THREE – Stranded
"It could be worse," Grace says, trying for a stoical pragmatism she really doesn't feel as she surveys the wintry scene outside the hotel for herself. It's quite clear that they won't be going anywhere for at least the next few hours, possibly for much longer. The snow is still falling heavily in big, fluffy flakes, and the strong easterly wind is turning it into a dense blizzard. Under different circumstances it would be an entrancing scene.
Reflected in the glass, Boyd raises his head to glare at her just for a moment. "How? How exactly could this be worse?"
Clutching at straws, she offers, "Well, at least we're not stuck somewhere in the car."
His head drops back onto the pillow, and the only reply is a discontented snort. It's clear he's just as happy about the situation as she is – if for very different reasons. Boyd wants to be back in London and back at his desk, and she… Well, all Grace really wants is to be somewhere else; somewhere a long, long way away from the small hotel room that feels as if it is becoming ever-smaller by the moment. She's not sure if she's pleased or not by Boyd's surly retreat back under the covers. She's about to offer further attempts at optimism when he grumbles, "We're never going to live this down, you know."
She turns to face him. "What, getting stuck in a blizzard?"
Mostly buried under the duvet, Boyd grimaces. "Sharing a bloody hotel room, Grace."
Evidently he's every bit as aware of the over-enthusiastic rumour mill as she is. She tries her best to sound nonchalant. "I won't tell if you don't."
"I'm putting it on expenses. They'll find out."
"Don't put it on expenses, then."
"It's against all my principles to pay for such a crap hotel out of my own damned pocket, Grace."
She doubts he's joking. Boyd has worked hard for everything he has, and over the years he has quietly cultivated some extremely expensive tastes in everything from whiskey to women. It's always amused her far more than it should, his penchant for everything from designer suits and bespoke shirts to luxury cars and Swiss watches. Admittedly they share a common interest in good food and wine, but that aside, Grace views his taste for the better things in life as just another of his eccentricities, an obvious foible to be gently mocked whenever she gets half a chance. Still, she's beginning to share his aversion for their small, bland hotel room. Just not for the same reasons.
Collecting her phone from the bedside table, she tries in vain for several frustrating minutes to get even a single bar of signal. Disgusted by her failure, she tries switching the television on. The reception is no better than it was the preceding night, the picture freezing and pixelating, any snatches of speech indecipherable. Giving up, she says, "I suppose they might know what's going on at the front desk." Boyd grunts but shows no sign of moving. Glaring at the back of his half-buried head, she sits down on the edge of her bed. "I said – "
"I heard what you said," he informs her, rolling over onto his back again and returning the glare, "and I'm reluctantly assuming it was some kind of euphemistic suggestion that I should get up and go and find out."
"Not necessarily. Though now you come to mention it…"
"Why do I have to go?" Boyd demands, the question accusing.
"You're the driver," she tells him, "so it makes sense for you to go."
"You're the damned navigator."
"Oh, I am not. I'm many things, Boyd, but I'm not your navigator. If I ever dared to tell you to turn left somewhere, you'd immediately turn right just to be bloody-minded. Tell me I'm wrong."
He glowers at her again. "Shut up, Grace."
-oOo-
In the end they go together, and the news is not good. Their stretch of the motorway is still closed, and is likely to remain so until either the weather improves significantly or the snow ploughs and gritters make enough of an impression for the route to be considered passable. Neither is likely to happen in the next few hours, they are told, which doesn't improve either of their moods. Squabbling tetchily, they embark on a reluctant foraging expedition, and even though they manage to find and consume a meagre breakfast at one of the low-end motorway-chain restaurants, it doesn't improve matters much. Faced with the minor hell of the noisy and over-populated services, they retreat back to the hotel room where they only have each other to get exasperated with.
"This is all your fault," Grace accuses somewhat unjustly as she takes position at the window again. It's still snowing, and what little she can see of the sky is dark and cloudy suggesting there will be no reprieve in the near future. "Spence and Eve volunteered to go, but no, you insisted it had to be us."
"Oh, so you didn't send me half-a-dozen bloody emails suggesting a one-day conference on ritual abuse cases would be good for your professional development?"
"I didn't expect you to agree."
"Well, it's a bit bloody late to tell me you were just being cussed," Boyd growls back.
