The lawn was white in the moonlight. Music streamed out through the windows and Abby was dancing by herself on the grass, spinning slow circles, her arms outspread and her head back to the enormous night sky. I stood by the alcove, swinging a long trail of ivy with one hand, and watched her: the pale swirl and dip of her skirt, the turn of her wrist holding it up, the arch of her bare foot, the dreamy drunken sway of her neck, in and out of the whispering trees.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” said a voice, softly, behind me. I was way too drunk even to be startled. It was Daniel, on one of the stone seats under the ivy, with a glass in his hand and a bottle on the flagstones beside him. The moon shadows turned him into carved marble. “When we’re all old and gray and starting to slip away, even if I’ve forgotten everything else my life has ever held, I think I’ll remember her like this.”
A swift painful pang went through me, but I couldn’t figure out why; it was much too complicated, too far away. “I want to remember tonight too,” I said. “I want to tattoo it onto me so I don’t forget.”
“Come here,” Daniel said. He put the glass down and moved sideways on the bench to make room, held out a hand to me. “Come here. We’ll have thousands more nights like this. You can forget them by the dozen if you want to; we’ll make more. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
His hand around mine was warm, strong. He pulled me down on the seat and I leaned in against him, that solid shoulder, smell of cedar and clean wool, everything black and silver and shifting and the water murmuring on and on at our feet. “When I thought we’d lost you,” Daniel said, “it was…” He shook his head, took a quick breath like a gasp. “I missed you; you have no idea how much. But it’s all right now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
He turned towards me. His hand came up, fingers tangling in my hair, rough and tender, moving down across my cheek, tracing the line of my mouth.
The lights of the house spun blurred and magic as the lights of a carousel, there was a high singing note above the trees and the ivy was whirling with music so sweet I could hardly bear it, and all I wanted in the world was to stay. Strip off the mike and the wire, into an envelope and down the postbox to Frank and gone, skim off my old life light as a bird and home straight here. We didn’t want to lose you, silly thing, the others would be happy, the rest of our lives they would never need to know. I had as much right as the dead girl, I was Lexie Madison as much as she had ever been. My landlord throwing my awful work clothes into bin liners when the rent dried up, there was nothing there I would need now. Cherry blossom falling soft on the drive, quiet smell of old books, firelight sparkling on snow-crystalled windowpanes at Christmastime and nothing would ever change, only the five of us moving through this walled garden, neverending. Somewhere far in the back of my mind a drum was throbbing hard for danger, but I knew like a vision that this was why the dead girl had come a million miles to find me, this was why Lexie Madison all along: to wait for her moment to hold out her hand and take mine, lead me up those stone steps and in by that door, lead me home. Daniel’s mouth tasted of ice and whiskey.
If I had thought about it, I would have expected Daniel to be a fairly crap kisser, in a meticulous kind of way. The fierceness of him took my breath away. When we pulled apart, I don’t know how much later, my heart was running wild.
And now, I thought, with one tiny clear drop of my mind. What happens now?
Daniel’s mouth, the corners curving in a tiny smile, was very close to mine. His hands were on my shoulders, his thumbs moving in long gentle strokes along the line of my collarbone.
Frank wouldn’t have batted an eyelid; I know undercovers who’ve slept with gangsters, given out beatings and shot up heroin, all in the name of the job. I never said anything, not my business, but I knew well that was bollocks. There’s always another way to what you’re after, if you want to find it. They did those things because they wanted to and because the job gave them an excuse.
In that second I saw Sam’s face in front of me, eyes wide and stunned, clear as if he were standing at Daniel’s elbow. It should have made me cringe with shame, but all I felt was a wave of pure frustration, smashing over me so hard I wanted to scream. He was like this enormous feather duvet wrapped all around my life, smothering me to nothing with holidays and protective questions and gentle, inexorable warmth. I wanted to fling him off with one violent buck and take a huge breath of cold air, all my own again.
It was the wire that saved me. Not what it might pick up, I wasn’t thinking that straight, but Daniel’s hands: his thumbs were maybe three inches from the mike, clipped to my bra between my breasts. In one blink I was as sober as I’ve ever been in my life. I was three inches away from burned.
