TWO - Jigsaw Puzzle

What's left of the night is far from restful. At first there are distracting noises from beyond the closed bedroom door that indicate her unexpected companion is far from ready to settle, and when they eventually cease, Grace goes back to struggling to relax enough to let sleep take her. Too many thoughts, too much to worry about. Sometime after three exhaustion takes over and the world finally fades away, but she doesn't stay asleep. She wakes and frets, dozes off again, then wakes to repeat the cycle.

When resumed noise from the rest of the flat drags her into a reluctant state of full awareness, there's a cold sliver of daylight scything into the room through a gap in the curtain. Thin winter morning light, harsh and unwelcome. When closing her eyes and willing herself back to sleep fails, Grace forces herself to sit up and then to get out of bed. The room is chilly, and she shivers as she goes to the window to draw back the curtain a little to survey the outside world. The uninspiring impression of an unremarkable, anonymous residential street that she formed the night before doesn't change. There are a few less cars parked on the road and in front of houses, and she catches a brief glimpse of an elderly man walking a small grey dog, but otherwise…

She can hear Boyd's voice. Muffled enough for the exact words to be indecipherable, sharp enough to suggest that he is not in the best of moods. There's no answering voice to be heard, indicating that it's probably a telephone conversation she's overhearing. At least, she thinks, she can rely on him to pry as much information as possible about their situation from whoever he's talking to. There are times when his blunt impatience is incredibly useful. He's not a man to be easily fobbed off, even – or especially – by his superiors.

Once again donning her dressing gown and pausing only briefly to glance at her reflection in the cheap mirror screwed to the wall above the tired, old fashioned chest of drawers set against the dividing wall between the two bedrooms, Grace heads out into the main room. In the cold light of day it looks even less homely and inviting than it did the night before. The ceiling is nicotine-stained, the grubby wallpaper is peeling, and there's a slight, underlying hint of damp that reminds her of a dilapidated student house she once occupied back in the late 'sixties.

Boyd is standing by the room's large solitary window, phone pressed to his ear as he stares out at the street. Listening hard to whatever it is he's being told, he spares her only the briefest of glances. The incongruous sweater has disappeared to reveal a crumpled-looking black tee-shirt, and his shoes are untidily abandoned beside the sofa. Grace can't decide if he's been to bed or not. He looks tousled and bad-tempered, and when he turns his head she can see the bristle of grey morning stubble on his cheek. Passing him without a word, she heads into the tiny kitchen, glad to discover that the limited supplies provided for them include both an unbranded box of teabags and a jar of instant coffee granules. There's milk, too, stowed in the small fridge, and further searching reveals a bag of sugar, a box of breakfast cereal, a sliced loaf, and both margarine and marmalade. Enough to create a passable breakfast, at least.

She's waiting for the kettle to boil when Boyd looms up behind her with an irritable, "Marshall's useless bunch of performing monkeys have put in half the front doors south of the bloody river overnight and yet have still managed to turn up precisely fuck all."

"And good morning to you, too," she says, holding up a chipped blue mug. "Tea or coffee?"

"Coffee," he growls. "How hard can it possibly be? I mean, really? Proctor's hired muscle for the bloody Baileys, for God's sake. You'd think the O'Dowds or the Walkers would be falling over themselves to point the finger in the right fucking direction."

"Dennis and Jack Bailey?"

"How many other Baileys do you know?" he demands.

"Well – " she starts.

"You know what I mean," Boyd interrupts, "don't be deliberately obtuse, Grace. It's too early in the bloody morning."

"It's gone seven," she points out. "Pass the milk, will you?"

"Yeah, well," is the tetchy reply, as the cardboard carton requested lands heavily on the counter next to her, "some of us haven't been to bed yet."

"Whose fault is that?" Grace asks, successfully openly the sealed carton without spilling the contents. "Oh, do get out of the way, Boyd – there's barely room to swing a cat in here as it is…"

He glowers, but takes a step back, ending up in the doorway. "Two sugars."

Pausing with teaspoon in the air, she asks, "Since when?"

"Since I said so. Why are you so damned cheerful?"

"I'm not," she says, adding a second spoonful of sugar to the blue mug, "I'm just in a better mood than you."

"Well, it's infuriating."

"Here," she says, thrusting the mug towards him, "drink that, and don't bother speaking to me again until you've regained your usual sunny disposition."

