Page 22 of Watching You

‘I feel like a fool,’ Lively grumbled. ‘I’d have been perfectly all right going back to mine.’

Beth Waterfall put his bag down in her hallway and took off her coat.

‘Call me judgemental, but I saw your flat when I went to pick up your things for the hospital, and I’m not convinced your kitchen hadn’t been leased out to a laboratory breeding new strains of bacteria. Would you sit down, Sam? You’re making me nervous.’

He lowered himself onto the sofa and leaned back gingerly. He was conscious of his neck every second. In his imagination, the covering on the wound there was no more sturdy than the skin on a bowl of custard left too long.

‘This is ridiculous. You’ve work to be doing for people who need you more than me.’

‘I’ve leave to take that I’ll lose if I don’t do something with it before the end of the month, and I give enough of myself to that place without giving extra for free, however much I love my job. Will it be tea or coffee?’

‘Ach, coffee, black and strong. Tea’s for women.’

She put her head around the sitting room door and gave him a look that made him wilt.

‘Coffee it is, but that’ll be the first and last reference to women being weaker than men while you’re under my roof. You’re not at the station now, and you’ve no one here who needs you to prove that you’re one of the boys.’

Lively reddened to an extent that would have permanently ruined his credibility with the team had any of them been around to witness it.

‘I’m sorry. That was out of order. Just goes to show I should be in my own home, not bringing my bad manners into yours. Will you just drive me to mine? I really …’ He struggled to get up and failed.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, can you not be told when you’re in the wrong either, without needing to run away?

Samuel Lively, I’m a single woman who’s looked after herself for years, a surgical team leader, something of a loner these days, and chief cook and bottle-washer under my own roof.

I’m asking you to mind your mouth, that’s all.

Among those things, though I say so myself, I’m also something of a baker.

So if you’ll sit down and swallow your pride, there’ll be coffee and Victoria sponge brought to you in just a few minutes. Can you live with that?’

She smiled at him, and Lively thought that surviving long enough to see the beauty of her face in that moment was worth every bit of the pain he’d experienced.

And fear. There had been plenty of that too.

Perhaps it was the fact that he was no longer a young man that had made it worse.

He’d suffered plenty of injuries before, and more than a few moments of true peril.

But the warm, wet wash of his lifeblood into his collar, drenching his shirt and dripping thickly onto the bulge of his stomach, had been an awakening into a world where he was suddenly mortal and where the precipice into forever was no longer a distant feature but part of the foreground.

He had not liked the feeling. Not one bit.

‘Cake,’ he nodded. ‘I’d like that. Thank you.’

Beth busied herself in the kitchen as he looked around.

It was the first time he’d been inside her house, their tentative few preliminary dates having taken place on neutral ground, bumbling between small talk and figuring out how to hold hands as if they were fourteen all over again.

Everything they’d done together so far was a first, and as wondrous as it was excruciating.

They had knocked noses trying to kiss. Argued over restaurant bills.

Been befuddled by the art of holding open doors in the twenty-first century, until Lively had decided that there were some things men should be able to do that were just plain good manners and not at all insulting to a secure, intelligent woman.

The sofa was comfortable – much more so than the old tatty thing at his place with cushions so worn you almost sank through to the bottom of them – and there was a television.

He was relieved at that. Beth Waterfall was the sort of woman he’d imagined might spend her evenings reading literary tomes or handwriting lengthy letters to friends abroad.

Bookshelves filled an alcove, the upper shelves displaying a variety of fiction and reference books, the bottom section packed with jigsaw puzzles and board games with Sellotaped box sides and battered edges.

‘Here you go.’ She entered and set a tray on the coffee table, the sponge cake on a marble slab, two plates next to it.

‘Just a wee slice for me though,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to lose some pounds. Started running again, in fact. Need to up my game if I’m going to keep up with the youngsters on my squad.’

‘Sam,’ Beth said as she handed him a more than generous slice.

‘If you want to get fitter, then as a doctor I say go for it. We live better when we look after our bodies. But as your … I don’t know, whatever this is at our age …

I can only tell you that I’m here for your smile, your sense of humour, and because you make me feel safe in a way I haven’t known for a while.

I’m not here for a six-pack. Now eat your cake and enjoy it.

The jam’s homemade and I grew the strawberries myself. ’

‘Where do you find the time?’ he asked, torn between wanting to eat and wanting to ask questions.

She shrugged and toyed with the sponge on her plate. ‘I have to fill the hours when I’m not at work. Plus, I find it hard to sleep. If you hear me walking around at night, don’t be surprised, but I’ll do my best not to wake you. Your bedroom’s at the back of the house where it’s quietest.’

Lively found it necessary to suddenly concentrate very hard on his plate.

‘Sure, yup, right.’

There was a long pause.

Beth closed her eyes. ‘Oh.’ It was her turn to blush. ‘Did you think—’

‘No, not at all. I’d never presume. We just hadn’t discussed it and I felt awkward for asking. The back of the house sounds perfect. And I don’t sleep all that much either, so you’ll not be disturbing me.’

Beth laughed so hard she had to put her plate down.

‘Aren’t we a pair of awkward dafties? Embarrassed to talk about such things at our age.

I didn’t think we were ready for anything more intimate yet given that we’ve still to perfect the kissing stage, and your neck’s not going to be up for much for a month or so.

’ She reached out and took his hand gently.

‘I’d like to look after you, Sam, if you’ll stop being such a stubborn old goat and let me. ’

‘I will, Beth. In fact I’d like that very much.’ He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. ‘I was looking at your photos earlier. Is that your daughter with you? She’s the spitting image of you.’

She slipped her hand slowly from Lively’s and wrapped her arms around her waist.

‘It is,’ she murmured.

‘Does she live locally? I’d love to meet her. What’s her name?’

Beth took a breath in through her nose and let it out through her mouth.

‘You can’t, I’m afraid. That’s Molly. Mol to her friends. She’s gone.’

Lively put his own plate down, the sponge cake forming an unswallowable lump in his mouth. ‘How long ago?’

‘It’s been more than a year now. I should have told you before, there’s just never really a right time to announce something like that.’

‘Was it an accident or was she ill?’ he asked softly.

‘There were pills involved. A lot of them. I hope you won’t find it too disturbing but you should know there’s an urn in my bedroom with her name on.

Well, at least that’s over. So you see, I invited you for my own sake as much as yours.

Perhaps the company will do us both good while you recuperate. ’

Sam Lively, Police Scotland’s notoriously grumpy, most irascible detective, found that he needed to look away and blink hard to clear the blurriness in his eyes.

Dr Beth Waterfall was more than he deserved, and the sort of woman he’d long since given up any hope of meeting.

And there she was, putting her faith in him, a man who had consistently screwed up every close relationship he’d ever formed.

She needed someone consistent, more open.

She needed a man she’d be proud to be seen with, who could entertain her with clever conversation over the Sunday papers.

He wasn’t that person. He never could be.

He opened his mouth to destroy the thing that had been offered to him.

He would leave straight away, go back to his own place, get out of her way.

It was good that she was trying to move forward after such a devastating loss.

It was extraordinary that she hadn’t simply given up on life completely.

And now here he was, catching criminals and being sarcastic his only two real skills in life.

‘I’m going to look after you, Beth,’ he said.

The words were not the ones his brain had been preparing. They weren’t the retreat he had planned. He had no idea where they came from.

Beth Waterfall, slowly, carefully – mindful of his wound – sank against his good shoulder as Lively realised that for once, when it mattered most, he’d managed to speak with his heart instead of his head.

He closed his eyes and held her.

The man watching the house from the car across the street closed his eyes too, and let his imagination run wild.