A/N: Thanks to fanficfan71 and MillionMoments for their kind reviews of Chapter 1 (and for MillionMoments' graciousness in not pointing out this story had the same title as one of their own works - which I have now rectified)
By six o'clock, Richard has had enough of the silent treatment. He can't get out of the station fast enough, actually hailing one of the island's extortionately overpriced taxis instead, so great is his need to get away. He directs the driver to take him straight home, and doesn't even quibble at the ridiculous price. Once home, he moves methodically around the shack, shuttering all the windows and locking himself in. He is in no mood for visitors this evening. Once he is certain that there is no aperture ajar to admit any light, lizards (sorry, mate) or locals, he shucks his suit, takes a long shower, and pulls on his pyjamas. Then he lies on his bed in the dark, staring at the rafters and again wishing desperately he was back home. Richard is sick of the island, sick of being stuck on it at the Commissioner's whim, sick of Camille's unpredictable moods, sick of feeling sick of it all.
Most of all, I'm sick of myself, he thinks grimly, why can't I just be like all those other sods out there, the ones which everything comes naturally to. The ones like Doug Anderson, and his cronies, back at the Met, down the pub each lunchtime and going out for a few drinks after work, bonding over shared interests in football and cars and women, even some of the married ones not averse to trying to pull if they thought could get away with it, their prowess with the opposite sex the subject of good-natured ribbing the next day. While he, Richard, was left sitting by himself in a deserted office, going over old case files in an awkward attempt to look busy. He was constantly the object of his colleagues' ridicule and scorn, and he had long suspected the entire division of devising elaborate excuses to avoid the stigma of being partnered with him. He knew, too, that he lacked the verbal and physical weaponry needed to stand up for himself. When he was bullied at school, his response had been to retreat far inside his head, becoming a too-pale, too-quiet boy who never made eye contact, who spent lunch break hiding in the library stacks, who avoided any interaction with his peers, preferring to talk only to the teachers, library staff, or even the Headmaster's hugely fat and friendly chocolate Labrador, Conker. His memories from that time are grey-tinted with misery, unlike the usual brilliant Technicolour in which most of his recollections are replayed.
Richard does vividly remember begging his parents to be allowed to stay at home, on his first exeat from boarding school, before realising that his father was looking at him with that mixture of annoyance and disappointment again, and that his mother's attention had wandered back to the fashion pages of the glossy magazine she had been flicking through when he had come to them, tear-stained and desperate on the Sunday night before he was due to return, to plead his case. He had never asked again. They just weren't that interested in him, once it became apparent that he was turning out to be a socially awkward, rather plain child who developed obsessive fixations on things like the history of Roman Britain, or the tiny fossils he found amongst the pebbles at the beach on their yearly caravanning holidays. He lacked his father's charm and his mother's beauty, indeed only his green eyes had come from her; even then, they were a pale imitation of her deep emerald ones. Everything else was, well, just Richard, as his mother used to say in a too-bright, brittle tone of voice. He breathes out slowly, a long exhalation of frustration and sadness, closing his eyes, seeing a thousand different instances, spooling across the movie screen of his mind (although when working a case, he likes to imagine it is the biggest whiteboard in existence, instead), of his parents' endless disappointment in him. He feels that there should be some sort of statute of limitation on this sort of thing, but no, apparently not.
Suddenly, he hears a vehicle pull up some way off, and a door slams, followed by rapid footsteps on the veranda, and then his front door reverberates with loud knocking. Go away, he wills silently, and leave me the hell alone. Richard lies in the dark and holds his breath until the visitor retreats and he hears the familiar sound of the police Land Rover's engine roaring into life, before the vehicle departs at speed. Too much speed, he notes. Camille. And the images that flood into his mind at the thought of her name threaten to overwhelm him. Closing his eyes, he counts his heartbeats until they return to a resting rate, trying to calm himself as he used to do at school when he would hide from the tormenting, taunting boys who picked on him simply for being different. He has been hiding for most of his life, it seems, and now he is hiding from the one person whom he had begun to hope, with the tiniest of hopes, might actually see him in a different light. Again he despairs of himself, of his lack of courage, before turning his thoughts back to Camille.
She had been so…strange this afternoon, so not-Camille, with her distant attitude and complete lack of interest in what he had to say, other than professionally. It had been like interacting with an automaton. She had reacted to nothing, snapped her fingers at nothing, hadn't seemed to notice that he was even in the room. Fine, he had thought at first, and busied himself with his forensics reports. Blissful silence, just what I have been wishing for all these months. Fidel and Dwayne had stuck it out gamely in the strained atmosphere for an hour, before one decided to walk the beat in the marketplace, and the other recalled he had to check up on a report of an illegal rum distilling operation in the mountains at the other end of the island, and roared off on his beloved Royal Enfield.
Camille had been completely absorbed by whatever she was looking at on her computer screen, and a couple more hours had passed in silence. Richard normally enjoyed working in the office with Camille and the others (not that I would ever admit it), but today something felt very wrong, and he could not just shake off her temporary moodiness as he had done many times before. It was as if the Camille he knew had disappeared and a stranger wearing her face was sitting opposite him. That idea made him feel very queasy indeed, so he had turned his attention to a pile of SOCO results from their latest case, cross-referencing them with the forensics lab's findings, and still the silence had continued, more oppressive than the appalling heat and humidity could ever be. He had taken no satisfaction from analysing and sifting through the two piles of data, a task he usually enjoyed as he began to see the connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of information, building the case, bringing it all together. When he had finally gotten up to leave, moving quietly so as not to invoke her ire, Camille had barely acknowledged his hesitant "Well, erm, good night, then", merely making a disinterested "Mm-hmm" noise low in her throat, eyes still fixed on her monitor. Usually she would have offered to drive him home, or perhaps the team would have gone down to her mother's place for a drink (with or without me, he noted despondently) but tonight she might as well have been miles away. As he had trotted down the station steps to look for a cab, he heard her voice speaking rapid-fire French, too fast for him to follow, and surmised that she was on the phone to someone. Her mother, probably, he had thought at the time, rolling his eyes, perfect.
As the sun drops beyond the horizon, and the blazing heat of the day transmutes into the unpleasant mugginess of a tropical night, Richard can no longer bear the humidity and stuffiness caused by shutting out the evening air. Deciding that the likelihood of unannounced visitors dropping by at this late hour is infinitesimal, he gets up to unlatch the shutters, then swings open the double (he refused to call them French) patio doors, and an envelope wedged between them flutters to the floor as he does so. His heart misses a beat as he bends to pick it up, recognising Camille's small, elegant handwriting, addressing the envelope to Detective Inspector R. Poole. He frowns, slitting the envelope open with the silver penknife he keeps on his desk, and removes a single sheet of paper with a few words typed on it. "Detective Inspector Poole, I hereby notify you that I have requested a leave of absence which has been approved by the Commissioner, Royal Saint-Marie Constabulary, for an indefinite period, commencing immediately. Signed, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey", he reads. It is neat, it is professional, and it fills him with fear. He re-reads it, looks in the envelope to see if she has included anything else (she hasn't) and picks up the phone, punching in a local number with fingers that tremble.