"Funny," Boyd mutters, but he takes the mug and slopes away, leaving Grace to finish making her tea in peace. She briefly considers making toast, too, but decides against the idea. If she makes enough for both of them, she risks setting a dangerous precedent, and if she doesn't…

Returning to the living room, she settles herself on the grey sofa and inquires, "So?"

Back at the window, Boyd glances round at her. "'So'…? So, what?"

She refrains from rolling her eyes at him. Just. "So, what are we supposed to do? Just sit tight?"

"Apparently." He sounds every bit as disgusted by the idea as he looks. "When I tried to go out earlier, it was made very clear to me that leaving the premises is not an option."

Grace frowns. "Go out? Why?"

"Fancied a walk."

"A walk," she echoes, not believing him for a moment. "At the crack of dawn? In December?"

"Why not? I hate being cooped up."

That much is true, she knows. Another reason why Boyd is considered such a controversial commander for the CCU – his stubborn refusal to stay permanently at headquarters diligently dealing with all the unit's administrative tasks as befits someone of his rank while his junior officers do all the leg-work. There's a reason why he deliberately spent so many years as a DI, refusing to court further promotion, and everyone knows it – and it has nothing to do with any lack of ambition or ability. Sipping her tea, Grace watches as he returns to his morose contemplation of the outside world. Eventually, she inquires, "Good film, was it?"

"Eh?"

"Last night? The cinema?"

"Oh." He doesn't look at her. "L'Atalante. The restored version."

"Good Lord," she says, not bothering to hide her surprise. "Jean Vigo?"

"Yeah."

"That's a bit highbrow for you, isn't it?"

"The Disney thing was sold out."

Sixteen years Grace has known him, and she's still not always able to tell whether he's joking or not. Like her, Boyd has eclectic tastes in a great many things, including entertainment. Music, art, literature, they've debated them all over the years, sometimes finding common ground, sometimes not. Idly studying the back of his head, she inquires, "And did your 'friend' enjoy it?"

She's not altogether surprised by the quick, sideways glance he gives her. Nor by the way he stresses the pronoun as he replies, "She did, thank you for asking."

He's an inveterate ladies' man, in his own, quiet way. Always has been. Much of his enjoyment, however, Grace deduced a long time ago, lies in the thrill of the chase. Actually maintaining a long-term, healthy relationship generally seems to present him with the kind of challenges he's too capricious and too impatient to deal with. Either that, or he really does repeatedly choose the wrong women as she's frequently heard him bemoan. In reality it's probably a complex combination of the two factors. Reflecting briefly on her own chequered history of failed relationships, she says, "But you didn't get your nightcap."

"Or anything else that might have been on offer," he adds, shaking his head. "Jesus, sometimes I think I might as well just give up and become a bloody monk."

"Poor Boyd," Grace says, with no sympathy whatsoever. "Well, I'm sure you can charm your way back into her good books if you try hard enough."

"Assuming I don't end up burnt to a bloody crisp, or face down on the pavement with a knife in my back."

Wincing, she says, "For heaven's sake… Could you be any more insensitive? People have died, Boyd. Good people."

He turns to face her, a sharp spike of anger colouring his tone as he growls, "You think I don't know that? Gail was a damn good friend, and Woodard was one of the best sergeants out there. Bar none, Grace. Bar fucking none."

She holds up her free hand in a placatory gesture. "All right, all right. I'm sorry."

Boyd glares at her for a moment longer, then grunts and turns away again.

Not in the mood to fight with him, Grace finishes her tea, sets her empty mug down on the cheap wooden coffee table and announces, "I'm going to go and have a shower."

There's no overt response. Then, she didn't really expect one.

-oOo-

By the time Grace is dressed and doing what she can with the limited quantity of cosmetics she quickly snatched together while packing the preceding night, the distinctive smell of fresh toast is permeating through the flat. Her stomach rumbles in response to the tempting aroma and she realises for the first time that she's hungry. Getting to her feet and smoothing down the long olive-green cardigan that she hopes will combat the worst of the winter chill, she wonders if Boyd is creating breakfast for one, or for two. Hoping for the latter, she concedes that the former is more likely. He's every bit as self-sufficient as she is, maybe even more so, and nowhere near as inclined to consider the people around him when he's preoccupied.

Opening the bedroom door, she wonders how long they're going to be confined together. Hopes it will be hours rather than days or, God forbid, even longer. She likes him – rather more than he knows – but history has repeatedly proved that the longer they're in close proximity the more likely it is that they will start to bicker over the kind of pointless things that lead to explosive and very real differences of opinion. They get along far better when they can walk away from each other before things turn ugly. She's self-aware enough to know that Boyd's quick-tempered intolerance is only part of the problem. She has her flaws, too, and her life-long inability to ever let someone have the last word in an argument that has always scraped across his nerves has never mixed well with his stubborn refusal to give ground easily. On anything.

