The lad emptied a packet of prawn cocktail crisps into his mouth, wiped his greasy fingers on his jeans, and opened a Mars Bar. Despite his penchant for snacks, he was tall and wiry, and his low-riding jeans revealed a pair of once-white Calvin Kleins. Acne bloomed pink on his nose and chin, and although his clothes were all label brands, they didn’t appear to have been washed this side of Christmas.
“Four, maybe five weeks,” he said through a mouthful of chocolate, turning to his mate for confirmation, but the other lad shrugged and continued to type on his phone. “What we in now?”
Rosie stepped out of the small pool gathering by her boot. The canal bridge offered shelter from the elements, but the rain hadn’t stopped all day, and water was running in a thin line to widen already well-established puddles.
“It’s March the fifteenth,” she said. “Which would mean you last saw Kyle around Valentine’s Day?”
The crisp-eater clicked his fingers. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. He got Tahlia one of those massive cards and a load of chocolate so she’d shag him, but then he fucked her off, so she started shagging Demi-Lee, which is kinda cool.”
Rosie recorded the comment verbatim, amused by the prospect of typing everything up for Steph, who had hand-picked her for house-to-house that morning and then sent her chasing after a gang of Kyle’s latchkey kid mates.
“Do you have an address or contact details for Tahlia?” she asked.
The lad chugged from an energy drink and burped close-mouthed. The stink of fish and artificial fruit flavour hit her as he exhaled.
“Her dad chucked her out cos she’s a lezzer. She was crashing with Demi-Lee for a while, but Woody reckons he’s seen her down the old mill.”
Rosie grimaced. “The one on Bennett Street? Looks like something out of a horror film?”
“Yeah. Second floor’s dodgy as shit. Mickey Foss fell through it a few months back, and he’s been a cabbage ever since.”
“Thanks for the heads up. Can you describe Tahlia for me?”
Still busy working on his Mars, the lad raised one finger as if loath to spoil his final bite. He swallowed and immediately began to pick his teeth. “She’s half-Paki,” he said around a grubby digit.
Rosie gave him a look that made him bite down on his knuckle. “Can we phrase that any better?”
“Sorry, miss,” he said, his cheeks reddening. “She’s small and, um, light brown, and she has long dark curly hair, and she doesn’t wear one of them scarf things. I think she’s about fourteen.”
“Thank you. I’m sure that’ll be very useful.” Rosie tucked her notepad into a pocket on her stab vest and looked around at the group: two lads and two girls, all of them skinny and shivering, and none of them older than fifteen. “Does everyone have somewhere to stay tonight?”
They nodded en masse, offering up addresses that were probably false and a shelter known only as “Olly’s.” She handed the lad her card. “If you think of anything else that might help, or you need help yourselves, give me a call, okay?”
He shoved the card into his pocket without glancing at it. She knew that none of them would ever contact her, but still, she had to try. She updated her status with comms as she slogged along the waterlogged towpath, avoiding dog shit and the odd needle discarded by the smack rats who congregated beneath the next bridge down. Surrounded by abandoned mills and factories, this part of the canal had long since been claimed by Manchester’s cast-offs: the drunks and the addicts, the homeless and the destitute. Only someone with a death wish or a very strong belief in a higher being would venture there after dark. She passed a pair of the latter by the lock, their matching red coats identifying them as volunteers from the neighbourhood church. The elder of the two tipped his hat at her.
“How do, Officer. All quiet on the western front?”
“For once. I think the rain’s keeping them in. Even the geese look cheesed off.”
He chuckled. “It carries on like this and the town centre will go under again. Sandbags are already out down Hearts Cross.”
That came as no surprise. The small village of Hearts Cross bordered Stanny Brook, but it sat squarely in a flood zone and its residents were still counting the cost from the last time the river burst its banks. With government austerity policies biting hard, the council had little in the pot for essential services, let alone flood defences, and they had employed a head-in-sand approach to future breaches in the hope that the sun might finally shine on their patch and negate the need for expensive works. Such blind optimism with regard to the region’s climate confirmed long-held suspicions that most of the councillors were morons.
“Have either of you met a lass called Tahlia on your travels?” she asked. “About fourteen years old? Possibly sleeping rough?”
“No,” the younger chap said. “There are kids dotted about in a few of the mills, but the buildings are death traps, so we stay out of them.”
