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“No,” he said. “Temper when I need to, at work. Some of those blokes need a good kick up the … up the bum at times, and that’s my job. Maybe I should be flattered that Alexis thinks I’m clever enough to be a criminal mastermind. I don’t have the subtlety for it, sorry.”
“What?” Janey just looked confused now.
“You have to keep secrets,” he said. “I’m not much chop at keeping those kinds of secrets. I don’t have a devious mind, either. Pretty much straight to the finish line, that’s me. No. I didn’t kill your mum. I loved her, and I didn’t have insurance cover on her, either, so you can tell Alexis that. I also wasn’t having sex with somebody else. Your mum was pretty. You must remember that. Pretty, and loving, and brilliant, and kind, and I … when you love somebody, you don’t do that, that’s all. If you’re not happy, it’s not going to make you any happier to wreck your family.”
“Was she clever?” Janey asked. “I mostly just knew she was my mum. She had a PhD, though. She was Dr. Hughes, so she used to be clever.”
“She was still clever. More than clever. Her PhD was in medical laboratory science, and there’s nothing easy about that.Shewas clever enough to killme,but not the other way round. In any case, married couples normally don’t spend their time plotting to kill each other. If they start hating each other, they get a divorce, that’s all. And we weren’t going to get a divorce.” He tried to think of what else to say and failed. “Maybe Alexis needs to write her own murder mystery,” he decided on. “But I’m not it.”
“I didn’tthinkyou could have,” Janey said. Her shoulders had relaxed, and he gave her a squeeze. “But Quinn—”
“She doesn’t like me as much as your mum did,” he said, “so no worries there. But, yeah, I’m going to be dating somebody at some point, because that’s what happens. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love your mum, but people can love more than one person in their life. When Mum died, I didn’t think so. Now? I’m not so sure.”
“You got over it,” Janey said. “That’s what Alexis said.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t get over loving somebody, no more than you’ve got over loving Mum. You go on loving them, because love doesn’t turn off, and it doesn’t seem to care much about death. But your heart … heals up a bit, I guess, after a while. You don’t forget, but maybe you need to love somebody alive, too.”
“So do you love Quinn?” Janey asked. “Is that why you want to have sex with her? Alexis said you didn’t. Love her, I mean. That you wanted to have sex andnotlove her.”
Minefields all over the shop here. He tried to think how to answer and couldn’t, so he just said, “I probably don’t know what I want yet. Quinn doesn’t want to have sex with me, though, so no worries, it’s not happening now. We’re friends.”
“Oh,” Janey said. “Good.”
“But you were rude,” he decided he’d better add. “To Quinn, and to me, but mostly to Quinn. You can ask me questions, even rude questions. You’re not allowed to be rude to somebody who’s only tried to help you.”
“Alexis said …”
“I can guess what she said.” He wanted to add,No more Alexis.That wasn’t going to work, though, and he didn’t do things that didn’t work. Beating your head against the wall was stupid and pointless. Instead, he said, “That Quinn’s been kind to you so she can have sex withme.First, that’s too much talk about my sex life, because it’s not your business, and it’s definitely not Alexis’s business. Second, I just told you, Quinn doesn’t want me. Alexis is bowled out all the way around on this one. It’s not a murder mystery, Quinn’s not my girlfriend, and nobody’s having sex. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said, and sighed. “I guess I have to apologize.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d say you do.”
18
AN UNPROTECTED HEART
Troy asked, “Can you tell about the crows?”
Quinn said, “Sure, but shouldn’t you be washing your hair? I canseethe sand in there.”
“I can’t do it by myself,” he said.
“Really?”
He sighed in a long-suffering sort of way that made her smile. “Ican,”he admitted, “but it’s not as nice.”
She’d been sitting cross-legged on the bathmat with Bacon beside her. The dog had his forepaws on the edge of the tub, which stretched his round little body to the max, and was wagging his tail like mad at Troy, watching as he manipulated plastic dinosaurs around the rim of the tub and maintained asotto vocedinosaur conversation. Now, she rose to her knees beside Bacon and said, “OK. Tell me what to do.”
Troy set down a red Triceratops and a green T-Rex, who’d been having a serious talk about why eating your friends wasn’t nice. “Don’t you know how to wash hair?”
“Not somebody else’s.”
“Oh. I thought all grownups knew that.”
“Nope. You’re teaching me something tonight.”
He gave that his usual serious thought, then set about instructing her. “Now,” he told her a few soapy minutes later, “you put water in the plastic cup and I lean my head way back, and you put your hand over my eyes so the soap doesn’t get in and pour the water over, and it feels very nice.”