"Toast," he announces from the sofa as she emerges, waving vaguely at the coffee table.

Hiding her pleased surprise, Grace murmurs her thanks and heads for the nearest armchair. Plain toast stacked high on a large central plate, margarine and marmalade in dutiful attendance ready to be deployed as required. From the copious number of crumbs on one of the two smaller plates, Boyd has already devoured his own share with some gusto. He regards her with placid indifference as she opens the jar of marmalade and picks up the used, sticky knife resting on his plate. No point in increasing the number of items needing to be washed. Spreading a thick layer over first one, then two pieces of toast, she says, "Do you think they'll bring us a turkey if we're still here on Christmas Day?"

"We won't be," he tells her, obviously not in the mood to banter.

"We might be."

"We won't be," he insists.

"You're sure about that, are you?"

"Yes I am. For two reasons." Boyd helps himself to yet another piece of toast and plucks the jar of marmalade away from her. "One, Jacky Bailey is a lot of things, but he's not a cop-killer, and he won't welcome the extra attention that being associated with one will bring to his door. Proctor's small fry, easily given up."

"Makes sense," Grace agrees. She chews for a moment, swallows, then inquires, "And two?"

"Joyce will nail my balls to the bloody floor if I'm not in Hampshire in time for Christmas lunch."

Amused, she says, "I see. Like that is it?"

"Yeah." He doesn't look at her as he loads marmalade onto his toast and adds, "It's the first Christmas since… Well, you know. I don't stand a cat's chance in hell of being allowed to spend it quietly on my own."

Since Luke, she thinks. The first Christmas since Luke's death. Of course there's no way his formidable step-mother will let him stay in London, alone and brooding. Grace is quite bold enough to say, "Well, good for Joyce."

"I somehow thought you'd approve." His tone is dry.

"I do," Grace agrees, and at the quick dark look he gives her adds, "Christmas is a time for families, Boyd. It will do you no good at all to sit alone in that big empty house of yours thinking about – "

"Who said," he interrupts, "anything about being on my own?"

"You did," she says, a little too triumphant. "'…A cat's chance in hell…'?"

Outwitted, Boyd scowls. "Shut up, Grace."

"Anyway," she continues, neither cowed nor offended, "once you're there, you'll enjoy every minute of it."

"Think so?"

"Know so. All that fresh air, Joyce and Cathy running around after you…"

He snorts. "You have met my sister?"

"Well, just Joyce, then," she amends in answer to the rhetorical question. Catherine Lloyd, divorced like her brother, is not, admittedly, the sort of woman to run around after anyone, male or female, let alone after the annoying kid brother she still somehow manages to view Boyd as. With both her own children grown-up and living abroad, and her ex-husband living somewhere in Scotland with his much younger second wife, Catherine seems to return to their childhood home far more frequently than her brother, even though their indomitable father has been dead for the better part of a decade. Both born in London, they were raised from a young age at their stepmother's family home just south of Lyndhurst only returning to the capital in adulthood. Grace doesn't know about Catherine, who she's met just a couple of times, but Boyd only has a couple of vague, sketchy memories of his late mother. She wonders, sometimes, what that feels like.

"What about you?" the man himself asks, the abrupt question disturbing her contemplation.

"Me?" Grace frowns. "Oh. Christmas, you mean? I didn't… don't… have any plans."

"Not heading back up to barbarian country this year?"

"I thought about it," she admits, "and my sister-in-law was quite keen, but…"

Boyd gazes thoughtfully at her but seems to decide not to press the matter. He grunts. "Families, eh?"

"They're lovely people," she assures him hastily, as he crunches his toast, "and I know I'd be made very welcome, but… Oh, I don't know. The longer we're apart, the less we seem to have in common."

"Yeah, there's nothing quite like discussing serial murder over a family meal for causing an awkward silence, is there?"

Allowing a wry smile, Grace nods. "And the worst thing is, it seems so completely normal to us, doesn't it? Talking about that sort of thing, I mean."

"Nature of the job," Boyd says, brushing toast crumbs from his fingers. "You know as well as I do how statistically rare serial killers are, but not if you're dealing with decades of unsolved crimes."

"We'll never get to the end, will we?" she muses, caught in a moment of reflection. "Doesn't matter how many cases we solve, we'll never get to the end."

