolfishly around the table.

‘I don’t know about wiring, but she thinks I’m more beautiful than you. She said so. Someone pass the champagne, I want to charge our glasses. William, you’re neutral, back me up on this. Who’s the best looking?’

‘What, I’m the mirror in this pantomime? Vivian’s the fairest one of all, nae question.’ William passed the champagne across the table and sat back in his chair, smiling. ‘Followed by Seb. I’m sorry, Donald, you and Edge don’t even make it onto the scoreboard. It’s those goofy smirks you have every time you look at each other. Nauseating.’

‘So much for all the world loves a lover.’ Donald held up his glass resignedly. ‘Happy birthday to me, anyway.’

~~~

‘He said I could have done worse. Reading between the lines, that’s quite the compliment,’ Donald told her on the drive home from the station, and glanced sideways at her, curled a little sleepily on the passenger seat. ‘I couldn’t be as enthusiastic about Hugh, but he seems okay. And seven years, for Seb, is record-breaking. What did you think?’

‘Of Seb, or Hugh?’ Edge roused herself and smothered a yawn. ‘Sorry! Exhausted. Seb’s like Tigger, you never know which way he’ll bounce next. I didn’t get much chance to talk to Hugh, but he seemed nice enough. A bit of a gossip, chip on his shoulder about his job, but then banks, God, that’s a foul work environment. It was a good evening. Never expected to be laughing so much, for sure. Did you enjoy your birthday?’

‘I did. Very much. What were you and Seb talking about so seriously after dinner?’

‘Your last birthday. He was telling me what it was like for you. You hadn’t told me.’

‘Told you what?’

‘Your depression. He worries about you.’

‘I’d forgotten.’ He went momentarily silent, frowning in recollection. ‘I really
had
forgotten. When you’re there, in the grey, you think there’s no way out, and when you’re out, you can’t imagine how you were there. He spent the whole of the last birthday dinner trying to talk me up. He thought I was giving up, giving in. I probably was, now I think back. I was pure burnt out, I’d had enough. A week or so later Hamish called me to say my name was next on the list. I’d nearly forgotten I’d ever applied to the Lawns. I certainly hadn’t planned to take it up so early, but I thought okay, ideal. Nice quiet older neighbours with blue rinses and some cracking stories to tell, no show people on their way up saying whatever they think you want to hear, or on their way down bitching and whining. I had to live somewhere, and it would be good for Odette, and I could let go.’

He paused, thinking back.

‘Seb wasn’t thrilled about me moving, he thought it would make me worse. I nearly didn’t tell him at all. He’d been nearly ranting at me by the end of the birthday meal, and I couldn’t wait to get away. He thought I was suicidal. I knew I wasn’t, but I also didn’t care one way or the other.’

‘You wouldn’t have jumped in front of a truck, but you wouldn’t have jumped out the way if one headed at you.’

‘
Yes
. When did you—oh, after Alistair died.’

‘Pretty much. I wanted something to end it all, without me having to actually do anything. I had Vivian and her husband Gordon, and they forced me back. I suddenly realized one day that the sun was shining, and it hasn’t been a particular problem since, but it was a very, very bad place. I don’t know how you coped on your own.’

His frown cleared and his mouth quirked. ‘Ten minutes after the movers left, one of my new neighbours was ticking me off. No blue rinse. In fact, quite a pretty woman, but if there was one thing I knew for sure, I wasn’t going to be allowing any flirtations on my home ground. When I saw her at breakfast twenty minutes later, I thought I would make it clear and went over to make a chilly apology.’

He glanced sideways.

‘You gave me the straightest look I’d seen in—well, in years. There was no artifice in it at all. You didn’t like me, and you didn’t want to be bothered by me. I was absolutely furious.’

Edge laughed. ‘I thought you were awful. Arrogant and chilly. You do realize that if Betsy hadn’t been murdered, we’d probably still be nodding politely at each other in the walkway? If I hadn’t just met William I wouldn’t have joined you both for breakfast the next day. But it wasn’t being furious at me that pulled you back.’

‘It was the strongest emotion I’d felt in quite a while, and you were the first person who had registered in any way for as long as I could remember—years. But you’re right, it was the murders that towed me clear. Solving murder as a cure for depression, we should tell the NHS. The pills, were you on pills? They keep you level, no ups, no downs, a safe but very boring middle road. I quit them in March and started wondering if I could ever pounce on you. I decided I couldn’t. I’ve got a fair track record for friendship, none at all for relationships, and I was enjoying ours.’ He turned into the Lawns and put the car in neutral outside his garage, engine quietly running. ‘As long as the supply of murders keeps up, I should be fine. Are you worried about taking up with someone with a history of clinical depression?’

‘I could ask you the same. Anyway, it wasn’t the murders that cured you, it was sharing a hobby with friends. That’s what my therapist kept telling me, anyway. Get a hobby so you can make more friends. Easier said than done, but it really does work after all, because that’s what you did. Are we going back to yours so you can model your dressing gown for me, or are you too tired?’

He grinned. ‘Hop out the car so I can put it in the garage. I’ll model, but you can only look, not touch. No sweaty fingerprints allowed, you’ll have to control yourself.’

Doll man

