They bought the house for its period features, the fireplaces, coving, big sash windows—if they couldn’t move to London, Zara had argued, then they’d get the best money could buy in Norfolk.
She looks up briefly from her screen as he wanders in. He watches her working, her eyes momentarily masked by a stray curtain of glossy red hair.
“You’re back early,” she says wryly. He’s not. Sarcasm plays across her screen-lit face. “So? How did it go?
“Yeah. Long day,” he says, shrugging off his jacket and perching on the edge of an armchair, lost in thought.
Today was supposed to be Chris’s day off. He’d been called in to pay a site visit to the hospital and have a conversation with the new doctor about the case. He hadn’t been too surprised to be called in, not since the hotline went up. Everyone had been working extra shifts since that had started. When he’d gotten to the station to change into his uniform, he’d been roped into following up on a whole tsunami of hotline leads, none of which had amounted to anything.
Overnight, the well-intentioned hotline had turned into a complete free-for-all. People from all over the country calling in, with all kinds of bizarre sightings and tip-offs, and they, the Burnham and Hunstanton station, had to follow up on nearly everything. Assess the information, grade it in order of relevance or urgency, and flag it up if the lead looked promising. That’s a lot of paperwork.
When he’d finally headed over to the hospital it’d taken him a good half an hour to track down the new doctor. And she’d turned out to beMarni Beaufort.
He’d found her. Found her in the hospital canteen. After fourteen years.
Seeing her had been very confusing. And now he felt…weird. But kind of good weird. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. How she used to look playing lacrosse at school, her cheeks flushed in the cold, her mischievous grin, her freckles. The Beauforts had been rich back then, crazy rich. Before it all happened, obviously. And all that wealth had somehow lent them this air, this healthy seductive glow. That calm, the ease, like nothing was ever a struggle, even winning, which the Beauforts seemed to do a lot.
Zara looks up from her article and frowns. She’s pretty sure Chris didn’t hear what she just said.
She asks again. “How was it with the new doctor, honey?”
Chris’s attention snaps back to her, he gives a quick smile. “Yeah. Yeah, it was good,” he says, getting up and heading into the kitchen.
“And…?” Zara probes further, following him into the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe and watching as he stares unseeingly into the fridge.
“And…er, and yeah, she was nice.” Chris realizes this line of questioning will not go away unaddressed. “Her name is Emma Lewis. Dr. Lewis. She seemed nice. She’s from London. Seemed good at her job. The hospital says they’re lucky to get her. I told her I’d send her everything we have that could help. And that was it.” He closes the fridge door empty-handed. He’s not exactly sure what he was looking for in there—but he didn’t find it.
“Did she say what she thought it was?” she presses. “What’s wrong with him?”
“No. I didn’t ask. First day, isn’t it?”
“And what’s the general mood at the station? Any leads? Is that why you’ve been so long?”
“Just got dragged into all that hotline stuff as soon as I got there.”
“But there must be some interesting stuff in all that, right?”
“Yeah, interesting is definitely the word for it.”
Zara frowns. “If it’s that pointless, can’t they get someone else working on it other than you guys?”
“Not really, Zee. There’s never enough of us, even when nothing’s happening. We can outsource to other stations but that still means transferring information and making a bunch of outgoing calls for every incoming call we receive.”
“Uh-huh.” She nods and slides onto the kitchen table bench. Chris can tell she’s desperate for information. She must have had a slow day. She leans forward on her hands in a parody of an attentive schoolgirl.
“You know I can’t actually tell you any details, Zee. You know that.”
“I’ll make it worth your while.” She pouts provocatively.
“Stop it.”
“Can’t help it,” she says, and changes tack. “Look, honeybun, I am trying really hard, you know how hard I work, I’m trying to pip a lot of people to the post here. And this story is an absolute gift to me.Nothinghappens here and then suddenly this happens right on our doorstep. I hate to bring it up again but we stayed here, Chris, we didn’t move to London, we stayed here and that’s all great, honey, but if this story can raise my profile then I can get a better job. A national paper. I wouldn’t have to move, we wouldn’t have to, I could write from here and just go in to the city once or twice a week. Writing for real, not just this local piecemeal shit I’m doing right now. So, please, Chrissy, throw me a fucking bone, okay? I’ll be good, I promise.”
Chris shakes his head slowly. “Unbelievable.”
“I know, okay. Before you say it, I’ve heard it before, Chris, you’ll lose your job, blah, blah, blah, loss of trust. You won’t, Chris. You won’t lose your job. Police talk to press all the time. That’s life. It’s not like I’m asking you for the nuclear codes or anything, I just want a vague update on what’s going on with this case. Something that I can package up nicely and sell to editors. I’m doing as much research and tracking on this as you are, honey, I’m on message boards all day, Twitter feeds, you name it. If we share information then surely everybody wins, right? What do you think?”
Chris sits down slowly opposite her, palms on the table, weighing up all she’s said. He does worry he’s held her back. That someday she’ll hate him for it. “Okay.” He pauses, then lets out a low groan. “Something. Oh God, okay. This is what I can tell you. But don’t go crazy with this, okay? You promise?”
