AN: Hi everyone. I've not felt like writing much recently what with all the CV-19 crisis. I am self employed so I'm really worried about my financial situation as well as my health and the health and mortality of everyone else, not just those close to me but everyone in the world. I really hope each and every one of you reading this is well and that your loved ones are well. I found that for a while after the crisis hit full on mode that I couldn't concentrate on writing but now I am finding a little solace and distraction through it. I hope you will continue to join me and our heroes in a little escapism from the dread that is currently on all of our minds. Love and good health to you all ML
It was still early in the morning when Robbie got out of bed and, carefully putting the covers over her, left Laura sleeping while he went into the cottage kitchen.
In his arms, after they'd talked, she had slept for a little while, she'd cried more tears and they had talked some more. He'd held her close and told her to try and get a bit more rest.
Eventually, they had both dropped off to sleep again. Robbie wasn't sure if it was a deep sleep for Laura, but anything would be better than no sleep at all, especially after the trauma of the emotions of the morning and the events of the previous day. He awoke again after a couple of hours and felt better, in body at least. Listening to Laura's story had been tough. He was angry and upset but he knew showing it to her would pay no favours. She needed pragmatic help and his experience as a DI came to the fore and together they had discussed practically what might happen to Rex and Chrissy, given the evidence and circumstances and Laura had seemed to accept that hopefully, perhaps, that justice might get done in the long run. She had seemed calmed enough to get some sleep at any rate and Robbie knew that was a good sign and an indication that she was going to be ok.
In the kitchen, Robbie put rashers of bacon under the grill, cut some bread and then made a pot of coffee. Outside the sun poured brightly into the cottage garden and the birds were busy in the herb bushes as they had been the day before, looking for insects and seemingly enjoying the morning sunshine after the bad weather of the previous day. Robbie saw the note on the countertop about the hot tub and thought wryly about how their holiday had turned out compared to how it could have been without all the drama and the trauma.
With a slight frown on his face, Robbie made bacon sandwiches and piled them onto plates and was looking for a tray to take them into the bedroom when Laura appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
"Oh, you're awake. I was just about to bring these through. Hope you're up for a bacon butty?"
"Always. They look good Robbie."
"Yeah, well even I can't mess a bacon sandwich up"
Laughing softly Laura went up to him, still in her nightclothes and dressing gown and kissed him as he bent forward to greet her.
"I'm starving, actually" she said, studying him as he handed her a bacon sandwich on a plate
"You look a lot better than you did yesterday, how are you feeling?" She asked
"Actually, I'm feeling alright" and his voice and face reassured Laura. He did look a lot better and she was relieved that he'd not shown any signs of concussion.
They opened the door onto the garden and ate their breakfast and they both felt the benefit of the fresh air and sunlight. The sun was strong for late August but there was a slight chill in the shadows that seemed to herald the coming of autumn.
Finishing their coffee, Laura and Robbie chatted for a while, discussing the inevitable visit from DS Cox and, for them both, there was a familiar comfort of discussing such matters within the realms of their normal behaviour. They would often discuss cases at home together and the recent events had, despite being so personal for Laura, taken on an air of familiar procedural methodology that seemed to calm and ground them both.
After a while their conversation turned to their respective youths, and how different their experiences had been in their younger years.
"I still can't get over the fact that you were engaged" said Robbie, eyebrow raised in gentle surprise. Laura regarded him with one of her looks, her lips pursed but with a gleam in her eye.
"Go on" She said "get all the jokes out of the way – how he must have been the bravest man on the planet to ask me to marry him et cetera"
Robbie looked at her for a few seconds before he replied, a soft smile "No, I'd say he was the smartest man on the planet, until he broke it off"
Laura looked at Robbie for a minute, a tired and slightly quizzical expression on her face.
"Anyway" She continued, looking at Robbie with a puzzled smirk on her lips, "just for the record, that was the one and only time I've been engaged."
She laughed softly. "If I'd married each time I thought it warranted it, I'd have been divorced just as many times. Well, almost."
She gave him a sideways glance. Robbie frowned he wasn't quite sure what she meant by that.
She sighed as she continued "I was young and it's the sort of silly thing you do when you're young. It was all just purely adolescent foolishness but getting so royally dumped like that knocked me for six at the time. Quite terribly so."
Robbie gave her a sympathetic smile. It upset him to think of Laura being hurt so young, despite her personality of bold bravado he knew she could be vulnerable at times and he felt for her heartbreak at a young age. He'd not been much older when he'd met Val and if the feeling of intense love he had felt for her had been the same that Laura had felt for this Raul bloke then his heart ached for her younger self. He smiled at her again and she looked back at him suddenly aware of his apparent empathy towards her, even though he didn't say anything she saw it in his face. She smiled back at him, a thoughtful smile as she continued talking.
"You know, I'd forgotten all about Raul to be honest. I mean very, very occasionally I would think of him but in a sense of thinking about the me at that time, not really him. A few years later I saw in a society magazine that he'd got a banking job at his father's firm and married into minor royalty and had 5 kids, so I had a rather narrow escape I think" and she laughed. Robbie chuckled back with her, somehow he couldn't see her fitting into such a lifestyle either.