"All these years, and you couldn't work that out for yourself?"
Clad in his suit trousers and a very crumpled grey polo shirt embroidered on the left breast with the Metropolitan Police Tennis Club crest, Boyd stretches out on his bed, hands clasped behind his head. "I swear, Grace, if you keep this up, West Midlands Police are going to be investigating reports of a female forensic psychologist unexpectedly found buried alive in several feet of snow and ice."
Smirking, she shakes her head. "Trust me, they'll be far too busy trying to find out who on earth could have smothered a middle-aged Detective Superintendent while he was asleep."
He snorts. "You're welcome to try…"
Grace ignores him and goes back to staring at the falling snow. It's been years since she's seen such a sudden and intense freeze, and she finds herself asking, "Do you remember the winter of 'sixty-three? They say it was the coldest winter for two hundred years."
"Mm," is the disinterested reply from behind her. He surprises her by then continuing, "I remember going sledging in Greenwich Park. Broke my damned wrist colliding with another kid. My brother thought it was hilarious and just carried on enjoying himself while I trudged home. We waited for bloody hours at the hospital. Place looked like a warzone."
"The day of the worst blizzard I was supposed to be going to the pictures with Colin Bulmer," Grace muses, casting her mind back. She can still picture the tall, lanky youth that her parents took an instant dislike to. She winces inwardly, remembering their stoic disapproval. "But the roads were treacherous, the buses weren't running, and just about everywhere was closed anyway."
"Colin Bulmer, eh?"
"He was seen as quite a catch," she says, turning to look at him. "He went straight from school to work at his dad's printing firm. All the girls in our street fancied him. He had a Lambretta."
"Says it all."
The disparaging note in his voice needles her, makes her demand, "Oh? So what did you have, then? A Vespa?"
Still lying flat out on his chosen bed, Boyd smirks. "Grace, I hate to break it to you, but at the time I was twelve."
It's a depressing thought. Irritated, she challenges, "Later on, then? I bet it was a Vespa, wasn't it? All style and no substance."
He makes a disapproving noise. "Hardly. Some of us had proper motorcycles."
The vivid image that pops fully-formed into her mind is both intriguing and compelling. Deadpan, she says, "I see, and what exactly constitutes a 'proper' motorcycle?"
"A battered old BSA," is the laconic reply. Boyd sits up, puts his feet on the floor. "Bought it cheap from a guy in Dagenham the minute I turned sixteen. My mother had a blue fit."
"I bet."
"Eventually traded it in against a second-hand Triumph Bonneville. Couldn't afford to buy a car."
"All these years," she says, "and I never knew you were hiding an inner biker, Boyd. You wait until I tell Eve."
His expression is somewhere between a grimace and a grin as he shakes his head. "It'll be a cold day in hell before I deign to call that flimsy heap of Japanese crap of hers a motorcycle, trust me."
Turning back to gaze out of the window at the wintry scene outside, Grace says, "The first vehicle I ever owned was a bright red Morris Minor."
"Figures. What was he like, then? Colin Bulmer?"
She glances over her shoulder, surprised by the inquiry. Old memories stir, and none of them are happy. Knowing he will push until he gets a reply that satisfies him, she says, "Good-looking. Confident. But the reality didn't live up to expectation. He was just a local lad, nothing special really. I expect he's retired and has half-a-dozen grandchildren by now. Why?"
Boyd shrugs. "Just curious. We don't often have the time to just chat like this, do we?"
She looks at him askance. "Chat? I didn't think you actually knew the meaning of the word."
"Harsh, Grace. Very harsh."
"Hm." Grace shakes her head. "You know, I think you're genuinely starting to go a bit stir-crazy."
He grins, showing teeth. "Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?"
"I would never attempt to give you my professional opinion on your mental state, Boyd."
The grin disappears immediately. "Well, that's not strictly true, is it?"
The slight edge to his voice makes her glance at him again. He hasn't moved, is still sitting on the edge of the bed, forearms resting on his thighs. He stares straight back at her in complete silence, finally raising one sardonic eyebrow. When he does, Grace understands, knows exactly what he's referring to. Repressed, depressed and in denial… Bitter words that she threw at him in anger; words it seems that neither of them has forgotten. For once, though, she's not in the mood to attempt to placate him simply because it's easier than dealing with his moodiness, his temper. Harsher than she intends, she says, "You're going to hold that against me forever, aren't you?"
