Had Helen really thrown away her whole career because of the difficult position she had put her in? Lexi had had no idea that she would do that for her. Did she truly care for her that much? She didn’t need to go that far; she just needed to turn a blind eye. But wasn’t that in itself asking too much of her? Before she had a chance to question her about it, Helen made her own request.
“How’s your mother?”
Lexi’s return to London had been less than satisfying. Leaving Helen behind had been hard, added to the guilt she carried for what happened in Warner. The relief at finally getting the justice she deserved for her sister had never really materialised. Informing her mother of her actions, how she had kept her promise to Leah, had had little effect on her mother’s continued decline, almost as if there were nothing to stay around for, not even her surviving daughter. Lexi shrugged off the parallels that her life had with Malcolm Walters.
Unsure of what to say, she settled on something middle of the road as she felt Helen’s eyes on her. “Same as usual.”
“No dramatic recovery?”
Helen’s words sounded harsh even as they were swept away by the wind. Tears stung Lexi’s eyes. Had it been a mistake to meet up? She managed to look away, preventing Helen from seeing the tear slip down her cheek.
“I’m sorry, Lex. I didn’t mean that.”
Lexi hastily wiped at the tear with her coat sleeve. “It’s fine.” She felt the cavernous hole open around her feet: first her sister, then her mother’s continued determination to end her life by her own hand, all because of one man’s selfish actions. Lexi knew she’d done some terrible things, but surely it wasn’t comparable to what he had done. How many other lives had he ruined over the years? Now she could add hers to the list. She had thrown away the chance of being happy with someone.
Placing her drink on the decked floor, Helen stepped closer to Lexi. “No. It’s not fine. Come here.”
Helen pulled her into her arms. The familiarity was almost painful for Lexi. What if this was the last time they’d be together? She couldn’t let that happen, not without a fight. It took a few moments for Lexi to regain control of her emotions. She kept her face pressed into Helen’s shoulder as she spoke. “I wasn’t sure you’d come today.”
“When I saw you that night in Warner, I wasn’t sure I’d be here either. I missed you.”
Lexi felt her own smile against Helen’s cheek. She had waited so long to hear those words. “I’ve missed you too.” Her whispered words barely scratched the surface of how she felt. She had missed Helen’s friendship, the smell of her skin, the long, languid kisses she gave as they made love, even her confidence and constant teasing. “It’s so good to see you.”
Her arms instinctively gripped Helen a little tighter. The night she had walked away from Helen’s house, she’d been sure she had seen her for the last time.
Heavy bootfalls on the pier heading in her direction behind her drew Helen’s attention. She pulled back a little to meet Lexi’s big brown eyes before she turned to deal with the interruption. She saw only warmth and hope. Any doubt she had at coming to the meeting was swept away by the wind.
“I need to talk to this officer for a minute. I’ll be right back. Don’t run off.” She walked over to meet the uniformed man. After giving him an explanation regarding her intimate knowledge of O’Brien, they shook hands and parted company.
At the end of the pier, Lexi seemed deep in thought as she looked out to sea. Helen picked up her hot chocolate, disappointed that the heat had dissipated. She retook her place next to Lexi, their arms brushing as they both looked out to sea.
“Did you leave your job because of—” Lexi didn’t turn to look at her.
“You?” Helen finished for her. “No. You and Julia may have been the straws that broke the camel’s back.” Helen turned to face Lexi. “But I was burned out when I left Manchester. Warner was a step back for me. Now I need a change.” She sipped her drink. After over fifteen years, the stress of working endless brutal cases illuminating humanity’s ability to be cruel and little else had taken its toll. She didn’t like the perception of life the job had given her, not to mention the lack she felt of any other aspect to it—she had no family or friends outside of work.
“So I took some time off after Julia. And decided not to go back.” Helen trailed off, staring at her hands wrapped around the now lukewarm hot chocolate.
“I’m sorry about Julia,” Lexi said quietly.
“I was surprised by the flowers. Thank you. They were her favourites.” Helen turned to look back out towards the sea to hide the tears that threatened to fall. Julia’s death was still raw for her.
“I know. You told me.”
Helen let out a long breath, allowing a small smile at the shared memory of their time together.
“Time off suits you. You look good.”
Helen turned her body sideways, once more leaning on one arm as she faced Lexi. The attraction Helen felt for her was still strong—magnified, if anything—by their time apart. She had never met a police officer with Lexi’s abstract approach to her job, and it had been a refreshing change. Even now, knowing what she did about her, Helen was still fascinated by the person in front of her. She looked as beautiful as ever, although a little tired, maybe. Had she been concerned about their meeting?
“Fancy a walk?” she asked, hoping to keep Lexi for a bit longer.
“Sure.”
