Just Keep Breathing

by GS Rhodes

  The waiter appeared and placed their drinks on the table, offering a hopeful smile to them both which faded when John politely informed him that neither one of them had yet picked up the menu. He said he would give them a few minutes and scurried off, presumably to stand over to one side and watch them until they picked up the menus and put them back down again.

  “The reunion tonight, then,” John said, opening his bottle of sparkling water and glugging it into the glass. “What’s the dress code? I’m assuming it’s also not a day pyjamas kind of place.”

  DI Kidd winced. He’d forgotten about that.

  “What?” John said. “Have I said the wrong thing? I promise I’m not about to wear day pyjamas out, that was a joke.”

  “I know, I know,” Kidd said, taking a quick sip of his drink before turning back to look at him. He was staring across the table at Kidd, his dark brown eyes looking a little sparkly in the light coming in from the window, his hair in that perfect quiff that miraculously seemed to stay there. Kidd had no idea how. His hair always looked scruffy no matter what he tried to do with it. He looked hopeful and Kidd felt like he was about to tell a child that Santa Claus wasn’t real. “Something has sort of come up,” he said eventually.

  “Oh?” It was all John managed. It was clearly still Kidd’s turn to speak.

  “The reunion is still happening, and I’m still going, but the parents of Sarah Harper, the girl that’s gone missing, they are likely going to be there,” he said, though he didn’t like how readily he was giving out details of what he was working on. He wasn’t supposed to be doing that. But this was different, wasn’t it? “I thought it would be a good idea to go with DS Sanchez, you know Zoe, so we can scope things out a little. I meant to tell you earlier, but I’d already moved this lunch because of my stupid work schedule and I didn’t want to—”

  John reached across the table and put a gentle hand on Kidd’s forearm. It stopped him from speaking immediately and he looked up to lock eyes with John once again. He was smiling. In spite of the fact that Kidd was blowing him off entirely for tonight, John McAdams was smiling. And it was enough to calm the pounding in Kidd’s heart.

  “It’s alright,” he said. “I don’t mind not going to the reunion with you. I sort of mind about not getting to spend the evening with you, but we can do that another time. I’m not about to have a breakdown over it.”

  “You’re not?”

  John laughed. “Not even close,” he said. “You will have to make it up to me some other time though.”

  “I don’t know if I have another reunion around the corner,” Kidd said, allowing an easy smile to fall across his face. “So, if you have any other ideas?”

  John grinned broadly. “I have plenty.” He waggled his eyebrows and Kidd felt his heart skip. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had that effect on him. He knew it was probably Craig, but he tried to push those feelings out of his head right now. The last thing he needed was to ruin this.

  “We should probably look at this menu,” John said. “I can feel the eyes of that waiter burning into the side of my skull. If we don’t order soon he’s going to have us escorted out for loitering.”

  “‘Escorted out for loitering.’ You sure you’re not a detective?”

  “I’ve read enough crime novels in my day job to pick up some of the lingo,” John replied with a wink. Kidd felt weak. He needed to calm down.

  He was about to pick up his menu to see what this place had on offer when a high-pitched laugh from somewhere towards the back of the restaurant caught his attention. It turned out there were other people in here after all.

  There was a man and a woman at the far end of the restaurant. They were up on a raised platform, tucked away in a corner, almost in darkness. Even the curtains near them were closed. A man was whispering in the ear of a blonde woman who was giggling, either at what he was saying or at that feeling of someone saying sweet nothings to you.

  Kidd was about to turn back to his menu when the man moved away from the woman’s ear and came into focus. He locked eyes with Kidd and his face dropped instantly.

  What on earth was Greg Spencer doing here?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kidd’s head was spinning, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn back to the menu, to break eye contact with Greg. Greg looked ashen, like he was about to throw up right where he was sitting.