"Jesus," he says, "you're a real little ray of sunshine this morning, aren't you?"

"I'm tired," she admits, "and not altogether happy about the thought that someone out there wants to kill me. We don't all have nerves of steel, Boyd."

"I can't say I'm over the moon about it, either, but much as I hate to admit it, we're probably in the best place. Those guys downstairs don't fuck about, Grace. If at any point they think we're in imminent danger, they'll shoot first and ask questions later. That's what they're trained to do."

"Mm." A thought occurs to her. "You're still an Authorised Firearms Officer."

Boyd's expression becomes guarded. "I am. Under protest, as you well know."

"Well, why aren't you armed, then?" she asks, hoping it doesn't sound too much like an accusation.

"Who says I'm not?"

Grace studies him for a moment, trying to gauge his sincerity. Boyd does not like guns. Chooses not to go armed in situations where he justifiably could, something Spencer, for one, has never understood. Not making the words a challenge, she says, "You're not, are you?"

Boyd holds her gaze. "It wasn't offered as an option."

"And you didn't request it."

"If Proctor's man can get through two officers armed with MP5s…" He doesn't finish the sentence. Doesn't need to.

-oOo-

Accompanied by Carl Spicer, DCI Marshall arrives just before noon. A solid, imposing man who looks more like a soldier than a police officer, he reminds Grace a little of her long-dead grandfather. The same quiet, confident manner, the same unshakable calm. He's polite to them both, but there's nothing deferential in the way he deals with Boyd, despite the other's marginally senior rank. Calm, patient and utterly intractable, he says, "I know my team, and I know they'll get a result. I'll be questioning the Bailey brothers myself shortly. We will find the killer."

"Jacky's the one you need to lean on," Boyd tells him, pausing in his restless prowling. "Dennis is vicious, but he hasn't got the bloody sense he was born with. He won't see that it's to their advantage to help us."

"With all due respect," Marshall says, his tone glacial, "I think I know how to handle scum like the Baileys."

"Do you." It's not a question. "Well, I spent well over six years at Deptford nick right in the middle of their patch, Chief Inspector, and I can tell you now, if you go in to interview them with that attitude, neither of them will say a bloody word. Jacky's old school. Treat him with a bit of respect and he might – just might – take care of the problem for us."

Marshall's reply is curt. "That might be how you do things in the CCU, Boyd, but the rest of us aren't prepared to – "

"I think," Grace cuts in, well-aware that Boyd's hackles are rising, "that what DSI Boyd is trying to say – "

"Ma'am," Marshall interrupts, "my orders come straight from DAC Lambert, and they do not include conspiring with known criminals."

"'Conspiring'," Boyd mimics with a derisive snort. "Take the fucking broom out of your arse for a moment, Marshall, and you might just see that getting the Baileys to play ball is the best option we've got. If they put the word out that they're not happy about one of their associates going freelance, the people who actually know something will start talking to us."

Buried in the depths of her cardigan pocket, Grace's phone starts to ring. Both men glare in her direction as she fumbles to retrieve it. The little display is illuminated, and it bears the simple legend 'Eve L'. Glancing at Boyd as she stands up, she says, "It's Eve."

"Eve?" Marshall queries with a frown.

"Eve Lockhart," Boyd informs him. "Our pathologist and forensics expert."

"I should talk to her," Grace says, getting to her feet. "I'll go in the bedroom."

"Doctor Foley – "

"Leave her," Boyd interrupts. "She knows what she can and can't say."

Marshall doesn't subside. "That may be, but – "

"I said," Boyd repeats, more than a hint of steel in the words, "leave her. Go on, Grace."

Sparing him a quick, grateful smile, she retreats to the bedroom, answering the call as she closes the door. "Eve."

"Grace," the other woman's clearly relieved voice says in her ear. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she says, moving to the window to look out at the street, "or, at least, doing okay. Under the circumstances."

"I won't ask you where you are, but please tell me you're safe?"

"We are," she says, watching a grey-haired woman jostling numerous festive-looking carrier bags into the open boot of a waiting car. Christmas presents for the grandchildren, perhaps?

"'We'?" Eve sounds surprised. "Boyd's with you?"

Even though it's pointless, Grace nods. "I'm not sure he's enjoying it much, but he is, yes."

A dedicated smoker's throaty chuckle is followed by, "I can imagine. You're both all right, though?"

"We are," she repeats. "We've got a couple of armed protection officers looking after us."

"Oh, I bet he's delighted about that, isn't he?"

