Chapter 26: Reflections Again
She hated the click of the lock as she turned the bolt, the warmth of the sitting room as she turned on the light, even the empty silence as it enveloped her. It was all fine—there was nothing wrong with anything—but Cully despised it now. This was not where she wanted to be, at home. But she hardly knew where— No, that was a lie; she knew exactly where she wanted to be, and the clarity was unnerving.
Rather than wait for Gavin to return to his car and watch him vanish from her life at the end of another day, she had dashed inside as soon as he turned away. She couldn't watch, not after...The thoughts churned in her mind even as she clenched her eyes, trying to shove them aside. The skin she had touched only in her imagination had become real and hot under her fingertips, and not even her breath had been her own. When his hand reached her waist, sliding beneath her shirt, goosebumps had risen along its path. His hands and fingers had learned the curves of her body from her breasts to her hips as hers danced over his chest.
And god, what else could have been—would have been—if not for that phone call? Hours—a night—spent sharing her body and herself completely with him, relishing every moment? She knew that much. But what he had said a minute or so later as the possibilities faded, that was troubling her more than anything. "The way it always will be." Always. The word was pounding in her mind, running through her head—
"Tom?" Cully stumbled back at the sound, her back pressing against the door as her mother's voice rang through the house. The words were only broken by the sound of feet in the upstairs corridor. "Did you forget something?"
Her pulse had raced at the unexpected words, but now began to slow. "No, it's me, Mum."
"Cully?" At the top of the stairs, her mother appeared, a robe over her nightclothes and her hair tousled. "Where on earth have you been?"
"Rehearsal went quite late," Cully said, pushing herself away from the door. The evening and the hour had at last crashed down on her, settling on her shoulders like a weight.
"Until just now? It's gone ten."
She shook her head as she forced herself to take another step forward. "Just until eight thirty. I don't know how long Gavin was waiting for me—"
"It's nice of him to have waited that long," her mother said quietly, folding her fingers around the bannister as she started down the stairs.
I don't think anything could have kept him away, Cully thought. As desperate as his hands had been on her skin, she could think of nothing that would have stood in his way. And there was nothing she wanted to, either.
"Cully?"
"I called before then," she said sharply, taking a few quick steps into the center of the sitting room as her mother reached the bottom of the staircase. "I made him something for dinner, that's all. To make it up to him."
"That was very kind of you."
Blood rushed to her face, hot and surely vibrant. "It wasn't any trouble, Mum."
"I'm sure he appreciated it."
Cully pulled her bag from her shoulder, opening it and thrusting a hand in, searching for nothing in particular; it kept her face down and hidden. In Gavin's kitchen less than two hours ago, she had forced herself to stop speaking. "If you keep saying that, Gavin, Mum will really want to keep you around." It had been the wrong thing to say then, but with each day that passed, it felt truer.
But...no, it was beyond reason to believe that. Hoping the flush was fading from her cheeks, Cully drew one deep breath, then another before looking up again. "It was either that or leftover takeaway for him."
Her mother paused a foot or so from her. "He did get your father's call, didn't he?"
Gavin's fingers had been drifting along the buttons on her blouse—one or two had given way under their movements—when they both recognized the sound of his mobile's ring. The heat had been pulsing in her abdomen, worse than an ache and aching for relief. Just remembering it, Cully shivered, and the warmth of his hands on her skin rose again to push the chill away.
"Are you cold, dear?"
Cully shook her head, curling and uncurling the fingers of her right hand. They were feeling his face again. "Uh—no." They were pressed to his neck again, now sliding beneath his shirt collar. "He's driving to Midsomer Magna now," she said, her mouth suddenly parched.
Her mother crossed to the window, pushing aside one of the curtain's edges. Cully turned to follow her, just catching the faint glow of the street lamps gleaming through the glass. "I hope they're not out there for too long tonight," she said softly, letting the fabric fall back after a moment.
"So do I." Whilst she had never seen Gavin as drawn into work as her father, Cully knew the exhaustion was inevitable. At times, a policeman could be seized by a case, almost swallowed up by it. It had worried her mother for decades and was now worrying her. And there was nothing she was able to do for—
"You know how your father gets when he's so involved with a case."
Dad? Crossing her arms over her stomach—trying to tamp down the slow burn still smoldering there—Cully swallowed. Well, of course that was what her mother meant. She had no reason to be worried about Gavin. "Do—" The remainder of the question failed to form in her mouth. Her mother had asked hardly any questions and barely appeared concerned. "Do you have any idea what's going on, Mum?" she finished. Her father would have made small, nagging inquires. But now...nothing.
