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I WAS HEADING back to the ward after a canteen lunch only to reach the door at the same time as Trin’s mother. We’d always had a polite relationship. She didn’t mind me and I didn’t mind her and we stayed polite and distant but even I knew her well enough to see the confusion in her eyes.
“Hi, Mrs Matthews,” I said, hoping I didn’t look miffed. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have brought you a coffee.”
She raked her gaze over my head. “What happened to you?”
“I . . . fell.” I gave her a strained smile as she flicked her gaze to my prosthesis.
“Oh.” She turned to the door and limped through it. She needed a hip replacement and was on a waiting list. She’d been on the list for two years in extreme pain. Trusty National Health Service at its best.
Now, I get what you’re thinking but before you point out my prosthesis, that was down to private medical cover and the police pay-out. I’d have been lucky to get a wooden stump on the NHS.
“Trin called me this afternoon,” I said, hoping that was the cue to explain why she hadn’t told me.
Her mother sighed. “This is very awkward, Morgan, I’m sorry.” Her Geordie accent was still in place. “I was under the impression you’d split up.”
“Why?” I didn’t like the way her mother was glancing in the direction of Trin’s small ward.
She sighed again. “I must have been mistaken. I would have called you.”
“I guess things have been a bit strained lately.” I forced a smile onto my face.
Her mother searched my eyes and I could see she wasn’t impressed by something. “She was in the car . . . left after the tea party . . . for the birth?”
“Whose birth?” I’d known the Matthews family seven years and I’d liked them but suddenly I felt like I’d been firmly ejected.
“Trin’s niece.” Her mother pursed her lips. “She didn’t tell you?”
“No.” If I felt sick before, I really felt sick now. I marched into the ward where Trin was awake talking to Wood . . . who had a graze on her chin.
Wood jumped when she saw me. I’d seen guilt on a hundred different faces, but it didn’t match the complete ruddy-cheeked look Wood had on hers.
“Nice gash,” I said, motioning to her chin. “Guess I don’t need to ask whose car you were in then?”
“Morgan,” Mrs Matthews whispered. “Please, not here.”
“I picked her up.” Was all Wood had. “Why are you here?” Like I was breaking some unwritten law for knowing my own fiancé was in hospital.
“Well, I am her next of kin seeming as I’m her fucking fiancé,” I snapped. I glared at Trin. She had panic in her eyes and I had the gut-wrenching suspicion how a mediocre DS had landed a prime position in the best team on the force.
“It’s not what you think, Morgan, I swear,” Trin whispered, tears in her eyes. “I just needed a lift.”
“What do you expect me to think? I didn’t even know I had a niece.” I rubbed over my face. It might have sounded stupid to worry about that detail but I’d been great friends with Trin’s sister over the years and Trin’s sister had been fighting to get pregnant for most of that time. It was a huge deal . . . and I didn’t even know.
“Keep it down,” Wood muttered and glanced over at the nurses.
“Excuse me?” I glared at her. “Why the fuck are you here?”
My voice echoed in my pounding head. The nurses scowled at me.
“I’m her partner,” Wood snapped back.
“Oh, well then, where the fuck were you when I was in hospital?” And my voice was getting louder. The other patients were watching, more out of sheer boredom than anything else.
“Morgan, please, language,” Mrs Matthews muttered. “This is not the place to sort out spats.”
“Please don’t do this,” Trin whispered through tears.
The guilt creased up my stomach but then anger followed and made it crunch. “You were driving home from a family occasion with another woman, a family occasion I knew nothing about, and you have the cheek to call me?”
I turned and stormed out.
“Morgan . . .” Wood hurried after me.
I stopped and glared at her. “You come within feet of me and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out.” I stormed out of the ward and pulled out my phone. I was sniffing, I could hear myself. What a mess.
“Hayefield Manor,” Frank said in his toffy-nosed accent.
“Frank, it’s Morgan. Could you put me through to Edwina?” I slumped down onto a bench outside the hospital. Two nurses, in scrubs and jumpers, puffed on e-cigarettes away to the right of me.
“No, she’s unavailable. Can I take a message?” He sounded like I was an annoyance. I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t in the mood for arseholes.
“Morgan?” It was Sophie, Sophie and her soothing alto. “Do you need assistance?”
I sighed. “Yes, please, ma’am. I’d like a lift home.”
“Which hospital are you at?” She was calm, soothing, strong. I felt tears bubble and sniffed again. “I will come and get you.”
“Green Oaks. Do you know where that is?” It wasn’t but twenty miles from Hayefield but Green Oaks was on the edge of Evesham, a small town. I was sure Sophie would go to grander hospitals.
“Yes, I know it well. I am on my way.” Sophie hung up and I let out a breath only to growl when Wood walked into my line of sight.
“I mean it. Unless you want me to assault you, piss off.” I didn’t have the energy to glare so I stared at the oak trees planted in green areas to hide the hospital from a housing estate nearby.
“You are better than that.” Wood perched on the arm of the bench furthest from me. “Someone forced us off the road, Morgan, and you didn’t have that corker on your head when I saw you a few days ago.”
I shrugged. “I fell.”
“I didn’t get the plates. The car flipped.” Wood rubbed her hands together, over the scrapes and scratches. “We were shunted from behind.”
“Right now, I don’t care.” I flicked my gaze back to the trees. The lights twinkled in the night sky.