  The woman hadn’t noticed, she was too busy saying something to him and packing her purse away into her bag. She was chattering away to Greg, but even from this distance Kidd could see that he had no idea what she was saying. If there was a pop quiz, he would fail it.

  “Are you ready to order?” The waiter had appeared at the table once again, pulling Kidd’s attention back to John, who was looking over at him expectantly. “Or do you still need a moment?”

  “Ben?” John asked. But his face suddenly dropped when he saw the expression on Kidd’s face. Kidd didn’t know what it was exactly, something akin to a murderous bear most likely because right now, his sister’s husband was out with another woman and his blood was boiling. “Ben, what’s going on?”

  John turned around and looked at the couple before turning back to Kidd. “You know those people?”

  “I know one of them,” Kidd said. He looked up at the waiter. “Just a few more minutes, I promise it won’t take me much longer than that. Everything looks great.” The waiter scurried away and Kidd put his menu down on the table. “I won’t be a second. I’m sorry.”

  He wondered how many more times he would apologise to John for getting distracted when they were supposed to be together, for putting something else first. He hoped it wasn’t something that kept happening. He was supposed to be doing better at this, but here he was, leaving a handsome man alone at a table to go and deal with something that was none of his business.

  Well. It was sort of his business. He’d always felt a little protective of Liz, but he thought that Greg was a good guy. He was supposed to be anyway. He didn’t feel the need to have an, “If you hurt my sister, I will hurt you,” chat when they got married because it seemed like a tired old cliché but now he was having second thoughts.

  “Greg,” Kidd said flatly as he reached their section of the restaurant. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Yes,” Greg replied, nervous, sweating profusely. Good, Kidd thought. “Small world isn’t it?”

  “Tiny,” Kidd replied. “And you are?”

  “Beth,” the blonde woman said, her smile never fading for a second. Her lipstick was a little bit smudged around the edges. It was enough for Kidd to put two and two together and come out at the right number. “Nice to meet you.”

  Kidd smiled and turned his attention back to Greg. “Can I talk to you outside?”

  “We’re actually just leaving,” Greg said, getting to his feet, putting on his jacket.

  “Great,” Kidd said. “I’ll walk with you.”

  “I don’t want to keep you,” Greg said, nervously running a hand through his hair. “Aren’t you coming over for dinner again next week?”

  “It doesn’t really feel like the kind of thing to discuss over dinner,” Kidd growled. Greg was clearly trying to brush him off, trying to run away from this like he had no say in what was going on right now. Kidd locked eyes with him. “So. Outside?”

  Greg sighed and looked over at Beth who, bless her, looked so confused. Either she was none the wiser as to the fact that Greg was a married man, or she was just stupid. Either way, Kidd felt instantly sorry for her being caught in the middle of all this. Whatever this was.

  “Sure,” Greg said. He turned back to Beth. “Do you want to come out in five minutes?”

  “Sure, I’ll go to the bathroom,” she said.

  “Better make it ten,” Kidd replied. “Really wash those hands when you’re done.”

  Kidd walked ahead of Greg towards the doors of the restaurant. He saw John watching them as he walked past, several shades of confused. Kidd mouthed, “
I’m sorry,” on the way past.

  When they were out in the open, Kidd found the chill of the winter sun welcoming. He hadn’t realised quite how warm it had been in the restaurant, or maybe that was just his blood boiling at the sight of Greg.

  He didn’t check to see if Greg was behind him, walking over to a little bridge that passed over an inlet next to the restaurant. When he got to the railing, he turned around to see Greg staring at him, his jacket now on, doing up the buttons on his blue, checked dress shirt. Kidd clocked the fingers. He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring.

  “Ben, I can explain—”

  “Okay,” Kidd interrupted. “Try and explain what I saw in there, I dare you.”

  Greg took a breath. “Beth is—”

  “And don’t you dare lie to me,” Kidd interrupted again, doing his best not to raise his voice, not to cause a scene. “I know what I saw and I won’t have you standing here and lying to me about it. Where the fuck is your wedding ring?”

