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‘This storm. Used to be just the Yanks who did that. 1953, they started naming hurricanes. Women’s names only, for the first twenty-five years. Our Met Office started playing copycat in 2015. You know what we called our first one?’
He shakes his head.
‘Abigail. Doesn’t sound much like a storm, does it?’
‘What are they calling this one?’
‘Delilah.’
He glances over. ‘Really?’
‘“Why-why-why, Delilah?”’ Emma sings.
She has a nice voice.
‘Judges, sixteen,’ Abraham replies.
‘You whada-what?’
‘You’ve heard of Samson?’
Emma cocks an eyebrow. ‘Nazarite hardman with big hair. Armed himself with a donkey’s jawbone and laid out an entire army of Philistines. Delilah was his lover. She found out his secret, got a servant to shear off the mane. Then his enemies slung him in a Gaza prison and made him grind grain for a living.’
‘Until his hair grew back.’
‘At which point, he knocked down the walls of their temple, killing himself and everyone in it. Mic drop,’ she adds, miming something that Abraham doesn’t understand. ‘They always said there’d be benefits to a convent-school education.’
‘Samson’s my middle name,’ he tells her, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Emma’s laugh is deep-throated and genuine. ‘Fuck off.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘How fucking tall are you, anyway?’
‘Six four.’
‘You want that lift?’
‘I shouldn’t.’
‘Oh,pffsh. You think you’ll get an Uber in this?’ She takes a last drag and bounces her cigarette off the no-smoking sign. ‘Come on, Samson. Quick march.’
2
Emma walks away without a forward glance. Within moments, her hair is plastered to her scalp.
Abraham knows he’s being played, heknows. And yet her conversation’s so diverting he craves more. Corporate Comms might not like him accepting a lift, but he’s deflected Emma’s questions about Daniel Locke. He breathes deep, stepping out from the overhang.
Emma’s car is a small hatchback. Inside, Abraham slides back the passenger seat as far as it’ll go.
She pulls on her seatbelt, blots her face of rain. ‘Police station? Pub? Curry house? Kebab shop? Home? Not necessarily in that order.’
Abraham frowns. He knows she’s joking, but he doesn’t know how to respond.
Emma starts the engine, flicks on the wipers and gets a good blast of air going. ‘Relax, Samson. The pubs are shut, the curry houses too. And you don’t strike me as the kind of guy to chow down on a lamb doner.’
‘You know the station?’