It was Sunday, and by a stroke of luck, the first truly glorious day of spring that year. She sat on a bench on the Heath with her bare legs stretched out in front of her, head tilted back towards the sun. There was a book folded open on her chest, but she found every time she reached the bottom of the page, she could remember nothing of what she'd read. The sun and the light scent of the newly-budded flowers were too distracting. The book could wait. Days like this in England were too rare.
She was enjoying the solitude when she became aware of a noise in the grove of bushes next to her. She raised her head lazily and turned towards it. There was the sound of the crunching of some old leaves and then animated voices: the shriek of a child's laughter mingled with the gruff sounds of a man.
She smiled in anticipation as the path wound its way out of the bushes, and they emerged. The child was riding on shoulders, and the father held onto they boy's feet and carried a football tucked under one arm. The child's face lit up when he saw her.
"Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!"
"There are my handsome men!"
Gene grabbed Sam by the waist and hoisted him off his shoulders. The boy spread his arms out like an airplane and laughed happily as his father swung him in circles and lowered him gently to the ground. He jumped to his feet and ran to give his mother a grubby hug.
"Did you have fun? What did you do?"
"We played football, and Daddy said a naughty word."
"Oi, Sam!" Gene called out in mock protest and the little boy giggled. Alex turned to him with a raised eyebrow.
"Did he, now? Well, Daddy is a very naughty man, and I don't think he shall have any ice cream after lunch." She rummaged through the basket on the bench next to her and handed Sam and Gene their lunch. Their son toddled off to chase a butterfly through the grass with his sandwich in hand.
She clicked her tongue disapprovingly at Gene. "He's going to take that to nursery, you know. Wait 'til I start getting calls from other mummies about all the clever new words Sam Hunt is teaching their children."
He smiled back at her sheepishly and sat and unwound the headphones from around his neck and set his Walkman down as he sat next to her on the bench. She was surprised to see him with it. She'd given it to him for Christmas the year before, and he rarely used it.
"What are you listening to?"
"Some rubbish," he grunted.
She slid in underneath his arm and they ate their sandwiches with their heads lolled back towards the sun.
It had taken them three years to get to this spot. She missed Molly desperately sometimes, but Sam was a constant joy. She was happy. They were happy.
Luigi's wasn't the best place to raise a baby, but after Sam was born, it would do until she could find something else. Gene had offered to stay and sleep on the sofa in the days after they brought Sam home, and he never left.
She tried to pinpoint the moment when she fell in love with him. She supposed she'd always been attracted to him, the way women tend to be attracted, for better or worse, to confident, swaggering, sexy beasts like Gene Hunt. But for all his swagger, she liked him, too. He was gentle and funny and smart, and she found to her surprise that she enjoyed his company. But that was lust, that was companionship. This was something else.
She supposed it happened one night when Sam was three months old or so. There was nothing particularly unusual about that night. They'd taken Sam to be Christened that morning, and then they'd had a nice lunch downstairs with everyone there. Alex had watched with affection as Gene carried Sam around the restaurant and showed him off proudly. It was a perfect day, and she'd gone to bed feeling happy and content.
She woke in the middle of the night to the sound of Sam crying for his midnight feeding. Gene had stumbled in bleary-eyed and scooped the baby up and carried him over so she didn't have to get out of bed. And that's probably the moment she knew she loved him.
It was stiflingly hot the next night. She'd opened the windows to let some air in, but the noise from the street kept her awake. She tossed and turned, the thoughts in her mind churning, until she finally rose and crept into the lounge.
Gene was lying on his back under a thin sheet, staring up at the ceiling with his arm tucked behind his head. He said nothing when he saw her but slowly propped himself up on his elbows. She crossed to him and knelt wordlessly beside the sofa, where he tucked a loose curl behind her ear.
"Come to bed, Gene," she finally said in a low, throaty whisper.
As with the one and only other time they had made love, he was gentle, letting her set the pace. It had been a long time, and although she had tried to get back into her pre-pregnancy shape, her body had changed. She was feeling unsure and vulnerable, and he seemed to sense that.
But then as he let her know with his mouth and his body that she was still beautiful, her confidence grew. There was an urgency and intensity, as if they were making up for lost time. Afterwards, they lay breathless and spent as a breeze billowed the curtains in and blew across their damp bare skin.