Grimacing, Grace says, "He hasn't stopped moaning about the fact that they wouldn't let him go out to stretch his legs earlier."

"Poor you," is the prompt and heartfelt response. "Someone from Scotland Yard has been in to brief Spence, but the rest of us have been told not to ask too many questions."

"I'm not surprised." Adept at hearing all the things that aren't being said, she adds, "Don't worry, Eve. The situation is… in hand. We shouldn't be here too much longer. I hope."

"Is there anything you need?" Eve asks, ever-practical. "I'm sure we can get stuff to you through Spencer and whoever it is he's been told to liaise with."

Tempting as it is to reel off an extensive list of home comforts, Grace shakes her head. "No, not at the moment. I had a chance to pack the bare necessities before they picked me up last night. If things do drag on, though…"

"Call me if you need anything," Eve replies. Someone, possibly Spencer, says something indecipherable in the background and she adds, "Look, Grace, I'd better go. We've been told to keep any calls as brief as possible."

"I understand." Quelling a sudden stab of melancholy, she adds, "Eve?"

"Yes?"

Trying to sound both confident and matter-of-fact, Grace says, "Tell everyone not to worry. Everything's going to be fine."

Eve's response is an unconvinced-sounding, "Of course it is."

-oOo-

"What," Boyd demands, emerging mid-afternoon from the small second bedroom where he retreated for a short nap not long after their meagre lunch, "is that?"

Grace doesn't bother glancing round at him. "It's called a 'jigsaw', Boyd."

"Haha, very funny." He drops heavily onto the sofa next to her. "I know it's a bloody jigsaw, Grace. I can see it's a bloody jigsaw. What I meant was, where did it come from?"

"Found it under my bed," she says, batting away his hand as he reaches for the stack of blue pieces neatly piled to the left of the partial framework of edge pieces she's working on. "Don't interfere. I have a system."

"Dear God," he says, withdrawing his hand, "is this what my life's come to? Stuck in a cruddy flat in the arse-end of nowhere watching someone else fuck up the Eiffel Tower."

"I am not 'fucking up' the Eiffel Tower. I'm doing rather well, thank you. If you want to do something useful, sort out all the bits that look as if they're part of the Champ de Mars."

"Do I look like someone who's in the mood to do a bloody jigsaw?"

Sitting up a little straighter, Grace switches her gaze from the jigsaw pieces strewn across the coffee table to her companion. His dark eyebrows are drawn down in a forbidding scowl, and he looks petulant at best. She shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Boyd gets up again, walks across to the window. The light is beginning to fade from the winter sky, and he glares out at the world in accusing silence. Grace watches him while pretending not to. He doesn't cope well with boredom and inactivity, and if she knows him half as well as she thinks she does, it won't be long before his limited patience runs out altogether. What will happen when it does, she's not sure. He will shout, because he always shouts, but there is nowhere for him to go, nothing for him to do. Sifting through jigsaw pieces, she waits.

It's a full two minutes or more before he says, "Hare killed Rhonda Weekes at Christmas, do you remember?"

She does. The pretty seventeen-year-old was Hare's fourth confirmed victim, and she died some seven months before Grace joined the massive police operation launched to find the so-called 'Merton Murderer'. She remembers – vividly – being shown the gruesome crime scene photos in the tiny, windowless office from where Boyd was running the investigation. Aloud, she says, "He dumped her naked body in the park in the early hours of Boxing Day. Just left her there, lying on the grass."

"Mm." Boyd carries on staring out of the window. "We were in Dublin, staying with Mary's family. It was all over the news. Little did I know that five months later…"

"…another two girls would be dead, and you'd be leading the manhunt," Grace guesses. She stares at the piles of little cardboard pieces arranged before her, but barely sees them. "That poor girl's family. Losing a child at Christmas…" She doesn't finish the sentence, the crashing insensitivity of her thoughtless words rendering her silent as she realises…

Boyd doesn't move, doesn't look at her. Again, offers, "Mm."

"I'm sorry," she says, too-quickly. "I didn't mean… I wasn't trying to imply that…"

"It's all right." Tight, but calm. Resigned, even. "I know what you mean."

Grace takes a deep breath. Not knowing if she's doing the right thing or not, she says, "We could talk about it, you know, if it would help. It's not as if there's anyone around to interrupt or overhear."

Back still to her, he shakes his head. "No point. Nothing to say, is there? My son's dead, and all the talking in the world is never going to change that."

"It's not," she agrees carefully, "but it might help you start to come to terms with it."

