And so, on with the show while I still have the interwebs. Thanks again, as always, for reading and for your lovely reviews.
Chapter Fourteen: Shaken and Stirred
Gerry bursts out of the pub and screeches to a halt, resembling a cartoon character as he looks left and right and back again, as if by doing so he can make one very furious detective superintendent materialize.
She can't have gone far, since her head start had amounted to about a minute – it hadn't taken Gerry longer than that to dispatch Patterson; his boxing days don't yet belong completely to the realm of memory, although it had been quite a while since Gerry had decked someone over a woman. That, and she's currently not too steady on her feet.
Unless she's jumped into her car and driven away. Shit, she wouldn't be that stupid, would she? Not rational, law-abiding, good girl Sandra Pullman.
A second mental voice chimes in, pointing out that Sandra hasn't been all that rational, law-abiding, or good (fan-freakin'-tastic, but not good) today, which is sexy as hell unless it means she's off slamming her car into a tree or mowing down an unwary OAP. Sandra does go through more cars – although, to be fair, Jack and Brian weren't exactly blameless there.
Sandra isn't driving, though, unless she's nicked some poor soak's car. The tightness in Gerry's chest eases marginally when he catches sight of the familiar blue convertible. Instantly he's stalking over and thumping on the driver's side window with the flat of his hand.
"Open up," he demands in the voice of command he has only risked using once before with the gov, on a memorable occasion when he'd suspected she was angry, reckless, and determined enough to make mincemeat out of the both of them. Come to think of it, that had to do with driving too.
Bloody women drivers.
She turns to look at Gerry, leveling a scorching glare at him. "Sod. Off," she pronounces very clearly, biting out the disconnected words.
"Sandra, open this door, or I'll call the local plod and have you picked up for D.W. bloody I.," he threatens, his firm features grimly set. This was the look that had scared three daughters straight and countless perps – well, maybe less crooked.
"I'm not driving, am I?" She has to shout her scathing response to be heard through the closed door and thick window glass. "I'm sitting."
"Public intoxication, then," he hurls back.
"I'm in my car, you dickhead!"
Dickhead now, eh? That was more Brian's style than Sandra's. "On a public street," he points out.
She settles back in her seat, folds her arms, and closes her eyes. This is getting Gerry nowhere; time to switch tactics.
"I don't know what you think in that tiny female brain of yours, Sandra," he announces, because apparently provoking the lion in its cage seems like a grand idea at the moment, "but I've told Frank Patterson exactly bugger all about you, and I am not leavin' until you decide to act like a bleedin' adult and discuss it. So if you want to spend the night in your car, madame, that's your business, but I'm staying right here. How are you going to feel if I die of exposure, hey?"
"It's April," she snaps. "Besides, you've got more than enough body fat to keep you well warm." But she at least turns and looks at him.
Neither of them wants to be the first to break eye contact, so it's Mexican stand-off time, which gives Gerry leisure to think about a few potentially relevant points.
First of all, if Sandra truly thinks Gerry would've told Frank Patterson, or anyone, about their – she doesn't like the word relationship, does she? Their agreement, then – she evidently not only trusts him slightly less far than she could throw him, but she must not actually know him all that well. That raises Gerry's hackles, but also leaves him feeling rather hollowed out inside.
Secondly, she has seemed irritated with him, which he calibrates by the amount of sneering she does in his direction, all week, so this can't be entirely about what Patterson does or doesn't know.
Sandra has by now realised that Gerry is truly bull-headed enough to lean against her car door all night if need be. She's fully as stubborn, but yearns to walk home and fall into a semi-drunken torpor that will pass for sleep; furthermore, she's begun to feel as mature as a recalcitrant child. She ought to know, since she deals with them five days a week.
Gerry's ears catch the unmistakable click of the locks being released, and he looks back to see Sandra staring straight ahead, expressionless. The situation doesn't look promising, but he'll take whatever opening he can get, so he immediately walks around and slings himself into the passenger seat before she can change her mind.
"If you didn't tell Patterson," she demands in a level, tense tone before Gerry can even speak, "then how the hell does he know about us?"
His shoulders sink as he sighs. His response is hardly going to placate her. "He saw us. He must've done."
Her eyes flare hugely and then go very small. "What do you mean, he saw us? Saw us where?"
"That night at the pub," Gerry admits, defeated. "With Strickland." She starts to protest and Gerry clarifies, "Downstairs, Sandra."
Two hot spots of colour appear on her high cheekbones as the blood leeches away from the rest of her face. "You've known that all this time, and you never said a word to me."
"No! I mean – look, I thought maybe – I glimpsed him for a split second out the corner of my eye, and then he vanished. I thought I'd imagined it. I wanted to think I'd imagined it."
"And you saw no reason to tell me." Her voice is dangerously quiet.
"Jesus, Sandra, I –" He breaks off and grabs her upper arm, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I wasn't sure, yeah? And what would you've done? What you're doing right now: Blamed me, the way you always blame me when something goes tits up!"
She bites the inside of her cheek, breathing hard, her eyes locked on his. She can't deny it. Gerry is so easy to blame, so easy to shout at. He's always so resilient. "I could've tried to protect my reputation, my career –"
"How, by insulting me in public? Wouldn't work, since you do that anyway. By giving me the sack?" he challenges.
They both know she wouldn't have done that, not without a real reason, and her eyes drop from his. Only for a second, but it feels like a victory, and he decides to press his advantage. "Look at me and tell me you think I told that prat anything about you, that you really think I'd do that, sober or pissed, and we won't have anything else to say to each other."
