Chapter 4: Landlines and Lifelines

A/N: I've been looking forward to writing this chapter

When Camille did return, Fidel asked if she wanted them to go canvas the market for witnesses to an assault the previous night, and she agreed it seemed a sensible idea. Dwayne was not best pleased with him, but Fidel thought it was best the leave Camille alone for the conversation she would hopefully be having.

"Don't you want to know if he calls?" Dwayne complained once they were out of ear shot.

"I think it'll be pretty obvious if he has when we get back," Fidel chided him.

"But we won't know what was said!" This was just met by one of Fidel's disapproving looks, which had increased in intensity since his promotion. That boy was becoming less fun by the day.

Camille regretted sending the other officers off when the phone rang, it was probably just some tourist who'd lost a wallet and she didn't really have the patience for such enquiries recently.

"Honore Police Station, Detective Sergeant Bordey speaking."

"Camille?" The sound of his voice set her heart rate climbing.

"Richard…Sir?" she asked uncertainly, wondering if perhaps her recent lack of sleep was resulting in auditory hallucinations.

"Oh, don't call me Sir. Um, are you okay?"

"Me? You're the one who had a car crash and got moved to the other side of the world, Sir."

"Didn't I just say don't call me Sir? I'm not anyone's superior and it is weird," He sounded genuinely exasperated. "Look about what my Mother said, just…ignore her. I might not remember much but gut feeling tells me she was talking bollocks."

"She was looking out for you I suppose."

"Yes, I haven't needed to regain any memories to figure out my mother is rather over-protective. Sometimes I think she's the one who should be seeing the head doctor."

"Are you…? Have you..? I mean…"

"Not so much, but a bit here and there. I was wondering you know if maybe I could call occasionally if I perhaps need help placing a memory..."

"Yes," Camille said quickly. "Whenever you want. Or even if you just want to talk about life in general. Just ring."

"Great, that's great. I have to go before my Mother starts to wonder why I've been hiding down the back of the garden so long. I'm supposed to be weeding, she thinks I look pale and need to spend more time outdoors. I have no idea how I managed to come back from the Caribbean so pale."

"Because you burn easily, so you wore factor 50 sunscreen and stayed out of direct sunlight all the time. You barely took off your jacket let alone wore short sleeves so the sun could not physically reach you," She told him, smiling fondly at memories of him complaining about the heat and ignoring any and all suggestions on how to modify his dress appropriately.

"Wasn't I really hot all the time?"

"Yes," she told him, still smiling. "And you made sure we knew about it."

"God that must have been annoying. Speaking of annoying, I can see my Mother watching me from the upstairs window, I better get back to tackling the ivy. Bye."

He hung up before she could say her own farewell, and Camille found herself with a little niggling worry to the way he'd responded to her description of him. Had it come off negative? She couldn't deny at times it was annoying but it was also so very him, and they'd just all learnt to accept it.

When Camille saw the caller ID, she was a little perplexed, "Isn't it the middle of the night in the UK?"

"Yes, but it's not there right?" Richard replied.

"Nope, it's just gone six. Are you okay?"

There was a pause, where in her mind's eye she could see Richard gathering his thoughts, she expected him to ask something probably personal rather hesitantly, but she was actually surprised by the directness of his question, "Look I asked Fidel and he said you and I would fight, but it wasn't a big deal. But now I've just woken up and I can clearly remember you sitting on my bed crying your eyes out and I can remember how I felt about that and so clearly I must be some kind of asshole!"

Camille tried to temper her surprise that he'd spoken to Fidel about their relationship, she'd be questioning the young officer about that later, "Oh really, how did you feel?"

"Really annoyed, I was wishing you'd stop blubbering so I could get a straight answer out of you. God, admitting that's hardly going to endear you to me anymore, is it?"

She giggled, which just left Richard feeling even more confused than he normally was, "What? How is this funny?"