"Don't, Grace." Finally, he does turn. "I know you're trying to… be kind, but… Well, it's just not my sort of thing."

There's no point in pushing him. None at all. She says, "I haven't forgotten the promise you made me."

From the look on Boyd's face, neither has he. His shoulders stiffen perceptibly. "I'm not shutting you out. I just don't want to talk about it. Any of it."

It will break you if you don't, Grace wants to scream at him, frustrated by his continued stubborn refusal to accept the help she's so qualified to offer. Sooner or later, it will break you, Peter. Instead, she goes back to staring at the incomplete jigsaw and mutters, "Whatever you think is best."

For a moment he remains still and silent, then he moves to the nearest of the two armchairs, settles himself and says, "When I was a kid – must've been the Christmas of 'fifty-eight – I broke my arm out riding."

Attention caught by the sudden bizarre revelation, Grace looks up. "Riding? You? You don't ride."

"Used to," he tells her, fingers of one hand drumming idly on the arm of the chair. "Joyce's father was a Verderer, and she's still an agister to this day. There were always horses and ponies around. Anyway, that year we went out for a ride on Christmas Eve. Me, Cath, and Joyce. Don't know where my father was. Up in London, maybe. We had a couple of New Forest ponies at the time, me and my sister. Tough little beasts. We were amusing ourselves by racing each other up and down one of the bridleways while Joyce talked to someone she knew. I was doing my best to overtake Cath, and the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air."

Eyebrows raised, she says, "You fell off?"

"At full belt," he tells her, straight-faced. "Pony stumbled; must've slipped in the mud, or something. I don't remember hitting the ground, only lying there staring up at the branches and the sky. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything. Completely bloody winded. Then the pain started. I knew straight away I'd broken my damned arm."

Grace can't picture it. Can't imagine him as a child. "What happened?"

"Cath caught the pony, Joyce picked me up and dusted me off. Clipped me round the ear for being so stupid, too. Idiotic thing to do, she said. Lucky I didn't break my damned neck."

Sighing, Grace says, "Don't tell me – you ended up spending Christmas in hospital?"

Boyd's grin is as quick as it is unexpected. "Well, that was my biggest fear, you see. Lied my head off, told everyone I was absolutely fine. By Christmas morning my arm was black and blue and swollen up like a balloon." He holds his left hand up, stares at it thoughtfully. "Seems I never did know what was good for me."

"Ah," she says, finally understanding the point of the tale. "Well, you're not a kid anymore, Boyd, and telling everyone that you're fine when you're not isn't brave, it's stupid and potentially very dangerous. Like galloping full-tilt along a muddy track. So then what happened?"

He closes his fist experimentally, as if testing the limb it's attached to. Apparently satisfied, he lets his arm drop. "Spent the next two days in Southampton Hospital. It was a bad break and they had to operate. I have a forearm full of metal pins to remember that Christmas by."

"You're your own worst enemy," Grace tells him, shaking her head. Her own distant childhood memories are stirring though, and it suddenly strikes her how little they really know about each other's past given the length of time they've been friends. Almost grudgingly, she asks, "Do you want to hear about my worst childhood Christmas?"

Boyd is watching her with a reflective sort of curiosity. "Go on."

"I was six," she says, returning her attention to the jigsaw pieces, "and I got whooping cough. My mother had four other children to look after, including a new baby, so my father decided I'd be better off at my auntie's. In hindsight, it was probably the best thing to do, but at the time… Well, I felt as if I'd been sent away because I was sick and no-one wanted to look after me. My auntie lived in Blackburn. Too far away to make visiting easy. We didn't have a car. I remember crying myself to sleep every night for a week."

"Hard for a kid to understand," Boyd says, his voice usually soft. "Well, I think that trumps my broken arm."

"Auntie Vi didn't celebrate Christmas," Grace continues, momentarily lost in the past, "though I never did find out why. To her, it was just another day. She let me have the present my parents had left for me, of course, but that was it. Just another long day spent lying in bed wondering if I was ever going to be allowed to go home. Ever since then… Well, I've always tried to make Christmas a bit special."

"And yet," he says, unnerving her with his acuity, "you haven't made any plans."

She shrugs. "Just as well, the way things are going."

"I told you, Grace, we're not still going to be here at Christmas."

"I wish I had your confidence."

Boyd gets to his feet, ambles the short distance to the sofa and says, "Shove over. Two people can fuck up the Eiffel Tower a lot faster than one."

-oOo-

Cont…