“That’s understandable.” She gave them her card, issuing the usual request should they cross paths with Tahlia before she did. The church ran youth groups and a food bank and took a mobile soup kitchen into the town centre at night. No one seemed to mind listening to a sermon if they were hungry enough. “Right then, I’d best let you get going,” she said.
They performed an awkward shuffle on the narrow path, Rosie stepping aside and slipping on a muddy verge. Rain was seeping beneath her shirt, and her trousers clung to her thighs as if they’d been spray-painted on. She stamped sticky lumps of mud from her boots as she walked on, her foul mood exacerbated by a WhatsApp message from Kash showing nothing but a Big Mac and a large fries.
I hope it gives you heartburn, she replied, and swore at the central locking on her patrol car when it flashed the indicators but failed to open the doors.
In no rush to get to Bennett Street, she took a roundabout route that weaved through the back streets of east Manchester. She beeped her horn and waved at the owner of the Manc Muffin, who always piled extra bacon on her breakfast barm. Then she circled around the back of the massive gas holders, slowing to admire their Scalextric-like structure, their framework bleak but bold against the washed-out sky. The regeneration triggered by the building of the Etihad Stadium hadn’t reached this far, but the redbrick terraced streets felt like home to her, and she hoped any eventual attempts to gentrify the area wouldn’t drive its soul from it.
She didn’t bother stopping at the front of the old mill. Every man and his dog knew that was where the padlocked gates and security warnings were. Instead, she drove slowly around the block toward the straight section that ran alongside the river. She and Kash had crawled through a gap in the fence there one night, on a mission to disrupt a medium-sized rave that hadn’t let a lack of electricity dampen its spirits.
Recognising the bright red slab of hoarding that marked the illicit entrance, she parked the car and tried to summon the energy to get out. The mill dominated the neighbourhood, towering above the tightly packed houses and spoiling the view from every backyard. It got set on fire once or twice a year, but it seemed impervious to serious harm, and no one would accept responsibility for its demolition. She snapped a photo, focusing on a broken window and bricks burned black and splintered at the edges, and then attached the image to a message for Jem. I’m going in. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, send help.
Jem must have been between emergencies, because a reply came quickly. Send help where, you pillock?
Bennett Street, Ardwick.
Christ, is that the old mill? Jem punctuated her question with horrified emojis. Are you on your own? Please don’t go upstairs. I went to a lad not long back who’d fallen through the second floor and mashed his brains.
Small world, Rosie thought. I’ll be fine, she typed, unsure why she had chosen to contact Jem and not Kash. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I’m out.
Please do, and be careful. There are rats in there bigger than Alsatians.
No, there aren’t. Rosie sent the text and then tagged on an addendum. Shit. ARE there?
No, but they’re well organised and toothy. Crap, got a job. TEXT ME.
I will, I promise, Rosie replied, and got out of the car.
As if to add insult to injury, the mill was tall enough to create a wind tunnel, funnelling gusts that tore at her uniform and hair and hurled rain against her.
“Fucking hell,” she spat, but the wind whipped the curse away as well, following it with a prolonged barrage that rattled loose panels of fencing and sent howls echoing off the brickwork. Her access route took her across a minefield of wooden planks, shattered bricks, and litter of every imaginable kind. The locals had turned the perimeter into a makeshift tip, dragging out their unwanted sofas and white goods to dump them amongst the nettles and brambles. The last time the river had burst its banks, it swept most of the crap away, but people had wasted no time refilling the gaps.
Rosie took her time navigating the obstacle course, wary of falling and ending up with her hands full of glass or contaminated sharps. The building cast a long shadow, exacerbating the weather’s overbearing gloom, and she switched on her torch as she approached a pile of wooden crates stacked to boost trespassers through an empty window. The crates rocked beneath her weight, and she scrambled through quickly before she tempted fate, grateful to land on a solid concrete floor that was covered in charred remnants and rat droppings but not liable to collapse without warning.
A slow pan of her torch revealed hefty floor-to-ceiling pillars and a series of low brick walls that had formed partitions back when the mill was operational. Any remaining machinery had been removed by the owners or looted for scrap metal, and the expansive space was now strewn with cider bottles and beer cans, junk food wrappers, and the odd condom. The closest corner, where two of the windows still had glass, showed signs of more prolonged inhabitation: a circle of ash from a small fire, tattered blankets, and a pair of soiled trousers, but no one seemed to have been there recently and the clothing wasn’t that of a teenage girl.