  Greg looked down at his fingers like he’d seen a ghost. Maybe he’d hoped Kidd wouldn’t notice. Maybe he’d forgotten that it was Kidd’s job to notice things.

  “She’s a colleague from work,” Greg said. “I’ve been working late a lot over the past few months. She’s been helping.”

  “I assume she’s been doing more than getting the coffees in,” Kidd spat.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No, Greg, what’s not fair is the fact that you’re off with someone else when you’re married to my sister,” Kidd growled. “It’s not fair that I had to see what I saw in there. It’s not fair that I’m having to rip the shit out of you right now and that I can’t hit you.”

  “You want to hit me?”

  “I want to beat you to death,” Kidd said bluntly. “I want to beat you to a pulp and throw you in that water and never see you again. What the fuck are you thinking?”

  “I-I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Greg said. “It was…it was fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yeah,” Greg said, joining Kidd at the railing and looking out across the water. “Look, I don’t know how much Lizzie tells you about our marriage, about how things are between us, but lately it hasn’t been too good. I’ve been busy at work, she’s been busy with the kids, we barely have any time for each other, and then there was Beth…” He trailed off, putting his head in his hands. “It all just went too far.”

  “How long has it been going on?” Kidd asked, keeping his voice as flat as possible.

  “Ben, please don’t ask me that.”

  “How long?” Kidd barked.

  “Two months,” Greg replied quietly. “They really started riding me hard at work when I came back because I’d been off with Liz and Tim for my paternity leave. So it was a lot of late nights. And late nights with Beth there. One night it went too far and…I never stopped it.”

  “Did you want to stop it?”

  Greg didn’t answer right away. “I love Lizzie so much,” he said finally, tears choking every word. “Her and the kids mean everything to me. It was a mistake.”

  “A mistake that you continued with,” Kidd said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Keeping it all secret, taking off your wedding ring…” Kidd trailed off. “If you were trying to hide it, might I suggest not taking her to a restaurant in the town where your wife lives, where her brother works.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be out on a lunch date,” Greg said. “Who’s the guy?”

  “That’s John,” Kidd replied. “He’s…new.”

  “Things going well?”

  “Yeah,” Kidd said. “I could do without leaving the aforementioned lunch date to come out here and tear you to pieces, but here we are.” Kidd sighed and looked at Greg. He was still cradling his head in his hands. “Look at me, Greg. Please.”

  Greg looked over at Kidd. His eyes looked like they were about to overflow with tears. He’d been caught, and he knew that he’d been caught. He looked terrified.

  “Please don’t tell her,” Greg whispered. “Please.”

  Kidd took a breath. He knew that the right thing to do would be to go over to their house right now and tell Liz what he’d seen, that her husband had been cheating on her. But then he thought of the kids. When he thought of Tilly and Tim potentially losing their father, all his own doing, of course, Kidd felt his fury fade. He didn’t want to be responsible for that. He couldn’t bring himself to be.

  “I won’t,” Kidd said quietly. “But you need to end this. Whether you tell Liz or not, that’s your prerogative, I’m not getting involved in that part of your relationship, but you finish this today. You put your fucking wedding ring back on and you be the man you’re supposed to be for my sister, and your kids.”

  Greg nodded. He took a few deep breaths, the tears vanishing from his eyes as quickly as they’d appeared. He calmed himself down a little before he spoke.

  “Thanks, Ben,” he said. “You’re a really good person, you know that?”

  Kidd wasn’t so sure. He and Liz didn’t keep secrets from one another. Whenever things got hard in either one of their lives, their first port of call was to speak with the other sibling about it. But now there was something that Kidd certainly couldn’t talk to her about, at least not without causing a heck of a lot of damage. Even so, it didn’t feel good.

  “Finish it today,” Kidd said. “Alright?”

  “I will, I promise,” he said. “Thanks again, Ben. And I’m sorry.”