"Oh you've got the memory all out of context, that's all. I'm glad you called. That was the first time we met. I was undercover, pretending to be a cleaner for Charlie Hulme whom I was investigating. But then you turn up and tell me he's dead, you've been sent to Saint Marie from London to investigate his killing, so I decided to play the part of the somewhat devoted cleaner. Plus I was hoping you'd feel so sorry for me you'd keep me on as a cleaner and I'd be able to continue searching the property."

"Oh," Said Richard. He sounded almost disappointed that he was not, as he had so delicately put it, an asshole. "I suppose that's ok then."

"You should go back to sleep and not worry about it. Goodnight."

"Yeah, night."

"There is a chance I am going to murder my Mother."

It was a Sunday, and Camille was sat on the beach reading when her phone rang. She was a little taken aback by the warm fuzzy feeling that occurred at the sound of the irate voice.

"You'll have to come arrest me. Have your revenge for that time I arrested you. Which I think was reasonably justified…"

"You still didn't know I was a police officer," she said succinctly. "Why are you going to kill your mother?"

"She's been exposing me to a parade of every woman I've apparently ever shown an interest in. I suspect, however, that if my memory was intact I would struggle to remember half of them and she's just using my amnesia as an excuse to try to set me up with women she approves of. One of them was apparently my piano teacher's daughter, though I'm pretty sure if she wasn't recently divorced Mum wouldn't have invited her over for dinner. You see the other strange thing about all these women is they all happen to be single, which seems a bit too much of a coincidence. Or perhaps I am simply so amazing I have ruined them for other men, but I have the feeling you'll tell me that's unlikely."

Camille giggle and then told him, "You make it sound like a lot of women, Richard. I mean my mother makes me go on blind dates occasionally as well."

"10 women in 2 weeks Camille. Do you know how hard it is to make small talk when most of your life history is missing?"

Camille was trying to pretend she wasn't panicking just a little at Richard's mother's obvious attempts to get him to settle down. After all, if he did like one of these women, then his reasons to return to Saint Marie would start to dwindle.

Richard understood her lack of answer as an inability to think of a suitable one, "No, of course you don't, though it was actually supposed to be a rhetorical question anyway. Anyway, if I end up charged with killing her I want somebody to have known my suffering. And now I have had my fill of winging, how are you?"

She wanted to tell him she missed him, and that he should come home. That whenever she looked at his desk and saw somebody else sitting there, she felt a pang of sadness even though it had been weeks since he'd left. That she'd taken to praying to whatever God might be listening that he'd get better. Instead, she told him she was a fine. Her mother would tell her that not saying how she felt was a habit she'd picked up from Richard, and she'd be right.

He hardly ever opened with Hello, "Did you know I spoke Mandarin Chinese?"

Camille thought about it, "Yes, you mentioned it once, but I never heard you speak it or anything."

"Well I suppose French would have come in more handy that Chinese."

"Oh you definitely don't speak French," her tone had perhaps more vehemence than she intended.

"Well I must have spoken a little? I mean even if I came to Saint Marie knowing only half a dozen phrases surely I would have picked some of it up?"

Camille rolled her eyes, which was pretty pointless since he couldn't see her, "Well if you did you kept it to yourself because you refused to speak it."

"Right," he sounded contemplative, and Camille couldn't help but notice he'd lost the enthusiasm he'd had at the start of the conversation.

"So did you wake up speaking Mandarin this morning?" She asked, trying to get the conversation back to its original topic.

"Nearly that actually! This woman turned up yesterday and it was weird because I couldn't remember who she was but at the same time I knew I hadn't seen her in a really long time and I was happy to see her. So I hugged her, which seemed to really confuse her…"

"You don't really hug people," Camille told him.

"What am I? OCD and afraid I'll catch their germs?"

It was very weird to try and explain somebodies behaviour to them, especially when you weren't entirely sure why they acted that way in the first place, "No, you just aren't very…touchy-feely."

"Well I don't think hugging somebody you've missed is touchy-feely but okay, I guess."

They'd gotten off topic again, "So what about this woman then?"