“You need to. Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that we are investigating Haye and we get hit?” Wood’s tone irritated me further. Was she seriously talking to me like I was a witness or a suspect here?
“I think it’s more than a coincidence that the woman who took my job happened to be in a car with my fiancé.” Fury drove me to my feet. “And neither of you is good at lying.”
Wood blinked a few times. “We . . . we aren’t . . . it’s just I’ve been helping out running her sister to her appointments . . . Trin wanted me to celebrate it with them.”
“Oh, nice.” I was too helpless to punch her. My head hurt too much. The shock made it hard to react. “So you take my place in her family life too, great.”
“You couldn’t drive for a while.” Wood held up her hands. “I wanted to make it up to you, help out. I needed support and Trin kept nagging at me to go to the counsellor like you did.”
“Nice of her to bother with you but then having both arms is probably easier on her eyes.” I fired it at her. I knew it would hurt her but I didn’t care.
“She loves you, Morgan. Give her a break.” Wood was completely unruffled. “I care about you. I looked up to you. You were an amazing officer and teacher but we were never ever friends. Trin is my friend and she needs me to support her.”
“What did you think I needed from her then?” I couldn’t even stand looking at her. I felt ambushed. I didn’t know if I was jumping to conclusions or being stupid but I felt like I’d been shunted out of my own life by Wood.
“That’s between you.” Wood fussed with her hair. Something she did when she was trying to be assertive. “I’m opening up the case on Eugenie Forthwright again. I talked to Max.” Who’d been my old criminal psychology guru. “He watched the interview tape. He is highly concerned about Haye.”
And if Max said that, he was usually right. Shit. “I work for Lady Haye. I trust her.”
Did I? How hard had I hit my head then?
“Do you? Or is she working you?” Wood was twisting the conversation in a way that made me feel I was under caution. “I haven’t missed the way you look at her.”
“Did you feed that to Trin before you tried to sleep with her or just for pillow talk?”
Sophie pulled up in an Aston Martin and relief flooded through me. I wanted to get away from the hospital, from Trin, from Wood.
Wood rolled her eyes like I was being childish. “She will hurt you.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” I spat at Wood who glared at Sophie’s car. “No matter what she does, she couldn’t hurt me like you have.”
Tears fell down Wood’s rosy cheeks.
I was a shit. A complete shit. I went to take it back—
“Morgan, are you alright?” Sophie’s soft voice filled me with some kind of strength. I turned to her and she didn’t need an answer. She strode over, took my left hand, and helped me to the car.
“Morgan, think about what you’re doing.” Wood’s Scottish lilt thickened with tears and desperation. “Please.”
“I have nothing more to say to you, Detective Inspector Wood.” I got into the passenger seat and Sophie closed the door for me and got into the driver’s seat. “Please, could you just drive?”
Sophie nodded and roared us out of the car park. “Perhaps you should heed your friend’s warning?”
“She’s not my friend.” My phone rang: Trin. I rejected it.
Sophie studied me, then nodded. “Where do you live? You wished me to drop you home?”
“Hayefield Manor,” I said, realising that I’d called it home. “I’d have caught a taxi otherwise.”
Sophie let through a seductive smile. “Very well.”
She sped us along the country road, the light from the dash illuminating her bone structure. She looked strong, enticing, and yes, dangerous. I soaked in her movements, the way her eyes fixed on the road yet felt like they were watching me; the way her hands slid over the wheel or gripped the gear stick; the way she filled the car with her presence.
“I think they’re sleeping together,” I said as she pulled us into the garage at the bottom of the Hayefield estate. “I saved Ruth’s life. I’m not sorry I did but it feels like she is punishing me for it.” I scrubbed the tears away and let her help me from the car. “Does that make any sense?”
“Yes, survivor guilt is profound,” Sophie said, taking my hand and leading me up the long driveway. “Your suspicions, whether correct or not, perhaps are telling you something, yes?”
“That my fiancé shut me out of her life and is friends with Ruth . . . she supports Ruth . . . but can’t stand me because I’m not who I was.” I stopped and tears dribbled free. “And I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
Sophie rubbed my shoulders and took her jacket off. She draped it over me. “Was that person so bad?”
“Yes. I was only focused on work. I was all about work. I feel like when that was taken away I was empty.” I hadn’t even told the counsellor this. “What I thought was real, wasn’t. And you know who the only people came around every single day were?”
Sophie’s eyes warmed as if she guessed.
“Yeah, Fiona and Bob.” I shook my head. “I hadn’t given Fiona the credit of saying she was a friend before but she really was . . . and I’m sure you know how hard it is to argue when Fiona gets going.”
Sophie nodded. “Because she knows how deep wounds can be.” She smiled at me, calm, strong, knowing. “And she also knows, like any wound, it will heal with the right treatment.”
“And what is that treatment?” I whispered, half expecting her to sling me some line about distance.
“Strong liquor and hard work.” She helped me into the 4x4 buggy thing. Guess she’d decided walking was too much for me. “At least that was my grandfather’s remedy. It’s worked extremely well for me.”
“Then I’ll go for that. You look like you could handle any wound.” I held on as she drove us up to the manor.
“That’s because I’ve had many.” She said nothing more but led me to the same room in the family wing and left me with painkillers and a maid.
That was something I’d noticed in Sophie’s eyes but not put words to. Beyond the predatory lure, the seduction, the distance, lay some deep wound . . . but what?