She looks sightlessly out into the darkness as she inhales and exhales deeply. Part of her wants to tell him that's exactly what she thinks, just so he'll piss off and she can go home and hibernate. But she couldn't hibernate forever.
"All right," she says shortly, gruffly. "All right, Gerry, I'm sorry." Her eyes dart toward his and hold there. "I am sorry," she says a little more softly.
It's the second time she's ever said those words to him, so he doesn't take them lightly. It's a good thing Sandra doesn't really cock up more, because she's piss poor at the apologizing. Gerry thinks he must truly have entered his dotage, because he has every right to be angry at her – and he is – but she looks so uncomfortable that what he really wants to do is hug her and smooth her silky hair until she tells him to stop acting like a nonce.
Maybe his geriatric brain is just turning to mush because she makes him crazy. And speaking of crazy –
"You want to tell me what this has really been about, then?" he asks mildly.
Her brow wrinkles in a quick frown. "I told you –"
"Yeah, you told me." Gerry leans back leisurely and stretches, reassuring her that he won't move until he hears the truth. "But you've been walkin' around with your knickers in a twist for the better part of a week, so why don't you try again?"
Her glare could reverse global warming. "I don't know what you mean."
"Look, if you're tryin' to get rid of me, Sandra, just tell me to piss off. Don't use that pillock in there –" he jerks his thumb toward the pub, where he assumes Patterson is still looking for his tooth – "as an excuse, and don't play dumb, because you're terrible at it."
"You smug bastard!" she exclaims almost admiringly. "You really do have some sort of Don Juan complex, don't you? I mean, what would you do if I said to you right now, 'Oh, Gerry, I just can't wait another minute, take me home with you'?"
He raises his eyebrows, nonplussed. "I'd check your temperature."
"And then?" she demands.
"I'd take you to hospital or home, depending on the result."
Her eyes are really quite beady when she narrows them like that, but hell, she's still gorgeous. "With you," she specifies. "To your flat."
Gerry is staring at her. "Yeah, sure, although we're about three minutes from yours, so I don't see why –"
She's shaking her head. "Christ, you're incredible. What would you do with me once you got me there?"
"What the hell are you on about, Sandra? Unless I've totally missed something over the last four months, you've got a rough idea of what I'd do, and you approve. At least you haven't been airin' any complaints to me." He glares right back, affronted.
"Oh, for God's sake, I'm not questioning your technique, you tosser," she snorts. "Just your moral fibre. Don't you think Jayne might have something to say about this little scenario?"
"What does Jayne have to do with it?" Gerry screeches, exasperated and bewildered.
Sandra, too, has had enough. "I'm certainly no sainted virgin, Gerry, but I'm hardly going to have it off with you while your wife's in the next room! Or did you want her to join us?"
Maybe Sandra's a lot drunker than Gerry thought.
"Emily told me," she continues, very much on her dignity, "that Jayne has moved back in with you. I think you could've mentioned it."
Gerry can't respond. His jaw has come unhinged, and he's having difficulty screwing the components back together.
"Honestly, Gerry, I know this has been your pattern of behavior for forty years, but don't you think you owe it to Jayne, and to yourself, to stop screwing everything in sight and actually try to make your relationship work, like a grown-up? You're sixty-one!"
Gerry's mandibles are again in working order, and as he processes what Sandra has said, a slow but inexorable grin spreads over his face. "You're jealous!" he crows, delighted.
"You're ridiculous," she retorts, but her own face is flaming.
"No, you are." He turns and leans toward her across the gear shift. "You're jealous! That's why you've been in Ice Queen mode all week. This is bloody great!"
He looks so gleeful that it would be comical if Sandra weren't in the midst of a slow, humiliated burn. "You're talking complete shit, Gerald. I just expected more from you than –"
He can't contain himself any longer, and besides, he can't fully enjoy the moment with her looking so miserable. "I don't know what Em told you," he breaks in, "but Jayne is not stayin' with me. She came to lunch on Sunday and then went home with Carole, because she hadn't told Caitlin or the other girls about the divorce."
"Then why the hell would Emily think she's living with you?"
"Shit, Sandra, I don't know, but I hope my girl's a better detective on the clock than she is off." He chuckles. "You're jealous. This is fantastic."
She has folded her arms again and is scowling. "I'm not, so stop gloating, you prize arsehole." She can't quite maintain the degree of real anger she had going before, though. "I wasn't impressed by your duplicity, that's all."
"My duplicity," he repeats benignly. "If that's what you want to call it, but I know a thing or two about jealous women."
"And I know seven ways to kill a man without using a weapon."
At that Gerry strives valiantly to rein in his glee and mirth, but the certain knowledge that Sandra Pullman was moved to jealousy over him makes Gerry want to howl with triumphant joy. No matter what she says, or doesn't say, Sandra isn't as emotionally uninvolved as she wants him, and probably herself, to think. It makes him feel magnanimous.
"You're the boss," he agrees cheerfully. "Come on, I'll drive you home."
She thinks it over for only a few seconds before handing him her car keys. Gerry makes no move to take them, and her forehead puckers, questioning, bruised and irritable.
"In my car," he specifies, and she rolls her eyes. "You don't expect me to leave it out here unprotected over night, do you?" Gerry demands, aghast, as they walk toward the Stag, and Sandra finds herself smothering a smile.
At least some things will never change.
Note: By the way, if you're wondering why Emily is leading Sandra down the garden path, and whether she's doing it intentionally or not, all will eventually be revealed. :)