"Well apparently we once did some undercover work. She debriefed me on what we did because it's a little bit classified and just warned me off sharing any memories of that time with anyone but my therapist, who apparently has security clearance. Anyway at the end of the conversation she told me I should practise my Mandarin more because my accent had gotten awful and it turned out we'd had the whole conversation in Chinese."

Camille was a little taken aback by the story, "Are you telling me you were some kind of spy?"

"Well that sounds really cool so let's go with yes. But what I'm actually saying is that at one point I worked for special branch, yes. I suppose you wouldn't have known that, it's sort of nice to think I actually knew something about myself you didn't already know."

"You know I actually can imagine it," Camille told him playfully. "Though maybe more Johnny English than James Bond."

There was a pause, before Richard said, "I think that reference may have been lost on me."

Another redundant eye roll followed.

"Hello Richard, how are you?"

"I'm good, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, bored really, no open cases at the moment."

"Well, I was hoping you might have a reason for what I did today."

Camille really wasn't sure where this was going, "What did you do today?"

"I bought a pet lizard. I had just gone to buy some milk and I walked past this exotic pet shop like I do every day, except today I walk in and buy a lizard and all the stuff that comes with it. A Carolina anole to be precise, my mother is not happy. She can't figure out why I'd want a lizard for a pet and off the top of my head nor can I - but I have no plans on giving him back. I just wondered if you had any ideas."

"You don't remember Harry?" She asked, hoping the name would magically trigger a flood of memories. Actually she hoped that would happen every time they spoke.

"Nope, sorry."

"Well he's a little lizard who lives in your house. Wild, but you named him Harry and you used to feed him. Don't worry, I convinced the new Inspector to keep leaving out food for him."

"Ok, well, at least now when I argue with my mother I can assure her it wasn't the brain injury that made me buy the lizard."

Camille was a little surprised when he rang her again a mere hour later.

"Prevention is better than cure, they say that right?"

"Yes…"

"Well in order to prevent me killing my Mother, which I think would be a cure for many of my problems, I think it's about time I moved out."

"Is it because she said you can't keep the lizard?"

"It's not just that," he said defensively. "It's just plain weird living with my parents at my age. My mother got upset when I mentioned it but Dad is calming her down. And I can definitely afford to because I looked in my bank account after buying all the lizard stuff and found there was two hundred and fifty grand in it. Apparently, I sold my house just before I ended up back here. I had no idea I even owned a house, well I owned most of it."

"You sold your house?"

"Yeah, so I'll use some of the money to rent a place and see how it goes."

"Why did you sell your house?" She asked before realising what a stupid question it was. If he didn't remember selling it, he'd hardly remember why he did it. She was reeling from the revelation though, her heart racing. Because what she had here was evidence, proof of something she'd denied because she'd been too afraid and too stupid to see it.

He didn't answer her question, he seemed instead to pick up on her change in mood, "Are you alright?"

No, I mean, yes, I mean. I just realised I was wrong about something. I'll have to fix it sometime soon."

"Okaaaay…"

She tried to time her call for when she thought he would have actually finished moving his stuff in, "Are you all finished up?"

"Yeah, I think so. I was just staring at the oven trying to remember if I can cook. Can I?"

"Um, I never saw you cook but then you never seemed to be starving to death so you must have fed yourself somehow."

"Oh well, moving house probably deserves take away anyhow. Plus I suspect if I open the freezer I will find about a hundred Tupperware containers filled with my mother's cooking."

She laughed, knowing that she came home sometimes herself to find her mother had let herself in and filled Camille's fridge with food.

"You never really told me what your new place is like?"

"Oh it's very practical. It's a flat, got a nice view of the park. It's got two bedrooms."

Camille got the impression that last statement hadn't been as innocuous as the others, "Oh so your mother can stay over?"

"Ha ha. She's only a twenty minute walk away, I'm already wondering if I should have moved further. No, but I mean people could come and stay. For example, I mean it's a long way and it isn't cheap so I'm not, you know, asking you to but if you happen to want to take a holiday to London or something you could stay here. For free. As long as you like lizards."

Camille was pretty certain she had a stupid smile on her face, "I think that sounds like a really good idea."