The Likeness

“Then Saturday,” he said. “I know we were fighting and all”-he gave me a quick squeeze, dropped a kiss on my forehead-“but still. I realized afterwards: that was because we were both really into it, this case. Because you cared. It felt…” He shook his head, looking for the words. “DV’s not the same,” he said, “is it?”

I had mostly kept my mouth shut about DV. It hadn’t occurred to me, till then, that all that silence could have been plenty revealing, in its own way. “It needs doing,” I said. “Nothing’s the same as Murder, but DV’s fine.”

Sam nodded, and for a second his arms tightened around me. “And that meeting,” he said. “Right up until then, I’d been wondering should I pull rank and tell Mackey to bugger off for himself. This started off as a murder case, I’m down as lead detective, if I said no… But the way you were talking, all interested, thinking it out… I just thought, why would I wreck that?”

I had not seen this coming. Sam has one of those faces that fool you even when you know better: a countryman’s face, all ruddy cheeks and clear gray eyes and crow’s-feet starting, so simple and open that there couldn’t possibly be anything hidden behind it. “Thanks, Sam,” I said. “Thank you.”

I felt his chest lift and fall as he sighed. “It might turn out to be a good thing, this case. You never know.”

“But you still wish this girl had picked just about anywhere else to get herself killed,” I said.

Sam thought about that for a minute, twisting a finger delicately through one of my curls. “Yeah,” he said, “I do, of course. But there’s no point in wishing. Once you’re stuck with something, all you can do is make the best of it.”

He looked down at me. He was still smiling, but there was something else, something almost sad, around his eyes. “You’ve looked happy, this week,” he said simply. “It’s nice to see you looking happy again.”

I wondered how the hell this man put up with me. “Plus you knew I would kick your arse if you started making decisions for me,” I said.

Sam grinned and flicked the end of my nose with his finger. “That too,” he said, “my little vixen,” but there was still that shadow behind his eyes.

***

Sunday moved fast, after those long ten days, fast as a tidal wave built to bursting point and finally crashing down. Frank was coming over at three, to wire me up and get me to Whitethorn House by half past four. All the time Sam and I were going through our Sunday-morning routine-the newspapers and leisurely cups of tea in bed, the shower, the toast and eggs and bacon-that was hanging over our heads, a huge alarm clock ticking, waiting for its moment to explode into life. Somewhere out there, the housemates were getting ready to welcome Lexie home.

After brunch, I put on the clothes. I got dressed in the bathroom; Sam was still there, and I wanted to do this in private. The clothes felt like something more: fine chain-mail armor handmade to fit me, or robes laid out ready for some fiercely secret ceremony. They made my palms tingle when I touched them.

Plain white cotton underwear with the Penney’s tags still on; faded jeans, worn soft and fraying at the hems; brown socks, brown ankle boots; a long-sleeved white T-shirt; a pale-blue suede jacket, scuffed but clean. The collar of it smelled of lilies of the valley and something else, a warm note almost too faint to catch: Lexie’s skin. In one of the pockets there was a Dunne’s Stores receipt from a few weeks back, for chicken fillets, shampoo, butter and a bottle of ginger ale.

When I was dressed I checked myself out, in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. For a second I didn’t know what I was seeing. Then, ridiculously, all I wanted was to laugh. It was the irony of it: I had spent months dressing up as Executive Barbie, and now that I was being someone else, I finally got to go to work dressed a lot like me. “You look nice,” Sam said, with a faint smile, when I came out. “Comfortable.”