It was the last time he slept on the sofa.
Several months later, Shaz had agreed to watch Sam so he could take Alex to dinner for her birthday. He seemed distracted, and midway through the meal, just as she put a wine glass to her lips, he asked the question.
"What do you say we get married, Bolly?"
She thought it was a carefully-timed joke, and she carefully set her glass down with a laugh. He was sitting forward in his chair, unsmiling. "Oh, God, you're serious." She took a careful breath, but there was no way to answer this delicately. "Gene, I…I don't think that's a good idea."
"You love me, don't you?"
She smiled wryly. "Yes, God help me, Gene, I love you."
"So?" He shrugged. She loved him, so they should get married. It was that simple to him as that.
"Well…for one…there's your…lifestyle," she started carefully. "You drink like a fish, you smoke like a chimney, my God, your LDL must be astronomical."
"I'm good enough to father your child. Good enough to take into your bed."
"It's not that simple, Gene," she groaned and covered her face with her hands. "I know there are no guarantees in life. No one knows that better than I do. But I want a husband and father for Sam I can be reasonably sure is actually going to be here in 20 years."
He looked down at his plate and began to attack his steak with his knife and fork. He was angry and hurt. "Gene. Tell me the truth. Do you really want to get married?"
"Maybe you buy into all the feminist free love bollocks, but I think a man should be married to the mother of his child."
She sighed. So that was it. Ever the man of honour. "When we get married, Gene…if we get married. I want to do it because you love us and you want to spend the rest of your life with me and Sam and you won't let anything stop you. Not because of societal norms or your admirable but misplaced sense of duty."
He looked up from his plate and nodded once but said nothing. The subject did not come up again.
But on days like this, it didn't seem to matter, and life was almost perfect. Almost.
"Marry me."
Her head snapped up from the bench. She had just taken a bite of her sandwich and a splodge had oozed out onto her dress. She turned and looked at him with stunned eyes. He was smiling at her, with one eye shut against the sun.
"I can't believe you're going to ask me that while I've just dribbled coronation chicken all down my front."
"I thought I'd catch you unawares, and you'd say yes. It's all part of my cunning plan."
She swallowed her mouthful of food. "Gene…I don't…it's just so…" Sudden, she was going to say, but stopped. They'd been together three years, and he'd already asked her twice. It was anything but sudden.
"Why not? I've cut me hair, dropped a stone, cut back on the drinking…"
"You still smoke like a chimney."
"Shit."
She smiled at him and kissed him. He bristled slightly but then smiled back at her with a wan half-smile. "I want to marry you because I want to, not just because I should. I want to be a dad to Sam. I want us to be a family. Think about it, alright?"
She had tried to pass it all off as a joke, but his sincerity startled her. She blinked back at him and nodded. "I will."
He nodded back at her and rose from the bench. "Alright, lad, you ready for an ice cream?"
Sam clapped gleefully and ran to take his father's hand, and they headed down the hill toward the ice cream van.
She shook her head. She hadn't really thought about marrying Gene in ages, and he was right. He had caught her unawares. She finally believed he wanted to marry her because he loved them, and she'd hurt him by laughing it off. Gene Hunt just wasn't a man she could really see herself married to. But regardless…if she turned him down, she owed him more than that.
Her eyes fell to the Walkman on the bench next to her. Curious, she flipped it open and slipped the tape out. A smile spread over her face when she read the title: "Stop Smoking in Six Easy Steps."
She looked down the hill to where Gene had lifted Sam up to look at the pictures on the side of the van. He wasn't perfect, but he was trying. And she loved him. Maybe he wasn't the type of man she would have chosen for herself in her old life, but her old life was gone, replaced by this one. Strange and wonderful. Maybe the old rules didn't apply.
She had a man who loved her, who loved their child. He was flawed and damaged, but he was smart, charming and fiercely loyal, too, and she knew he would protect them to the death, if he had to. She reckoned she was lucky. And happy.
She laughed out loud as she saw Sam and Gene head back up the hill towards her hand in hand. Sam had somehow managed to get ice cream on his forehead already. Gene smiled up at her raised a hand in a wave.
With tears in her eyes, she waved back, knowing what her answer would be when they reached her.
THE END