Gasping, Charlie sat bolt upright in bed. She cast around her wildly, trying to process the weird disjunction between the weeds she’d been swallowed by and the homely bedroom she now found herself in. She ran her hands over her body, convinced her pyjamas should be wringing wet, but she was bone dry, except for a sheen of sweat on her brow. As her breathing began to slow she realized it was just a nightmare, just a stupid bloody nightmare.
Forcing herself to keep calm, she turned to look at Steve. He’d always been a heavy sleeper and she was pleased to see him snoring softly beside her. Slipping quietly out of her side of the bed, she picked up her dressing gown and tiptoed out of the room.
Crossing the landing, she headed for the stairs. She hurried past the door to the second bedroom, then scolded herself for doing so. When they’d first learned they were expecting, Steve and Charlie had discussed the changes they’d make to that room – replacing the double bed with a cot and nursing chair, covering the white walls with cheery yellow wallpaper, putting thick rugs on the hardwood floor – but of course all that excitement had come to nothing.
Their baby had died inside Charlie during her incarceration with Mark. By the time they got her to the hospital, she already knew, but had still hoped that the doctors would confound her worst fears. They hadn’t. Steve had cried when she’d told him. The first time Charlie had ever seen him cry, though not the last. There were times in the intervening months when Charlie thought she was on top of things, that she could somehow process the awfulness of it all, but then she would find herself hesitating to go into the second bedroom, scared to see the imprint of the nursery they had imagined together, and then she knew that the wounds were still raw.
She headed downstairs to the kitchen and flipped the kettle on. Recently she’d been dreaming a lot. As her return to work had drawn closer, her anxiety had found its release in nightmares. She had kept these to herself, keen not to give Steve further ammunition.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’
Steve had snuck into the kitchen and was looking at her. Charlie shook her head.
‘Nervous?’
‘What do you think?’ Charlie replied, trying to keep her tone light.
‘Come here.’
He opened his arms and she gratefully snuggled inside.
‘We’ll take it a day at a time,’ he continued, ‘I know you’re going to be great, that you’re going to get there… but if you ever feel it’s too much, or it’s not the right thing, then we can think again. No one will think any the less of you. Right?’
Charlie nodded. She was so grateful for his support, for his ability to forgive her, but his determination to get her to leave her job riled her. She understood why he hated the police force now, hated her job, hated the awful people out there in the world, and many times she’d thought about heeding his advice and just walking away. But then what? A lifetime spent knowing she’d been beaten. Forced out. Broken. The fact that Helen Grace had returned to work a month after Marianne’s death only poured fuel on the fire.
So Charlie had dug in, insisting she would return to work when her sick leave was up. Hampshire Police had been generous to her, had given her every ounce of support they could, and now it was her turn to give something back.
Breaking away, she made them both coffees – there was no point going back to bed now. The boiling water fell into the mugs erratically, splashing over the sides. Irritated, Charlie stared at the kettle accusingly, but it was her right hand that was to blame. She was shocked to see how much it was shaking. She swiftly put the kettle back on the mount, praying Steve hadn’t seen.
‘I’m going to skip coffee. Just shower and run today, I think.’
She turned to leave, but Steve stopped her, once more folding her into his big arms.
‘Are you sure about this, Charlie?’ he asked, his eyes boring into her.
A brief pause, then Charlie said:
‘Yes, absolutely.’
And with that she was gone. As she tripped up the staircase to the shower, however, she was well aware that her brave optimism was fooling no one, least of all herself.
7
‘I don’t want her.’
‘We’ve had this discussion, Helen. The decision’s been made.’
‘Then un-make it. I can’t say it any more clearly, I don’t want her back.’
Helen’s tone was flinty and unyielding. She wouldn’t normally be so aggressive to her superior but she felt too passionately on this point to back down.
‘There are lots of good DCs out there, choose one of them. I’ll have a full team and Charlie can go to Portsmouth, Bournemouth, wherever. A change of scene might do her good.’
‘I know it’s hard for you and I do understand, but Charlie’s got just as much right to be here as you. Work with her – she’s a good policewoman.’
Helen swallowed down her kneejerk response – getting abducted by Marianne hadn’t been Charlie’s finest hour – and considered her next move. Detective Superintendent Ceri Harwood had replaced the disgraced Whittaker and was already making her presence felt. She was a different sort of station chief to Whittaker – where he had been irascible, aggressive but often good-humoured, she was smooth, a born communicator and largely humourless. Tall, elegant and handsome, she was known to be a safe pair of hands and had excelled wherever she’d been stationed. She seemed to be popular, but Helen found it hard to get any purchase on her, not just because they had so little in common – Harwood was married with kids – but because they had no history. Whittaker had been at Southampton a long time and had always regarded Helen as his protégée, helping her to rise through the ranks. There was no such indulgence from Harwood. She generally didn’t stay anywhere too long and was not the kind to have favourites anyway. Her forte was keeping things nice and steady. Helen knew this was why she’d been drafted in here. A disgraced Detective Superintendent, a DI who’d shot and killed the prime suspect, a DS who’d killed himself to save his colleague from starvation – it was a sorry mess and predictably the press had gone to town on it. Emilia Garanita at the Southampton Evening News had fed off it for weeks, as had the national press. It was never likely in these circumstances that Helen was going to be promoted into Whittaker’s vacant shoes. She had been allowed to keep her job, which the police commissioner had apparently felt was more than generous. Helen knew all this and she understood it, but it still made her blood boil. These people knew what she’d had to do. They knew she’d killed her own sister to stop the killings and yet they still treated her like a naughty schoolgirl.
‘Let me talk to her at least,’ Helen resumed. ‘If I feel we can work together, then maybe we can fi-’
‘Helen, I really do want us to be friends,’ Harwood interrupted deftly, ‘and it’s a little early in our relationship for me to be issuing you with an order, so I am going to ask you nicely to step back from this one. I know there are issues that you and Charlie have to resolve – I know that you were close to DS Fuller – but you have to see the bigger picture. The man on the street thinks you and Charlie are heroes for stopping Marianne. Rightly so, in my view, and I don’t want to do anything to undermine that perception. We could have suspended, transferred or dismissed either of you in the aftermath of the shooting, but that wouldn’t have been right. Nor would it be right now to split up this successful team just when Charlie’s ready to return to work – it would send out completely the wrong message. No, the best thing to do is to welcome Charlie back, applaud you both for what you did together and let you get on with your jobs.’