"Anyway," she sighed as she continued "it heralded the start of me being dumped each time I thought I'd found the one. She looked out at the garden. The sparrows were squabbling loudly in the bushes and above the cottage a massive black backed gull soared across the blue cloudless sky.
Laura looked at Robbie, raising her eyebrows in contemplation "Rather foolishly I felt like I'd been cursed. Numerous relationships seemed to follow the same pattern – I'd get dumped for various reasons, and I always felt it was down to something I was or wasn't doing. Franco went to work in Switzerland, he chose work over me, which is fair enough but there was a similar job in London that he could have taken instead of going overseas. So of course, the same demon returned, and I assumed again it was something I was doing or wasn't doing that ultimately drove him away."
Robbie frowned to himself and looked down to the sunlit floor of the garden terrace. He wanted to say he hoped he'd never given cause to make her feel like that. He didn't think he had but then he thought about how he'd behaved before New Zealand, how he was so ready to just give her up for his own needs, how rejected she must have felt, and he felt bad again. He'd done to her what all the other men had done in her life, granted not on the same level, but maybe what he'd done had been just as bad in principle. He wanted to talk about it and say sorry. But this morning's conversation had been about her feelings, not his, so he simply smiled at her, desperately hoping to convey to her that he was still listening.
She continued to talk. "You know" she said, a thoughtful look on her face, "I've got the ring somewhere, maybe I should sell it; I could give the money to charity."
"Bloody hell!" Robbie suddenly exclaimed
"What?" Laura watched as Robbie leapt up "what's wrong Robbie?"
"Where's my stuff- my clothes from yesterday?"
"The wet clothes?"
"Yes!?"
"By the front door, I just dumped the bag there yesterday when we got in. Why?"
Robbie didn't answer but almost sprinted to the front of the cottage and went into the porch. Grabbing the bag of wet clothes he returned to the sitting room where Laura had followed him, with a slight alarm at his sudden panic.
"I bet it's gone. I don't believe this." He said
"What's gone? Robbie? What's wrong?"
Robbie tipped out the damp clothes onto the floor and grabbed for his jeans. They were covered in sand and grit and were still wet with seawater.
"Bloody hell" he said, his voice a mix of mild anger and exasperation as he turned out the pockets of his jeans "I knew it!"
"What Robbie?"
"The ring, it's gone. The jet and pearl ring. Damn it!" He rifled through the other clothes and pulled out his wallet and phone. "How come these survived?!" he said, "of all the things!" he exclaimed again
It took a second for Laura to realise what he was talking about, then she remembered, the memento mori ring purchased for her the day before.
"It doesn't matter, Robbie"
"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed again. "I'm sorry love"
"I don't care about the ring, Robbie, you're safe and you're here and that's all I want or care about." And Robbie looked at her and saw her eyes full of emotion again. He relented in his irritation, he didn't want to see her upset again but he was still in dismay, it seemed like the final insult.
"It cost a bloody fortune!"
"A very small price to pay for you being here." She said, taking his hands in hers, her eyes glistening with the threat of tears and her voice quiet behind a gate of emotion "Come here" and she wrapped her arms around him, being careful not to press on his bruises.
He realised what she was conveying. He'd not quite started to process what a near miss he'd had but he knew it was Laura that was more traumatised by things at the moment, much more than he was.
"You're right" he said with a sigh, pulling back and looking at her. He gently moved a lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes "I'm still annoyed though"
And Laura, suddenly relieved and amused at the fact that Robbie was worried about what seemed a trivial matter compared to what had transpired in the last 24 hours, laughed softly as she pulled back and saw his face. It was one she recognised from many instances of him being irritated or grumpy. Then her attention went to his bruised eye. The colours were changing. Robbie saw the concern in her eyes along with a sadness and then an underlying anger.
"I'm ok" he said, seeking to soothe her.
She nodded and her hand went to his cheek just below his bruising
"Listen." She said " I'm going to go for a quick shower then pop down to that little shop in Robin Hoods bay. We both need something nutritious in our systems, I'll make a soup or something and we need some more milk."
"At you sure? We can always get a takeaway if need be." Robbie asked.
"No, I'll make something fresh" she said, her hand on his chest and he felt the comfort from the simple familiarity of her gesture.
"Ok, if you're sure" Robbie said with a smile. He knew not to push it further. And she was a doctor after all. She returned the smile, and he saw the reassuring spark come back into her eyes that told him she was ok. With a final caress of his chest and a kiss she went for a shower.
An hour later and Laura made her way back to the cottage from the little shop in Robin Hoods bay. She'd bought fresh vegetables and bread and milk and had everything she needed to make a soup that would be light enough for Robbie's stomach after all the salt water he'd ingested and nutritious enough to keep them both going for the rest of the day. She'd also bought some local cheese and homemade pickle that she knew Robbie would like. She'd left him earlier having a shower and had checked his injuries to find they were all starting to heal well. His bruising was still very vivid and sore, but she knew in time it would fade and heal. As for herself she was already starting to feel better. She had told Robbie things that she'd not thought of for decades. It was a relief to tell him. He was the only man she'd ever told about this part of her distant past. She knew now how important that fact alone was to her.