Using that corner as a starting point, Rosie zigzagged across the floor, trying to cover as much of it as possible whilst keeping a close eye on where she was putting her feet. Several sections of the concrete had traps cut into it, covered only by rotting wooden doors and almost impossible to spot, even in daylight. Someone had splattered a couple with yellow paint, but a large hole in the centre of another implied Mickey Foss wasn’t the only one to have come a cropper in here. Kneeling by the gap, she directed her torch through it and leaned low, straining to pick out objects in the murk. Dank air hit her face, bringing with it a stagnant tang, and she could see floodwater several metres below, its ink-black surface rippling in the draught. She shivered, pushing away from the edge and then dusting off her knees as she stood. A quick check of her watch told her she had twenty-five minutes left before Jem might raise the alarm, but there was only the very back of the room still left for her to explore.
Following the rear wall brought her to a recess housing a flight of stairs. Happy to heed Jem’s warning about the upper levels, she was about to call it a day when a sudden smash of glass and a stifled laugh sounded clearly from the floor above.
“Shit.” She kicked the dusty bottom step, glaring at its fresh footprints. The prints were smaller than hers and overlapping, suggesting more than one person was up there.
The first step creaked but held as she put her foot on it. She set her jaw, resigned to her fate and somewhat comforted by the prospect of Jem being sent to her should she break her neck. Jem would no doubt be less than impressed, however, so she crept upward at a snail’s pace, avoiding any obvious weak spots in the wood and holding the handrail in the few places it was securely fixed. Still hidden in the alcove at the top of the flight, she mulled over her options. The last thing she wanted was to spook anyone and have to chase after the buggers, so she tiptoed to the door and pushed it open a crack. She could hear three distinct and distinctly young voices: two girls and one lad. The kids were close by and to her left, and judging by the smell that hit her, they were all stoned.
“Yeah, but it’s not unpossible is it?” the lad said. “They’ve got a horn.”
One of the girls laughed. “They’ve got antlers, y’thick twat, not horns, and they’d never shag a horse.”
“So where do they come from, then?” he asked, after a prolonged spell of inhalation that ended with a violent fit of coughing and another wave of dope smoke wafting over Rosie.
“Africa, I think. It were on ITV,” the second girl said. “But they got one in Chester Zoo, Woody, I seen it.”
Rosie’s ears pricked up at the mention of the lad’s name. She walked across to them, her presence completely ignored until she stopped a couple of feet away from their smouldering disposable barbecue and cleared her throat. The trio were slouching on the floor in a nest of blankets and sleeping bags. The girl with her back to Rosie craned her neck, grinning as she viewed Rosie upside down. Her lank hair—blond, streaked through with bright green—fell about her face, and her tongue piercing flashed gold in the torchlight.
“Hiya. You’re dead pretty. D’ya want a burger?” She rolled over clumsily, scrabbling about on the floor to retrieve a dirt-speckled barmcake housing a disc of grey meat.
“Uh, no. Cheers, though,” Rosie said. With none of the kids showing any inclination to do a runner, she sat on a spare crate at Woody’s side.
Woody sucked on his joint and then seemed to realise he’d made a grave mistake, not in smoking a Class B substance in front of a police officer, but in not offering her a toke. “It’s really good shit,” he said, turning the spliff’s soggy side toward her.
“It’s tempting, but I’ll pass, thanks.”
He shrugged at her refusal and unscrewed a half-empty bottle of cider. “Have you ever been to Chester Zoo?” he asked, regarding her with red-rimmed eyes and scratching at a scab on his cheek.
Rosie crossed her legs at the ankles, settling in for the long run. “Yeah, once, I think. Why?”
“Did you see the unicorn?”
The blond girl laughed so hard that her alcopop shot out of her nose.
“Ah,” Rosie said as their earlier exchange began to make sense. “I don’t believe it was there at the time, so no.”
“I’ve never been to a zoo,” he said. “I shot a squirrel with an airgun once, but it’s not the same as seeing a real-life unicorn.”
Rosie nodded, doing her utmost to remain professional. “Maybe you should do a bit of googling when you get home.”
The second girl—ghostly pale and Goth to the nth degree, with self-harm scars running the length of both forearms—held out a tube of Smarties and tipped a few into Rosie’s palm. “We’ll tell him later,” she whispered.
Rosie colour-ordered her Smarties on her knee and started with a purple one. “Break it gently,” she said. “It’ll be like finding out about Father Christmas all over again.”