  Kidd shook his head. “You don’t need to apologise to me. But you do need to make it up to Liz.”

  They said their goodbyes and Kidd watched as Greg walked away with Beth. The other woman. He had noticed last night that things between them weren’t great, but he hadn’t wanted to think that something like this was going on. But here it was, right in front of his face. He couldn’t very well ignore it.

  He looked back to the restaurant where he saw John looking at him through the window. John waved, none of the wiser, and Kidd offered him a smile. He might not be able to ignore it, but he would have to forget about it. At least for now.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Kidd returned to his lunch with John, trying to explain in as few terms as possible exactly what had just happened. John hadn’t even met anyone from Kidd’s family, he hardly wanted his first impression of his sister’s husband to be that, but he couldn’t help it.

  John was his trademark kind and understanding self, and no sooner had they spoken about it did the topic get buried under a discussion about what they’d each done that day. With John working in publishing, his morning had mostly consisted of meetings that he was conferenced into so he didn’t have to go into the office, and editorial work on the many different authors that he worked with. He loved his work, and it definitely consumed him sometimes, but not quite in the same way that Kidd’s did. He wanted to learn from John in that respect, learn how to leave the work stuff at the office and live a somewhat normal life.

  John walked him back, the two of them walking hand in hand until they reached the front of the station. Kidd found himself promising that he would make things up to John with the reunion, and John made it his mission to show Kidd that he wasn’t altogether bothered about it, that everything was fine and neither one of them needed to panic. It was what Kidd needed to hear.

  He turned his attention back to the station, refocussing his mind on the matter at hand. Finding Sarah Harper.

  “And who on earth was that handsome man dropping you off?” Diane chirped from behind the desk, her eyes practically on stalks. “You should have invited him in.”

  “What? So you could interrogate him? I don’t think so,” Kidd said with a wink.

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Don’t be jealous, Diane,” Kidd replied, taking out his key card for the door. “You’re my one true love, you know that.”

  “Oh, stop that, you’ll make me blush!”

  Kidd pushed through the door and headed back towards the Incident Ro
om. DC Powell and DC Ravel were out, DC Campbell saying through a mouthful of food that they had nipped out to get lunch.

  Has he done anything other than eat today? Kidd thought as he passed Campbell’s desk and headed to where DS Sanchez was perched, her phone in one hand, a disposable cup of coffee in the other.

  “Good lunch?” she said, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

  “I’ve had better.”

  The playfulness in her face suddenly fell off a cliff and she eyed him carefully. “Why? What happened?”

  “Oh, it was nothing with John,” Kidd replied, quickly telling her that he’d seen Greg with another woman at the restaurant.

  “So you confronted him?”

  “Gave him a bit of a bollocking, yeah,” Kidd said. “Couldn’t help myself. Would have decked him if I didn’t have somewhere else to be.”

  “Ben!”

  “What?”

  “What did he say?” Zoe asked.

  “He’s breaking it off with her,” he replied. “And we’re not telling Liz.”

  DS Sanchez sighed. “And why are we not telling Liz?”

  “Because I’m not about to be responsible for their family breaking up,” Kidd said. “If he wants to tell her, that’s his choice, but I’m not going to be the one to do it. He said he’s going to break it off with Beth.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “I have to believe him, Zoe,” Kidd replied flatly. “I don’t want to be the one to do it, so Greg Spencer is going to have to grow a pair and come home to his wife instead of hanging out with some floozy from the office.”

  DS Sanchez considered this, taking a slow sip of her coffee. She made the tiniest gasp before she looked back up at Kidd. “You don’t think that’s where he was last night, do you? When he came in late?”

  Kidd hadn’t even thought about that. If he had, he might have asked. He sighed and looked at Zoe. “I sincerely hope not, but I think you might be right.” He headed over to his desk and put his things down, the phone now had enough juice and had switched itself on. He took a seat at his desk and opened it up.