Vivian was talking over her shoulder to Edge as she opened the kitchen door into her apartment, and was nearly unbalanced by Buster suddenly jerking the lead out of her hand and rushing forward snarling towards her living room. A man shouted in protest and Buster barked angrily and backed into view, his hackles on end as he half-crouched. Vivian took one step into the kitchen, pressed her panic button smartly, and stepped back to the doorway as the wall phone rang.

‘Megan?’ She snatched the phone up and retreated another step back to the walkway. ‘There’s someone in the apartment, please call the police. Oh. Oh, okay. Actually, not okay, but thanks.’ She leaned back inside the door to hang up the phone and looked at Edge, wide-eyed. ‘It’s the new maintenance guy. Doll man. Megan said he’s doing apartment checks.’

‘Without you knowing? That’s not on!’ She walked into the kitchen, and Vivian followed slightly nervously.

‘No, I agree. Megan thought he had cleared it with me first. Buster, here boy!’ The dog came reluctantly, reversing all the way. She picked up the lead and took a firm grip, smoothing down the Labrador’s hackles. ‘Mr Morrison?’

‘That’s my father. Please, Doll, call me Thomas.’ He appeared in the doorway smiling slightly uneasily and both women stared at him. Despite the cold outside, he was wearing a tank top and baggy khaki shorts, his powerful shoulders gleaming with sweat and his belly pushing against the fabric. ‘That’s a dangerous dog you’ve got there, I thought it was going to bite me. Be a shame to have to put it down.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. The dog was attacking an intruder. Why are you in my apartment?’

‘Not only yours, Doll. With the old man retiring, I’ve got to do a maintenance check on every apartment, make sure they’re all up to spec. He’d been letting it go a bit, poor old fellow.’

‘Mr Morrison, I don’t like being called Doll. My name is Mrs Oliver and this is Mrs Cameron. And we’re both a little taken aback that you let yourself into my apartment without so much as a by-your-leave. I’m going to ask you to go now, and I will speak to the administrator about making an appointment for you to return, if it is genuinely necessary. If you don’t leave I am going to set my dog on you and it will
not
be put down because it will be defending me from somebody who is in my apartment without my permission, and who refused to leave when I told him to go.’

His swarthy complexion darkened but he stepped back into her living room to pick up his hoodie and tool-kit and walked past them without another word.

‘Vivian, you were magnificent!’ Edge applauded when the kitchen door had shut behind him. ‘Boy, will he regret that threat against Buster!’

‘Buster was doing exactly what he’s supposed to do. What a horrible,
horrible
man he is.’ Vivian was quite flushed. ‘Edge, he’s got to go!’

‘Yes, I agree. Joey was doing a great job but if he really feels he wants to retire, there’s no need for us to be stuck with a sleaze-ball like that. There are other Joeys. Coffee?’

‘Yes, sorry.’ Vivian put the kettle on, looking slightly distracted. ‘I feel thoroughly unsettled. The thought that a man like that can walk into my apartment any time he likes, day or night, makes me feel a bit shaky.’

‘The fact he has a master key makes me feel queasy too. I’ve barely started getting used to hearing a key in my door at night, and the thought that it could be him instead is chilling. The half-naked and sweaty look didn’t help. He looked for a horrible moment like one of those scary guys who swaggered into the club that night.’

She frowned at what she’d said as Vivian made coffee for them both.

‘Vivian—he looked like one of those guys at the club.’

‘Yes, I heard you.’

‘No, I mean I think he
was
one of those guys at the club. The ones that had Jemima with them on a chain.’

‘No! But she’s supposed to have had nothing to do with his appointment! What did Katryn say when you spoke to her?’

Edge sat down at the kitchen table, still frowning. ‘She said Joey had gone to her saying he wanted to start tapering off, and recommending his nephew. He suggested a trial for a couple of months. She was relieved, because Jemima had been really nipping at her heels about Joey being over retirement age. She also said that most of the residents liked Thomas. I think she was a little impatient with me for bringing it up. I did ask her how
she
liked him and she said he was really helpful and surprisingly good at admin, that he’d been helping her and even Jemima with office stuff. I slunk away feeling like a troublemaker, to be honest. Once you get past the hot eyes and calling people Doll, he’s just a sweaty man trying to be friendly. Well, that’s what I told myself then. But if I’m right about the club thing, that’s too much of a coincidence. I’m trying to think if Donald has ever seen him because he’d know at once if he was one of the club guys. I was riveted by their freaky outfits but he’d have been looking at faces. So would Hor—’

She bit her lip, but too late. Vivian, ever-observant, was looking at her curiously.

‘Horace?’ She put their coffees on the table and sat down.

Edge looked at her dumbly, her lip still caught between her teeth and Vivian’s eyebrows rose. ‘Beulah Edgington Cameron, are you telling me
Horace
was at the club? Oh! Was he the leather fetishist in those blackmail photographs?’

‘You’re too bloody quick, you’ve been hanging round William too long,’ Edge grumbled. ‘And yes, he was. But I was wrong about those photos. He really was wrestling, apparently he challenges for women. He’s the club member who rescued us
—
it was his reputation as a lunatic that got us out of there safely. But we can’t possibly ask him, not without him realizing who he rescued. And I kissed him thank you, you know, and he said to look him up when I wanted a change. I think I’d rather die than have him find out it was us.’ She stared slightly indignantly as Vivian whooped with laughter. ‘Anyway, if you can stop having hysterics, he said they were very bad men. He certainly wouldn’t be happy to have one of them running tame here.’