Only short chapter this time, mostly domestic, with some hefty hints...and a fair dollop of ham along the way...
It was Friday, it was teatime, and Alex Drake had had just about enough of waiting. He'd driven off several hours ago, she had no real idea where he had gone, and he had certainly given no indication of when he would be coming back and...and... I've had it. She was the one in control, she was the one who was responsible. But she was the one worrying herself sick over an imaginary construct.
Imaginary construct, my girl, you know he's real. You've felt his touch, you've cleaned up his wounded arm, that's his blood on that dressing lying in the bottom of the bathroom waste bin. No other man has ever inspired you to these levels of insanity...I hate him...so that's why you want to tear all his clothes off and make love until neither of you can think straight...argh! Stop it...Gene Hunt is in my head...He's in your blood stream, girl and you know it. Even a complete transfusion won't get him out.
Alex snapped the white table cloth and it flew neatly over the table. She busied herself laying the table, knives, want to shove one of those through him don't you... forks, touch my body, feel my fork, spoons...no, for goodness sake stop it. You're becoming completely irrational. She took a couple of deep breaths. And suddenly became aware that Molly was staring at her with her head on one side.
"No...Molly...I'm not mad."
"But I thought talking to yourself was the first sign of madness..."
"Very funny." She flapped a hand badly need to cool off here... "Have you finished your homework."
"Diversionary tactics."
"Very clever, Little Miss..." Alex swooped. "Tickle fight."
They writhed around together, giggling and tickling.
"Enough...enough..." cried Alex, slightly out of breath... "Mummy has work to do."
"But what about, Gene?" her daughter's soft innocent voice cut straight to the heart of Alex's problem. What about Gene? What in god's name was she going to do with him? Where was he?
Gene Hunt was asking himself the same question. He was stood, nursing a whisky, in a large and dark room, which was full of computers and had a huge flat television as its centrepiece. He was surprised by the nature of the room, one wall covered mainly with photographs which appeared to be pinned directly onto a huge corkboard which appeared to cover the entire wall. All the photographs were of youngish people doing daredevil things. Gene himself was a bit of risk taker, but parachuting off the top of a high building seemed to him to be a recipe for disaster.
He recalled Weasel's words about CJ's friends being out on the hairy edge. Only this edge seemed hairier than a polar bear's backside. Another thing disturbed him about this display of photographs, it was as though CJ had come into the world fully grown, he couldn't see a single picture of her family, and that bothered him in a way he could not fully explain. No parents, no brothers and sisters, no past.
The door off to his left opened and she was walking towards him. She had changed again, the dancer was gone, in her place was something quite, quite different. The businesswoman. He took in the skin tight black catsuit, made of some thick and clinging material that emphasized her magnificent figure, she slipped on a long sleeveless coat, made of some kind of lightweight floating material with a stiff upstanding collar also in black, and with her upswept hair done in a neat smooth french twist, she looked a picture of sophisticated glamour a million miles from what he had been expecting.
The Ice Queen cometh, unbidden another picture of Alex Drake sprang to mind. Bolly at her frostiest. He gestured to the photo wall. "Running away from something?" He wasn't certain what had made him ask that, just an instinct that something wasn't right here, and somehow his current situation and her past were linked. It didn't make a whole heap of sense, but then again, not much about his current situation or even his normal situation, did.
The way she set her chin, the light of battle in her eyes, so familiar, but impossibly different. For a moment he thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she shrugged, "or towards something ...rather depends on how you view it."
"And your parents?" Instinct was driving him on.
"Dead." The flatness of her tone warned him that he was pushing into territory that she didn't want charted. They had only just met, and he was wading around in something deeply personal, and female emotion things were something he definitely did not do, but this was the missing link, he could feel it.
"How."
"Blown to bits." The very matter of fact tone told him that this was a raw wound. Her eyes were dark, and she'd gone deep inside. He could hear the rise and fall of her voice, but it was as though it belonged to someone else.
"They bought a cottage when Dad retired, and moved to the country. Mum wasn't particularly keen but she loved him so much, she went along with it." She sat down on the back of the long black leather sofa. "Of course, Dad was retired, but that did not stop him being a copper. They became... involved with something... then one day Dad fired up his car to back it out of the garage... Mum was in the passenger seat... and my parents were gone."
Her chin went up, he could see her eyes shining brightly, but she held herself together with a supreme effort of will. "Gone forever ...I wasn't even there... and there was almost nothing left."
She stood up, he could see her pulling herself together with the iron will and self discipline that had obviously led to her success at such a young age.
She looked him over with a critical eye. "You look a bit... under dressed for tonight." She gestured towards the door behind her. "Plenty of hot water... and one of the few things I have left of my parents, are a couple of my Dad's suits and shirts. You'll find them hanging in the end space of the wardrobe on the right."
He was going to refuse, but then to refuse seemed like passing up on an opportunity to find out more. And if she's offering, it's not like her father is likely to mind. He could use the change of clothes and he needed to take every opportunity to find out more.