The Goth girl giggled. “He still spends half of Christmas Eve hanging out of the window with a pair of binoculars he won on a tombola.” Her brow suddenly furrowed as she noticed Rosie’s uniform for the first time. “Shit. Are you going to arrest us for the weed?”
Rosie pondered that while she sucked her sweets. “No. But I might have to wag my finger sternly and tell you to behave in future.”
Woody spilled cider down his chin, the four-litre bottle too heavy for him to keep raised. He was smaller than Kyle, and a familial resemblance to the Goth suggested they were siblings. “You’re nice,” he said. “I like you.”
“I like you too, so let’s do a bit of a deal.” Rosie took out her notepad. “I’m looking for a young lass called Tahlia, and I was speaking to a mate of yours down by the canal who said you’d seen her in here.”
Woody’s mouth twisted, drawing his lips to one side and making his nose twitch like an inquisitive rabbit. Rosie assumed he was puzzling out how she knew his name or why she was looking for Tahlia, or perhaps he still hadn’t moved beyond the unicorn conundrum.
“Tahlia,” she prompted him, stopping just short of clicking her fingers. “Fourteen years old, mixed race, long curly hair, had a fling with Kyle Parker? You tell me where I can find her, and I’ll forget all about the weed.”
The penny dropped in slow, clearly signposted intervals. Rosie had finished her Smarties and arranged another batch by the time he answered.
“Demi-Lee’s bird!” he said. “I fancied her for a bit, but Kyle said he’d knock me head off if I tried owt.”
“When did you last see her?”
“’Bout two weeks ago. Her and Demi-Lee had a barney and split up, and she had nowhere to stay. She crashed in here for a couple of nights, then she took all her stuff and never came back.”
“Did she say where she was going? Might she have gone home?”
“Naw, her dad’s dead strict, and he’d have killed her for being a lez. She said she’d got a really nice place, but she wouldn’t say where, so she was probably bullshitting.”
“Do you know where her parents live?”
“North Curzon. Tarrick Street, I think, but I don’t know what number.”
The girls were nodding along as he spoke, making no attempt to contradict him or elaborate on the details, and they shook their heads when Rosie asked if they had anything to add.
Satisfied they were telling the truth, she pushed to her feet and folded her arms. “Right, come on.”
They gawped at her.
“You promised you wasn’t going to arrest us,” the blonde said.
“I’m not, but I can’t leave you in here trespassing willy-nilly, drinking underage, and smoking dope. Do you have homes to go to?”
She got a couple of shrugs and a “yeah.”
“Are your parents or guardians there?”
“Our mam’s at work,” Woody said. He pointed at the blonde. “Her big sister will be in.”
“And how do we feel about her big sister?”
“She’s all right,” the blonde said. “She’ll make us pizza and won’t tell on us.”
That was good enough for Rosie. In a perfect world, she’d have delivered the children safely into the arms of their frantic yet forgiving parents, but the world was far from perfect, and a big sister who gave a damn and supplied pizza was better than nothing. She collected the cider bottle and stamped out the barbecue. “Mind how you go on the stairs,” she said. “If you get down them in one piece and don’t try to scarper at the bottom, I’ll buy you all a McFlurry.”
* * *
The woman put an arm around her boyfriend and laid her head on his shoulder. “At least the old sod went peacefully,” she said, and Jem almost spat her chewing gum into the bucket of bloody vomit at her feet.
The protracted and grisly demise of Stanley Brown had been anything but peaceful. A chronic alcoholic with a gastric ulcer, he had decorated every room of his flat with bright red sprays of gore before collapsing in the corner behind his telly. Rigor mortis had frozen his face in an agonised grimace, and his outstretched limbs were contorted, as if he’d spent his last seconds warding off a wild animal.
The woman made an elaborate sign of the cross, only in reverse and enhanced by a knock-kneed curtsy, and then gave her boyfriend a chirpy thumbs-up when he came back into the room carrying a six-pack and a large plastic bag. Busy with her paperwork, Jem hadn’t noticed him leave, but he’d evidently been raiding Stanley’s kitchen.
“Stan would want us to have these,” he said. He handed the woman a pilfered can of super-strength lager and toasted the body with his own. “Cheers, pal. You were the very best of us.” Dabbing his dry eyes with a ragged handkerchief, he turned to Jem. “You need owt else from us, love?”
“No, thank you. You’ve been very helpful. I’ll just wait for the police to arrive.” She raised an eyebrow at the plastic bag. He was struggling to lift it, and glass clinked every time he moved. Pre-empting any enquiry on her part, he gave her a brisk nod and sidled toward the front door.
