It was late morning on a Saturday and Robbie Lewis was at a loose end.
He'd tidied up the downstairs, cleaned both the en-suite and the big bathroom, hoovered the whole house and put away a load of washing before changing the bedsheets and duvet cover for freshly washed ones. He made himself a coffee and pulled out his phone from his jeans pocket.
He prodded the screen of the phone and wrote a message to Laura.
Fancy meets fir lined?
He swore as he read it back and prodded at the screen again.
Fancy meeting for lunch?
He knew it was a long shot but it was a Saturday after all. Laura was on call and, ever efficient with her use of time had gone into the Lab to finish off some reports and to oversee a batch of tests that had been scheduled. She worked too hard but he could never scold her for it, he had done the same. Still, he missed her, especially at the weekend.
He waited to see if she might reply straight away but there was no response. He drank his coffee and looked out into the back garden. It was early spring, the clocks had gone forward and the garden was kicking into life. Laura kept a good garden with plants for each season. There were daffodils out on the edge of the lawn and some bluebells were in leaf waiting in the wings for warmer weather. Against the walls were evergreens and flowering shrubs with blossoms that filled the early spring air with sweet scents.
On the pergola that surrounded the patio a blackbird was eyeing the grass for worms. It sidestepped along the wooden frame and then hopped into the grape vine. It looked across to the kitchen window where Robbie was looking out and cocked its head. Robbie looked back at the bird with a smile. He had been feeding the blackbird all winter and they had struck up a bit of a rapport. When the bird saw Robbie move to the back door it swooped down in a fast and confident line to the flagstones outside the kitchen. Robbie opened the door and stepped out into the spring sunshine.
"Come on then Lad" he said and threw a handful of bird food down to the waiting bird who went straight to it, its beak scraping on the smooth gritstone as it pecked at the seed.
Robbie looked up to the sky, it was a cold clear blue with the promise of warmer times to come but the air was chilly. Huge, crisp white rain clouds towered upwards, their tops turning into anvils that warned of heavy rain and thunder. The blackbird pecked at the seeds and then with a glassy shrill sounding alarm call it flew off and over the wall. A cloud slipped between the earth and the sun and it suddenly felt very cold.
Robbie heard his phone chime.
Sorry just had a call out. It will be a late one. You eat. I'll get something when I get in. See you later. X
Damn he thought. That's Saturday done for then. Poor Laura, she'd already had a bad few weeks with several violent deaths on the mortuary table. All very dark, even for Laura. He still didn't know how she managed to keep on top of it all without some sort of burn out. Before they'd got together he knew she often went away out of Oxford, even if only for a few days. It must have helped her as she never seemed affected by her job. He knew she went for counselling, and she made sure it was a service available to her team. Despite this he'd never seen her affected by her work; it was one of the things that made her brilliant at her job. She was always full of a black humour with many cases, but there was also a deep sensitivity towards both the living and the dead that he always saw in her work. She seemed able to switch her emotions on and off at will.
Knowing he would now be at a total loose end all day he poured another mug of coffee from the pot, and with a sigh, dropped down heavily onto the sofa to look at the tv listings. There was some sport on, football and snooker at least. He enjoyed watching sport but it was more enjoyable when Laura was about. She would tell him what a waste of time it was to watch sport on tv but she would always end up watching it alongside him. She would end up asking him about the rules of the game or the form of a certain team or a tactic. Despite this she would still maintain what a waste of time it was. But secretly he knew she would get drawn in and keep an eye on it. Sometimes she would sit and read one of her journals at the other end of the sofa and, at the start of a game or match, ask Robbie what the point was of a whole sports match that came down to one point or penalty. And what was the point of watching it anyway? They would discuss it at length and she would hold her argument all the way. By the end of the match she would have discarded her reading and would be watching the match resolve, all the time shouting insults at the players. He pretended to be annoyed with her but secretly he loved it. How he had missed it. Idle time, spent frivolously, it seemed, teasing each other and just talking and laughing. Laura loved it too. She loved to wind him up but then found herself asking him seriously about the rules of a game or about a player's style. In spite of this she would tell him, yet again, what a monumental waste of time it was to watch a sports match and he would argue back that it was no different to going to watch someone perform a piece of music. At this she reluctantly had to admit he had a point.