"What?"
"You know damn well what."
Boyd stands up, the movement somehow spare, economical. "Touched a nerve, did I?"
"I'm not having this conversation with you," is her decisive retort. "Not while we're stuck here together for God knows how long. If you can't let it go after all this time, that's your problem, not mine."
He moves to stand beside her at the window, and for some reason she's more aware than normal of the height difference between them. He doesn't look at her as he says, "Oh, this is bloody ridiculous. This is the twenty-first century, for fuck's sake – how can the whole country grind to a halt because of a bit of snow?"
"I assume that's a rhetorical question?"
"I've had enough of this," he says, starting into movement.
She turns to watch him, not altogether surprised when he starts to shrug into his long dark coat. "Where are you going?"
"To see if I can find out anything about a possible alternative route out of here that might just be passable."
"Well, there's obviously isn't one," Grace points out, "or there wouldn't be so many people still stranded here, would there? Why can't you just be patient and wait for the Highways Agency, or whoever, to open the motorway again?"
He glares at her. "I'll be back in a while."
At least he doesn't slam the door behind him. Grace sighs and moves to settle on the small couch. She thinks she understands – Boyd is getting increasingly stressed and irritable, and it seems they both know that it won't take much to spark his ferocious temper. He's been even more volatile than usual since losing his son, and she believes the phenomenon has a lot to do with his complete inability to cope in any healthy way with the sheer depth of his grief. Everything he feels and can't express, all the sorrow, bitterness, and guilt that surrounds Luke's death, explodes out in other directions, in displaced wild fury with things that don't really matter. Yet his abrupt departure is far more to do with him actually recognising that he needs some time and space to regain his equanimity than it is to do with hunting down a non-existent solution to their predicament, which she gladly accepts as some kind of progress.
Half-heartedly Grace starts to flick through the glossy pages of one of the female-orientated lifestyle magazines she purchased on a whim during their earlier excursion. Not really her sort of thing, not usually – but it's got to be less boring than watching the seemingly endless flurries of snow, or staring pointlessly at nothing until Boyd calms down and decides to return.
-oOo-
He's back much sooner than she might ever have reasonably expected. Less than quarter of an hour has elapsed when he lets himself back into their hotel room, but any scathing remark Grace might have voiced regarding his quick return dies away when she looks up and sees the still-bleeding gash above his left eye. Dark bruising is already starting to show on his temple, and she's on her feet and stepping towards him almost before she realises it. "Boyd? What on earth happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he mutters. "Slipped on the ice and cracked my head on one of those damned concrete bollards."
"Let me see," she orders, ignoring his half-hearted attempts to fend her off.
Shrugging out of his long coat, Boyd attempts to keep his distance. "It's nothing; don't make a fuss."
"For God's sake… you're dripping blood all over the carpet." Grace shakes her head and adds with some asperity, "Stop being a martyr, Boyd, and just sit down and let me have a look."
He glowers for a moment, resentment at her waspish tone of voice quite clear, but then collapses heavily onto one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs, muttering under his breath as he does so. Grace pretends not to hear the grumbled curses and complaints, and sets about examining the wound. Not as bad as it could be, but very bloody all the same. "You'll live, but you're probably going to have the headache from hell," she pronounces. "Did you hurt anything else?"
"Only my pride."
The wry way he says it makes her smile. Cautioning him not to move, she heads for the bathroom and uses cold water to soak the washcloth from his depleted sports kit. Wringing it out as much as possible, she returns to find an unusually obedient Boyd still sitting exactly where she left him. He frowns at her determined approach, however, says, "Oh, no. No, Grace. No. You're not Florence-bloody-Nightingale, so leave well alone."
"Close your eyes and think of England," she orders, advancing on him with the cloth.
His eyebrows rise at that, the instinctive reflex causing a wince of pain and a renewed trickle of blood from the slowly congealing wound. Grumpy to the last, he growls, "Fuck's sake… Oh, just get it over with, then."