“Come on, Yvonne. I’m sure the paramedic is very busy.”
Although far from sober, Yvonne got the message and tottered across to join him on the threshold. “We’ll be in the Red Lion if anyone needs us,” she said.
“Grieving,” he added, and stumbled in his haste to get out of the door.
Jem waited until the lift silenced the irregular clack of Yvonne’s high heels. Then she went into the kitchen, where the smell of sweet copper and decomposition wasn’t quite so eye-watering. The soles of her boots stuck to the lino as she walked to the cleanest countertop, and flies were gorging themselves on the unwashed dishes that filled the sink. She scratched her arm and then her head, setting off a chain reaction of furious itching that only abated when her mobile buzzed with a message from Rosie. Safe and sound and on my way to MaccieD’s. Fancy a Flurry?
Love one, Jem typed. But I’m stuck babysitting a body until your lot arrive. She was about to send the text when someone knocked on the door.
“Hello? Police!” a man shouted.
“In the kitchen,” she called back. “Watch where you’re putting your feet.”
The officer swore every couple of steps, making it easy for her to gauge his approach. With his presence guaranteeing she’d be able to leave the scene, she erased all but the first two words of her message and added, Meet me in the B&Q car park in fifteen.
She rendezvoused with Rosie at the far end of the B&Q car park, well beyond the steady stream of baby boomers laden with gardening supplies and buckets of grout. For the sake of convenience and staying dry, she took a leaf from every police series she’d ever watched and lined her driver’s window up with Rosie’s. Rosie—who apparently also watched too much telly—made a show of checking for witnesses before she passed Jem the ice cream, still wrapped in its brown paper bag. For extra effect, she’d donned her sunglasses despite the pouring rain.
“Very incognito,” Jem said. “I’m sure no one’s spotted us, sitting here in our subtly marked cars.” She hit her blues for the benefit of a woman who’d stopped to stare, and the woman flounced off, steering her trolley-load of magnolia Dulux into a bollard.
“Nothing to see here,” Rosie announced loudly. “We’re allowed to take a break, no matter what the Daily Mail might say.” She waggled a finger toward Jem’s paper bag. “You struck me as an extra sauce kind of lass. So to speak.”
Jem said nothing, but she felt her ears go hot. Ducking her head to hide the telltale flush, she delved into her bag, popping the lid off her Flurry and then gaping at it. The tub was full to overflowing and covered in liberal dollops of raspberry, with half a ton of chocolate embedded in the ice cream. She sat up straight again, her pink ears forgotten. “How the hell did you wangle this? I’ve never been able to wangle this, even when I’m in uniform.”
“I batted my eyelashes at the cute lad behind the till,” Rosie said, and displayed another bag from the passenger side. “He gave me a free apple pie and a burger with extra gherkins.”
“You have a real gift.” Jem settled back in the seat and entered her rest request on the RRV’s data terminal. She’d told Ryan she was happy to take her break off-base, which gave her twenty minutes to catch up on all Rosie’s gossip. “So, what do you know? What were you doing in the old mill?”
Rosie caught a drip of ice cream with her finger and wiped it off on a napkin already dirt-smudged and crumpled. She’d obviously given herself a cat lick, but she’d missed a grey streak on her cheek and the cobwebs stuck to her hair.
“Trying to find Kyle’s mates,” she said. “I found a few by the canal who knew him in passing, but I failed to track down Tahlia, who may have been his girlfriend for a short spell before she joined us on the Dark Side by dating Demi-Lee.”
“The plot thickens,” Jem said.
“Indeed it does. Tahlia had been crashing in the mill, but by all accounts she’s moved to somewhere splendid.” Rosie tapped her teeth with her spoon, deep in thought. “Which seems unlikely.”
Jem had only been to the mill once, but the prospect of spending a night there gave her the collywobbles. “Where the hell are Tahlia’s family in all of this? Does she have any, or is she in care?”
“They live on North Curzon. I think Steph will be paying them a visit in the not too distant. According to a very stoned lad, Tahlia’s dad kicked her out after her dalliance with Demi-Lee.”