He smiled to himself. Stubborn lass. To be fair they could both be stubborn, in their professional lives it was often a necessary and important trait. It meant things got done properly. In other walks of life it could be a hinderance.
After his lunch Robbie went out to buy a Saturday paper. The air was fresh and there was a cold wind but when the clouds slipped away from the sun he felt it warming his back. An Atlantic depression was making its way up the country and the sky was an ever-changing catalogue of cloud textures and shapes and metallic shades of grey and silver-white against the shining blue patches of clear sky.
As he walked back from the shop, Robbie looked up at the branches of the cherry tree at the end of the road as he passed by it. It was in blossom, its pink delicate petals already taking a hit from a few heavy drops of silver rain that had started to fall.
It started to pour down as Robbie got back to the house. He was glad to get inside. He made a cup of tea and watched as it came down in curtains of thick cold rain. It got heavier and the rain briefly turned to hail. It was cold and the sky was clear blue in parts and a thick pewter where the base of the storm clouds had gathered. In the distance there was a low rumble of thunder and the sun illuminated the hard-edged cumulonimbus clouds that were towering into the sky. Robbie watched as almost as suddenly as it had started, the rain and hail stopped and the sun flushed the sky with light and bathed the wet leaves of the trees with gold and made the grass sparkle like emeralds.
For the rest of the afternoon he pottered about the house and did a few jobs before watching a snooker match on the telly. For some odd reason he felt restless. He wished Laura was home and found himself smiling at the fact that he missed her and that she would be home later even if it was late. He loved his new found life with her and the clarity with which he found himself aware of how happy he felt to be with her. He allowed himself to admit that he also missed work and working with her. He sighed. You can't have it all he thought.
At 6pm he made himself some beans on toast, lit the wood burning stove in the front room and then settled down to watch the rest of the snooker. He hoped Laura would be home soon and that she might have had chance to eat something while at work. She wasn't good at eating on the job especially if she was busy.
As the evening wore on he'd started to get worried. He didn't want to text her if she was busy, especially just to ask her if she was ok. Newly retired and with no formal links to the station he'd had no way of finding out what might be going on only that for her to have been on a call out for so long meant that it was something serious. Something grim. Part of him also worried about her and where she was. The trauma of Val's death still echoed around his life, ever so distantly. He couldn't bear to think of something happening to Laura. He was rational enough to know that if anything did happen she was with the right people and that he'd be told immediately.
Still, he dared not go down that particular avenue in his mind.
At 9pm he went into the kitchen and got himself a bottle of beer from the fridge. He went to the back door and opened it for a breath of fresh air. Outside the night was wild with cold wind and moonlight, storm clouds seemed to race, pushed by invisible forces. In the places where the clouds were briefly absent the sky was like dark blue velvet and peppered with stars that shone coldly, tossed between the ragged silver ripped clouds. There was a beauty in the moonlight but there was rain in the wind and Robbie felt a shiver pass through him. He frowned and closed the door onto the night.
He went back to the warmth of the stove and read the paper and idly watched the snooker. He kept checking his watch, it seemed, every 2 minutes or so.
Eventually just before 11pm when the logs in the stove had almost burnt out, he heard Laura's key in the door. There was the sound of it closing behind her and her locking it. Despite the familiarity of the routine there was no call of hello. He went quickly into the hallway, smiling and ready to greet her as usual. He expected to see her as she always was, bright and not always cheery perhaps, but always with a spark of something even when she was tired. Instead of this he saw her face shadowed in a way he'd never witnessed before.
It soon became apparent that it was a face that she'd not shown to him. Until now.