"Look up," she instructs, and when Boyd obeys she begins to dab carefully at the ragged gash. To her chagrin, however, their necessary proximity is uncomfortably distracting. She can feel the odd, barely-restrained tension in him, can feel the heat of his body radiating through his thin polo shirt. Realising that he's gazing steadily at her doesn't help her equilibrium one little bit. It must be a trick of the light, something to do with the way his face is angled towards the window, because at such close quarters his eyes, usually so impenetrably dark in appearance, show fascinating touches of green and gold that Grace has somehow failed to notice before. He's still watching her, apparently oblivious to the increasingly dangerous course of her thoughts.
"Enjoying yourself?" Boyd inquires.
"Immensely." Her reply is deliberately tart.
"You're not into the idea of playing doctors and nurses, then?"
Grace isn't proud of the way her heartrate instantly increases at the deliberate innuendo. Dabbing harder than is strictly necessary at the wound, she's mildly horrified to hear her own voice say, "With you, you mean?"
The slow, crooked grin Boyd gives her is incorrigibly wicked, forcibly reminding her of the long-ago days when idle flirtation between them was a harmless but thoroughly enjoyable daily sport. "If only, Grace. If only."
Her mind seizes on the words, worries at them, thoroughly dissects and analyses them in search of a possible subtext hidden beneath the familiar banter. He's still looking straight at her, but for once she finds she can't read him at all. It's infuriating, just how enigmatic he can be, especially when she's almost sure that –
"Ouch," Boyd complains. "Steady on, Grace."
Belatedly realising that she's holding the cloth far too tightly against the oozing cut, she forces herself to relax. "Sorry."
"For a moment there I thought you were exercising a sadistic streak I knew nothing about."
"Don't tempt me," she tells him. "You know, ordinarily I'd insist on taking you straight to the nearest hospital to get this looked at."
"It's nothing, I told you. Just a slight bang on the head."
Grace rolls her eyes skywards. "Thick as your skull is, Boyd, head injuries can be tricky; you know that as well as I do. Concussion – "
"I'm not concussed," Boyd interrupts.
"You could be."
"I'm not."
"How do you know?" she challenges.
"I just do. Have you finished poking about?"
"Not quite. Stop fidgeting." Her fingertips accidentally brush against his cheek and she's unprepared for the very real jolt the fleeting contact sends right through her. Inwardly cursing herself, Grace doesn't risk meeting his eye. They've got to get out of this confined space, she thinks with an edge of desperation, before all her old dreams and unrequited feelings can really –
Boyd turns his head, almost as if deliberately seeking to re-establish contact, and she starts in response, her heart pounding very fast. Their eyes lock, and for a moment she feels as if he's looking straight into her, past all the boundaries and defences, right into the fortified place where the guilty truth of how she really feels about him hides. She can feel the warm flush of blood rising in her cheeks, and as she pulls her hand back, he deftly captures her wrist, his fingers closing in a firm grip designed to hold not hurt. Time seems to be elongating, twisting into long threads capable of slowing everything around them to a crawl. Neither of them says a single word, they just stare at each other, something powerful but indefinable filling the silence with a dangerous, sparking tension. Boyd moves first, inclining his head to press his lips against her palm. Grace feels the delicate kiss like a brand, a mark being indelibly burnt into her skin. Before she can do anything, say anything, he swiftly releases his grip and stands up. It happens so fast, even in those few seconds of slowed-down time, that for a moment she's certain she imagined the whole thing.
"Thanks, Grace," he says, his voice gruff as he quickly moves away from her, "next time I'm in urgent need of a first-aider, I'll come straight to you instead of yelling for Eve."
Confused by what has just happened, her response is a dislocated, "You'd better take that shirt off and leave it to soak in cold water. It'll be completely ruined, otherwise."
Boyd frowns, looks down at the garment in question, as if realising for the first time that it's blood-stained in several places. It might be the result of the head-injury, or it might be that he's just as off-kilter as she is, either way he seems bemused as he grunts in reply. As he turns away he does exactly as she suggested, apparently either indifferent to her presence, or somehow not consciously thinking about it. The subtle play of muscle in his back and shoulders as he strips off the bloodied shirt makes Grace look away hurriedly, her heart-thumping in her chest. Only when the bathroom door closes behind him does she realise just how painfully her fingernails are digging into her palms.
-oOo-
Continued…