(i)
The faint sound of his son moaning in his sleep woke Max at 2am his first night without Millie. The really unfair thing about this was that Max had only just, half an hour ago, managed to drift off himself. Thankfully Thomas fell quiet again, but Max's sleep had been disturbed to such a degree that he knew it would be a while before he would fall under again. Ordinarily when his sleep was interrupted he would roll over to the middle of the bed and wrap an arm around Millie, or his movement would stir her to turn towards him and slip her arm around his chest. Under these circumstances, Max found he would soon be able to sleep again. But tonight there would be no such source of comfort. It felt like all around him there was nothing but emptiness.
Max lay on his back in the darkness with his hands behind his head, thinking. Or, more specifically, thinking about what Millie meant to him. Until Max had found himself attached to Millie, his sisters had been the only women with whom Max had ever allowed himself to form a strong emotional connection. This was not to say that there hadn't been many women in his life. There had even been a few who had hung around waiting for things to 'progress to the next stage'. But they never did, so these women eventually gave up and moved on. This didn't especially bother Max. It never seemed right to him to be expected to make an effort when it came to the opposite sex. A psychologist might trace this back to his relationships with his over-indulgent but emotionally distant mother and largely absent father. The example he had been given led him to believe that 'love' was something bestowed upon him as a birthright and it manifest itself through someone catering to his material wants. That some of the women he knew expected things like commitment or devotion in return seemed unreasonable to him.
So Max had quite happily resigned himself to the expectation of travelling life's path alone, with the odd 'comfort stop' along the way. But then he had got Millie pregnant. The almost sacred regard that children were accorded in his family made it impossible for him to even consider pretending the child didn't exist. And once he had acknowledged the child he had no choice but to acknowledge its mother. His entire perspective on Millie was altered by her status as Mother of His Child. Millie had turned out to be nothing like he'd expected from their interactions up until that point. Instead of behaving like he presumed any woman would and taking advantage of having successfully 'trapped' the highly desirable entity that was Max Carter, she had made it clear that his relationship was with his son, not her. She had held him at a distance and despite his and his family's best efforts, had declared that she was strong enough to cope without him and unless he could offer something special, she had no interest in anything further from him. This had added a whole new, very desirable dimension to her in Max's eyes. What was it about this seemingly unobtrusive woman that made her resistant to the charms that had worked on so many women before her? Here she was, with more right to demand from him than anyone and yet she requested nothing. For the first time in his life he became the pursuer and had done all he could to claim her as his own. And then, stupidly, once he had her he had taken her for granted...
Max rolled onto his side. He realised it was more than just his bed that felt empty without Millie. He needed her to put his mind at ease was well. At times in his life, especially in the still blackness of the night, Max would find himself tormented by dark thoughts. It wasn't that he had started off life as an unhappy person, or that his childhood had soured his outlook on life. Even if his parents were a bit strange, the bond with his sisters had helped him to grow up with some sense of stability, not to mention useful doses of common sense and humour. The night terrors his sisters had reminisced about soothing him out of were the types of dreams endured by most children who had an array of books, TV shows and an active imagination at their disposal. The real nightmares had started for Max from the experiences of his adult life. Although he liked to tell himself that nothing fazed him, Max was full of regrets. Beyond the standard Catholic guilt about most of the things he'd done and enjoyed through the years was the deep-buried torment about decisions, actions and their consequences through the course of his career as a police officer. The most traumatic of these was his having taken two lives while in CO19. He relived those moments he had pulled the trigger again and again in his dreams. He remembered the sounds, the smells and the bewildered expressions on the faces of his victims as they took the bullet's impact and realised that these were the last few seconds of their earthly existence, as precisely as if he were witnessing them anew.
Max had been offered counselling after each fatal shooting and had undertaken the bare minimum of sessions he could get away with. After that, he avoided discussing the subject in any detail with anyone. Sometimes people, particularly girlfriends, suggested that he needed to get his feelings about this off his chest only to find their offer of a shoulder to cry on rejected in no uncertain terms. As a work colleague of his, Millie of course knew about the shootings, but didn't try to draw him out about them, largely because she just didn't think this technique would achieve anything. But since they had become a couple and regularly shared a bed, there was no way she could ignore the impact the shootings had had on him when she saw him in his sleep, tossing, turning and muttering or even shouting phrases about putting hands on heads and dropping weapons. Her reaction to this, once he had woken in a sweaty panic, was to silently offer him her open arms and soft kisses on the top of his head. And he would willingly receive her comfort because, although he would often be still panting in fright, she would allow him the illusion that she was holding him simply as a matter of course and not because he had just emerged from what he regarded as a moment of weakness. And somehow her sheer proximity and the certainty of her love would always convince him that the past was the past and now that she was with him even his most horrific transgressions were somehow atoned and everything would be all right.