"No," her mother said, opening the curtain once more, "your father didn't know much when he left. Why?"
"Curious, that's all."
The curtain swung closed again. "I expect we'll find out more tomorrow, if either of them has anything else to say."
"Do they ever not?"
"He doesn't tell us everything, Cully."
"I suppose."
"Does Gavin talk much about work?" her mother asked.
"Some," Cully said, a yawn suddenly threatening to escape. "Probably more than Dad." That was the simple answer. Gavin had set out the entire case for her this evening, revealing more than her father ever had.
"Go to bed, dear," her mother said, resting a hand on Cully's shoulder. "You look dead on your feet. Is your rehearsal the same time tomorrow?"
"Of course. He never starts later, just earlier sometimes."
Kissing her cheek lightly, her mother said, "Good night, then."
"Good night, Mum."
As her mother returned upstairs, Cully headed into the kitchen, unexpectedly thirsty. Not bothering to set down her bag, she reached into a cupboard for a glass and thrust it under the tap, half filling it with water. The first sip chased away the worst of the thirst, but a new hollowness remained.
You can't expect anything else, Cully thought, draining the last few drops of water from her glass. It never ends—you've seen it all your life. Reaching out to set the empty glass by the sink, she nearly dropped it instead as her grasp suddenly loosened. What did that mean? It was true, every word of it, but thinking about Gavin in that way was something—unfamiliar. What was it, a month since he had wandered back into her life? And that was the right word for it, wander. Their paths had crossed on an ordinary day, for a single second that could have passed like every other if she had not chosen to shout his name. Would he have seen her—said anything at all? God, she hoped so, but she couldn't be sure. But that moment no longer mattered, for her unconsidered choice to call out to him had set them along this route.
Each time they had reached this edge, the fall had been steeper and faster, and what waited at the bottom of the chasm was murkier and more confused. You don't even know where you're starting from, Cully thought as she lifted her hand from the glass, now safely on the counter. She couldn't, not if she didn't understand what had compelled her to say anything that afternoon on the street. How was she to know where they were heading tomorrow—or the day after, or the week or month or year that followed—if the beginning remained mired in fog? She knew only one thing: his touch was devastating, and it was driving her mad, its presence and its absence.
The nagging disappointment drifted aside for a short time as Cully showered and quickly brushed her teeth. Her mind sank into the final tasks of the day, each movement and step becoming a distraction. But in short order, she was curled up in bed, thumbing her way through the first act of Pygmalion another time.
No matter how many times she read it—and she did so almost every night—she still stumbled over a handful of lines. Cully suspected the trouble was not with the words themselves but the way they were written; she nearly had to translate Eliza's lines at the beginning and had written acceptable versions in proper English alongside the director's notes. Even if her spoken words had to be garbled for a time to remain true to Eliza's character, at least now she knew what she was saying.
This evening, her eyes were just skimming the pages, refusing to make sense of the letters and words and sentences. On her bedside table, her mobile lay silent. After each attempt to read more than a few passages, her gaze returned to the quiet device. And as it remained quiet, she let her mind wander back to the play.
Cully left behind Eliza's lines written in her London dialect, again grateful that Shaw had chosen to write most of it plainly. 'Who's trying to deceive you? I called him Freddy or Charlie same as you might yourself if you was talking to a stranger and wished to be'—
The phone came to life, the electronic ring breaking her already limited concentration. Stretching out one arm, Cully just reached the table, pulling the phone to her and pushing the answer button with her thumb. "Hello?" she said, pressing the receiver hard against her left ear.
"Hi, Cully?"
She hadn't expected it to be anyone else, but hearing his voice remained almost an unexpected pleasure. "You finally made it out alive?" she asked, the play's pages falling closed on her fingers.
He let out a ragged sigh. "Better than some."
Leaning against the wall, Cully crossed her legs, resting her left elbow on her knee. "What happened?"
"One of our suspects was just killed," Gavin said quietly. "By another one of our suspects."
"What?" The book dropped out of her grasp and she pushed it aside with her hand.
"I thought it'd have been the other way round."
Her eyes narrowed. Sometimes, Cully thought he forgot that she did not have all the information laid out in front of her as he did. "That means what?"