As she turned into the track that lead up to the cottage she noticed another car next to Robbie's. The DS had obviously arrived. She sighed to herself. She wasn't looking forward to going through it all again but at least Robbie was there and knew everything now. That helped. Her focus was now on justice for Chrissy and perhaps somehow there would be some for all the other women whose lives Rex had ruined.
Laura let herself in to the cottage and could hear Robbie talking to DS Cox. As she took her shoes off she listened to the conversation from the little hallway.
"So, Doctor Hobson is your wife?" She heard DS Cox ask, his voice strong with the local accent.
"Oh, er, no not my wife" Robbie replied. "But she is my better half"
Laura smiled to herself and felt her stomach squeeze with affection at Robbie's words.
"Oh well we all need one of those" said DS Cox
"Aye we do." Continued Robbie "and she's the best" Laura felt a lump in her throat and the rising threat of emotion at hearing what he'd said. Swallowing it down she went into the room.
"Oh, hello love, DS Cox has come to take statements, and this is DI Salter." Robbie motioned to a man in his mid-forties who stood up as Laura came into the room. Introducing herself Laura sat next to Robbie opposite the DI and DS Cox who was sitting in an armchair with a laptop on his knee.
Robbie and Laura both gave their accounts of the previous day's events and it was odd for them both to be on the other side of the investigation line. Laura supplied as much detail as she could and both she and Robbie were relieved to hear that Rose had come forward to give a statement.
"We've known about Rex Winterson for a while." DI Salter said looking first at Laura and then Robbie. He was a big man, tall and broad and commanded most of the small sofa he was sitting on. "Winterson and his wife live in York but they often occupy a holiday residence up here that belongs to his wife's mother"
"Chrissy? How is she?" Laura asked
"She's doing ok, the little lad is with his grandparents in York. Mrs. Winterson will undergo a psychological assessment but with the evidence from you we can hope that it was a culmination of pressure that caused her to do what she did. The homeless woman, Rose, she's got her fair share of problems, some minor form not surprising given her situation on the streets, but generally she's just another of his victims."
DI Salter handed Robbie a print-out. Robbie took it and saw it was a mugshot of Rose and other details including various incidents and arrests.
"Poor lass" said Robbie, looking over the handout that listed various arrests and other incidents from shoplifting to drug possession.
"There's a lot of ruined lives left in Rex Winterson's wake, but we're building a good case against him and all this evidence will help." And he looked at Laura with a reassuring but guarded smile.
"We'll keep you updated about developments" He continued. Laura looked at the photo of Rose yes she thought at Robbie's words, poor lass. Her thoughts wandered again back to Rex but in spite of this she was hopeful that the wheels of justice might just be in motion for her and for Chrissy at the very least.
The sound of a mobile phone buzzing and ringing suddenly pulled Laura from her ruminations
"Ah, excuse me" said DI Cox and he stood up to answer his phone. "Yes, ok, we're on our way, sir"
"They've got them" He said with a stern excitement to his colleague. DS Salter stood up from the sofa
Robbie raised his eyebrows, alert by default from what was obviously an important work phone call.
"I'm sorry, we've got to go" DS Salter said "Drugs smuggling bust in the harbour"
Suddenly both men were galvanized into an action that Robbie was all too familiar with. With a hasty goodbye to Laura they made their way to the cottage front door.
"I'll see you out" Robbie said, following behind them.
Laura raised her eyebrows. Although glad to give her statement she was relieved to see the back of the two detectives. It had been testing on her to have to go through everything again, even with Robbie's support. She sighed and picked up the handout of Rose that DI Salter had left on the coffee table.
Laura studied the picture for a while. Something was bothering her, she looked again at the photo of Rose. There was something not exactly familiar, but. . . she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Frowning with concentration she read through the details on the handout.
"How about a cuppa, love?" Robbie said as he came back into the sitting room. The two detectives had left at speed. He felt a little tired and achy but like Laura he was glad the DI and the DS had left.
"I don't know about you but I'm parched, could probably do with anther painkiller too" Despite this admission Laura ignored Robbie. She was still studying the handout, an intense look on her face as if she was doing a complicated sum in her head.
"Are you alright love?" Robbie asked, puzzled at her behaviour
Laura looked up suddenly
"Robbie, where's your wallet?"
"What?"
"Your wallet!"
"Why do you want my wallet?"
"Just get it me, Robbie!" she cried
With speed and curiosity Robbie did as she said and went again to the sorry heap of damp clothes he'd rifled through earlier in his vain hope of finding the ring. His wallet had survived remarkably well in a zipped pocket in his jacket, there was just a little dampness to the edges. He cursed himself for not putting the ring in there instead of his trouser pocket.
"Here" He said, handing Laura the wallet, which she almost snatched from his grasp.
"Laura? What's so important?" Robbie asked, now completely dumbfounded.
Laura looked up at Robbie. "There's something in here I need to see"
And she opened Robbie's wallet. . .