Thomas's murmuring started again. Max reflected on how Millie always seemed to know exactly the right time to intervene when Thomas got upset at night. He listened and was completely at a loss as to how she could distinguish one of Thomas's types of cries from another. Before long though, Max heard Thomas's cries starting to pick up to such an intensity that even he could hear the lad was not going to settle without parental involvement. He got out of bed and took a pair of pyjamas out of the drawer, dressed himself and wandered down the hallway.
At the sound of footsteps, Thomas's hopes grew. "Mummy! Mummy!" he called. "It's dark!"
As soon as Thomas said the word 'dark' Max realised he hadn't turned on the boy's nightlight. Millie, he knew, would never have neglected such a detail.
"It's okay, Thomas, Daddy's here now," Max said quietly as he entered the room.
Thomas was standing up in his cot. "Mummy!" he demanded, even though he eagerly reached out his arms to his father.
"No Mummy tonight, just Daddy," said Max, hugging his son. "Daddy misses Mummy too. Do you want to come sleep in Daddy's bed?"
"Yes," said Thomas, smearing a moist nose on his father's chest.
Max carried the boy back to the parental bed and placed pillows along the edge so he couldn't roll out of his mother's vacant side of it. Millie's two boys both lay on their backs for a while staring into the darkness. Max put an arm around his son and realised that they both relied on Millie to keep their night terrors at bay. Soon Thomas nodded off, snuggled against Max's back, and it wasn't long before his much comforted father followed suit.
Father and son slept together peacefully and did not wake until, after having knocked on the door to no avail, Aunty Mag had let herself in. She made her way to Max's room and took a quick picture of the two of them with her phone. It was the flash that woke Max, who sprang up and groaned at his sister.
"What?" asked Mag innocently. "I can't recall ever seeing a more beautiful sight. That one's getting sent straight to Millie."
With Thomas safely transferred into Mag's care, Max got up and went to work.
"Didn't you get much sleep last night, eh Max?" asked the DI on seeing a yawning Max entering CID, clutching a large coffee.
"Thomas kept me awake," said Max, rubbing his eyes with his hands before taking a swig.
"Isn't settling kids the little woman's responsibility?" asked Terry, winking at Stevie.
Max sighed and figured they were probably going to hear about Millie's trip next week at wedding anyway, so it was best to come clean. "Millie's gone away for the weekend," confessed Max.
Neither Stevie nor Terry knew what to say. Neil, Grace and Mickey pretended to go about their business but kept their ears pricked.
"Organising the wedding has worn her out, so she's having a break before the big day. Is that all right?" asked Max.
"Of course it is," said Terry supportively.
"Where's she gone?" asked Stevie.
"Just to Brighton."
"Brighton?" piped in Mickey with a sly smile. "Well, that's a popular destination this weekend?"
The others all looked at him, intrigued.
"What do you mean?" asked Max.
(ii)
When Millie's train arrived at Brighton in the early evening, she checked into her room, ordered a meal, ate it while watching a movie in her room, and promptly and soundly fell asleep.
She managed to only wake up twice to worry about her boys, but that didn't stop her having a good night's sleep, as there was absolutely no reason for her to get out of bed early the next day. For the first time in ages, she managed to sleep in until nearly 8 o'clock.
Over breakfast she pondered which of the many options for her day she should pursue. The image she had had in her head of what a truly relaxing holiday would involve was one of her reclining on the beach. She decided this was the activity that most appealed to her, and the day was warm enough. But what to wear? She went back to her hotel room and rummaged through her suitcase in search of her swim wear. She had brought along a choice of two costumes: her white bikini and a sensible black one piece. She picked up the bikini top and held it up against herself. She knew she used to look good in this, but that was before her body had had to deal with nurturing and feeding Thomas. But why not be brave? What was the harm at just trying it on? She slid out of her clothes and into the skimpy two-piece and looked herself over critically.
Her tummy was definitely slightly looser than the last time she worn this bikini, but on the whole she didn't think she looked half bad. She pulled at the flesh of her belly to examine the traces of the stretch marks she had developed while pregnant with Thomas. Seeing how faded they were made her feel grateful for about the first time in her life for her pale complexion. A darker skin would have certainly made more out of those fine lines. She turned around to check out the rear view in the mirror and saw that that part of her at least hadn't altered too much.
She was beginning to feel she could get away with it. After all, the only person she was going to see who knew her was her sister, who had seen this and more at Thomas's birth.
Millie wasn't quite game enough to walk around in public wearing so little. She slipped on a light cotton skirt and top, grabbed her sunhat, sunglasses and bag, and went out to brave the world.
She chose a beach chair under a big umbrella, ordered a drink before slipping off her shirt and reclining on the beach chair. She reflected that this was what a holiday was all about!
Millie would have happily fallen asleep on her beach chair had not she registered that someone seemed to be speaking to her. And the voice was vaguely familiar.
"Millie?" it said. "Millie Brown? Is that you?"
Millie peeled open an eye and looked up at the person addressing her. Tall, dark, undeniably handsome. And looking as attractive as he had the last time she had laid eyes on him at Thomas's Baptism.
"Oh my god, Will Fletcher! What are you doing here?"