“Poor kid,” Jem said. Not for the first time in her career, the phrase “there but by the grace” sprang to mind. She had responded to numerous 999 calls for looked-after children, most in their early teens, running away from their care homes, taking drugs, self-harming, or getting drunk. Sometimes they got into the wrong car with the wrong man. Oftentimes they did the same thing all over again, and she came to know the children by name. She turned up the car’s heating as goose pimples rose on her arms. “What about the local shelters and hostels? Is someone checking those?”
“As we speak.” Rosie flicked through her notebook. “Have you heard of one called Olly’s? A lad mentioned it, and I assumed I’d be able to get the address from comms, but they haven’t been able to find it.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. I’ll ask around, though.”
“Cheers. I’ll probably be on that tomorrow, unless Steph finds me another plum gig involving towpaths and dilapidated buildings.”
Jem busied herself making patterns in her ice cream, concentrating on the swirl of sauce so she wouldn’t blurt out the question teetering on the tip of her tongue. Whatever was going on between Rosie and Steph, it was none of her business. If Rosie wanted to tell her, she would tell her.
“Two years and three months,” Rosie said, her voice barely audible above the rain drumming on the cars. “That’s how long we were together. We split up last September.”
“Oh.” Jem put her tub down. “Sorry, Rosie, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You didn’t pry.”
Jem regarded her carefully, trying to catch signs of anger or regret, but Rosie was nibbling a piece of Flake she’d dipped in raspberry, and she seemed quite cheerful.
“I wanted to, though,” Jem admitted.
“Well, yes, I could see that.” Rosie bit her chocolate. “But in contrast to my bull-in-a-china-shop approach, you are far too polite to be nosy.”
Jem checked the clock on the dash. She had eight minutes left on her break, which didn’t seem anywhere near long enough for this conversation. It would be cowardly to change the subject, though.
“It must be hard to see her all the time at work,” she said. “I know people who’ve had to move stations or groups after a break-up with a colleague.”
Rosie reached a hand out of her window, letting rain collect on her mucky palm. She watched it drip through her fingers for a few seconds before answering. “It helps that she’s Major Crimes and not a bog-standard plod, which is ironic, because that was half the problem in the first place. She wanted me to follow in her footsteps, work on her team, but I was happy doing what I’m doing. I’d like to take my National Investigators’ Examination—that’s the first step to qualifying as a detective—but I’ll do it when I’m ready, not to please whoever I’m sleeping with.”
“Sounds fair enough.”
“Not to Steph,” Rosie said, and for the first time Jem heard the bitterness and hurt beneath her words. “Steph is Type A to the core, and I’m…well, I’m not sure what the hell I am. It wasn’t all bad, of course. We got on fine at first, had a great social life, lots of nights out and weekends away. I don’t really know at what point it stopped being fun. I can’t remember it being a major light-bulb moment or anything; I just realised she was whittling away at me bit by bit. Every decision we made together was actually her decision, and I was constantly making compromises to keep her on side. It was exhausting, and I was miserable, so I ended it.”
She was back to staring at her palm again. Jem took hold of her fingers and gave them a squeeze.
“Did she just let you?” she asked. “End it, I mean.”
“No, not really,” Rosie said quietly. “We’re not a couple, not by a long shot, but she pesters me to go on dates with her and makes sure I’m assigned to her cases, and every so often she’ll get me drunk enough that I’ll sleep with her.” She withdrew her hand from Jem’s and tucked it between her thighs, her embarrassment evident in every stilted movement.
“Hey,” Jem said. She waited until Rosie looked at her. “I can fabricate feline shenanigans just as well as you can, so phone me if you ever need me, okay?”
“Steph knows I don’t have a cat,” Rosie said. Her face was pale, but she was starting to smile.
Jem shook her spoon at Rosie, splashing ice cream down the side of the car. “I’ll use my imagination. I’m very creative when I set my mind to it. Do we have a deal?”
“Okay, yes, we have a deal.” When they shook on it, Rosie kept a tight hold of Jem’s hand. “On a scale of one to ten, how pathetic do you think I am?”
“Zero. Minus one. Don’t be bloody stupid,” Jem said. “Nobody’s perfect. We all fuck up, get stuff wrong, and do things we’d want to change if we had the chance.” She held Rosie’s gaze, making sure she’d got her point across, and then jumped as the RRV’s data terminal began to bleep and her radio blared in synch with it. She scrolled down to the job information and sighed. “I rest my case,” she said, turning the monitor so Rosie could read it. Male, nineteen. Head stuck in a gate.
“For fuck’s sake.” Rosie could barely swear for laughing. “That scale I just mentioned? He’s getting an eleven.”