Gavin's first words were unintelligible, muffled by the rumble of a large engine. "...was probably the driving force behind all it," he continued, the din fading into a gentle hum. "And she was about to off Julia Gooders first."
Rolling her eyes, Cully asked, "And she is?"
"The last one left, and the one most likely to go barmy."
"You do have a way with words, Gavin." One of her feet began to tingle; Cully straightened her legs and the pins and needles began to throb. "But why would she—or whoever your dead suspect is—want to kill her?"
"Don't have the foggiest. But Mrs. Gooders claims she had the life frightened out of her by a phone call from Mr. Punch."
Twitching her still numb toes, Cully smiled. "You really hate those puppets."
"It's nothing to do with me," Gavin said. She supposed he was frowning now, or beginning to pace as Punch and Judy rose in his mind anew. "They're awful little things."
"After all the things you see, Gavin, those bother you more?"
"More than some things. But at least we know what happened to Gregory Chambers."
He definitely forgets, she thought. "The man who disappeared?"
"That's the one."
Feeling was inching back into her foot. "And?"
"Killed by all of them—for money."
Cully sighed; it was a wretched reason to be murdered, if there was a good one. "Do you ever come across a different motive?"
"Sometimes." A burst of chatter came through the connection. The crunching of gravel followed, and the voices faded away. "Bullard's probably right. He says money and sex drive most of them."
Her face began to burn, and Cully felt that same tight, demanding knot buried deeper in her torso. "Probably," she said, the air in her room suddenly thick and difficult to breathe. "So one part of it's solved."
"The small part. There's still the rest of them to deal with."
Cully moved the phone to her other ear, not holding it so close, though his voice had been quiet just now. "Are you any closer with them?"
"It'd be a nice change. But we don't have many more suspects to spare."
The new surge of tension was loosening, her foot was fully returning to life, and the length of the day was threatening to overwhelm her completely. "You sound like you're talking about Cluedo."
"It's true."
"It's a terrible thing to say," she said as she shook her head. After all these years, it was no surprise he had become accustomed to witnessing death and violence. More than a few comments had been made about Midsomer's murder rate, once or twice even on the BBC. Sometimes she wondered why her father had not chosen to transfer ages ago.
"Whatever you say." After a few moments, Cully wondered if the call had been dropped. But then he began to speak again. "Look, Cully, about earlier..."
The silence took over another time, broken by the same garbled voices and engines coming and going near to him. Even with the noise, Cully thought she heard him breathing. "Remember," she said, "you're not supposed to say you're sorry, Gavin."
The silence swelled again, but only briefly. "Even if I am?" he asked.
"I guess it depends."
"On what?"
Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked. If Gavin was finally about to leave the crime scene, perhaps her father had already departed. Not that it much mattered. "What are you sorry about?" she asked. The creaking did not sound again.
"I—don't really need to tell you, do I, Cully?" he asked, even quieter now.
She wondered how red his face was now. Earlier, it had been tinted pink as the heat and knots and need built, and hers must have looked the same. "No, you don't." Those knots had nearly been released as desire stood ready to spill over into the real world. With a few more minutes—perhaps just moments—the world would have shifted, with Gavin transformed from a man into a lover. And, in sleeping with Gavin, how much of that need would finally have been released, satisfied at last? How much more would have remained unsatiated? Cully pressed her free hand to her calf to stop its trembling. "Then I'll see you tomorrow?"
"I already said you would."
"Just making sure," she said, twisting a short strand of hair around her index finger. "Good night, Gavin."
"Good night, Cully."
Neither of them lingered after the farewells were completed, though Cully did not switch her mobile off when she laid it on her bedside table again. It was silly—she knew he would not call back—but something stayed her hand when she considered reaching for it. She wanted it to remain on. Instead, she picked up the play another time, flipping through it to the page she had been reading before; the words were just as blurred, and pretending to read them was pointless.
As she dropped the book onto the table beside her mobile, Cully did not struggle against the yawn growing in her chest; there was no use in fighting it any longer. Turning off the lamp, she tugged the sheets up to her shoulders. Her eyelids fell but sleep taunted her, dancing just beyond her reach despite her exhaustion. But Gavin was there, as real as if he lay beside her now. One of his arms was looped around her waist as his breath tickled her neck in the warm, drowsy afterglow.
Turning onto her side, Cully opened her eyes—and she was alone again, only the memories of warmth and hands and hungry kisses left with her. But the more she struggled against those new memories, the sharper and clearer they became. In that dark place between dreams and consciousness, they were almost real.