Lexi nudged Helen’s shoulder as they walked along the pier towards the shore.
With all the heat gone from her hot chocolate, Helen tossed it into the nearest bin, holding it open for Lexi to do the same.
She saw the smile on Lexi’s lips as she plunged her hands deep into her coat pockets in an effort to warm them.
“What?” Helen asked as they continued walking.
“Nothing. I was just speculating as to whether you would wear that coat all through the summer too.”
Helen wanted to tell her that if she had stuck around, she would have found out, but she held her tongue instead. She wasn’t here to start an argument. The anger and her dented pride for not seeing the deception coming had taken a while to dispel. A trust had been broken. Helen had tried to put herself in Lexi’s position a number of times. Having never been the victim of violent loss herself, it was hard for her to say whether she would have done the same thing. But she had seen people trying to acclimatise to the loss of a loved one at the hand of another. She could empathise with the need and desire for fair justice, not just some lip service from a judge. Although her own upbringing had had its challenges, Helen considered herself all the better for it. She would have gone to the ends of the earth if someone had been responsible for the loss of Julia.
Time was definitely a great healer in this case—time and the fact that Lexi hadn’t actually killed anyone. Alongside the CCTV footage Lexi had given her, she’d found enough evidence to corroborate Lexi’s version of events. That had been a relief. Much more so than she had anticipated.
“What have you been doing with your time off?” Lexi asked as she ran a hand along the icy steel handrail that ran along the pier.
“I’ve been keeping busy, working on the house, mainly getting it finished so I can sell it,” Helen replied as she tried to tame her hair made unruly by the wind.
“Finished that panelling, then?” Lexi enquired.
“All done,” Helen smiled as she recalled Lexi’s fascination with the interior of her house. “And you? What are you doing with your time now you’re not in the force?”
Lexi half smiled at Helen’s question. “Well, I’d only been a copper for seven hours before I got promoted to detective sergeant, so I think I did pretty well.” Lexi huffed some breath onto her nails on her right hand before polishing them on her left arm. Her expression stretched out into a toothy grin.
Helen played along. “It must have
been a moment of weakness. Or maybe I saw some potential in you.”
Lexi nodded. “Yeah, unfortunately, my current boss doesn’t quite share the same view as you.”
“Really? Well, they obviously haven’t seen your full skillset yet.”
As they fell into habitual grooves, it felt like the months apart hadn’t happened. Upon reaching the end of the pier, she raised a hand to her left, directing them along the sea defences. Lexi followed without question.
“So, where is it you’re working?” Helen asked, wondering if it was local to Holme Point, Lexi’s suggested meeting spot today.
“At Shield Securities, checking their security,” she said, with a hint of irony. “And coding, that kind of stuff. Have you got anything lined up?”
Helen let out a long breath. “I’m not sure I’m employable after being a copper for so long. It’s going to be boring working nine to five.”
“That’s not true, Guv. I’m sure there are lots of things you could do. You could become a private eye,” Lexi continued with a little too much excitement.
“Oh God, I’ll have to get used to people calling me by my first name again.”
Lexi frowned. “It can’t have been that long. You must have some friends,” she offered.
“Not really. Mostly colleagues,” Helen said, quietly feeling a little sorry for herself. In the time she’d had off work, she’d seen only a couple of ex-colleagues. The highlight was her old DS, Richards, bringing around his new baby. He had popped round with some thinly veiled disguise of an excuse, supposedly wanting some advice on a case. She was pretty sure he had expected to see her in pieces, having just walked away from a successful career. Maybe it hadn’t hit her yet. She had made a point of waiting until Richards had settled back into work before she’d left her position. Was she being too level-headed? The story of her life. Helen’s mind began to wonder at Lexi’s choice of location.
“So, you’ve been here before?”
“When we were kids, we used to stay in Lynmouth, just along the coast, every year during the summer for a couple of weeks.” Lexi smiled back at her. “Sometimes we’d come here to go crabbing off the pier.”
Helen nodded. She had never seen the fascination in baiting hooks with scraps of bacon to catch the same crabs everyone else caught. She felt sorry for them being pulled out and crammed into buckets for hours.
The wind seemed to have eased a little as they walked along the sea defences. Like the pier earlier, the promenade was almost empty too, no doubt due to the cool weather. Fortified by the familiarity of Lexi’s company, Helen broached the subject she had been avoiding since meeting on the pier.
“Lexi, I watched the footage you gave me.” She let the statement hang as she waited for Lexi to get her mind around what she had just said.
“You did? Do you think it was my fault that he’s…?” The wind concluded her question.
Helen reached for Lexi’s hand. “No.”
It was a streamlined answer, but it didn’t make it less true. Helen recalled the image of Jarvis lying on the floor in his kitchen as Lexi rushed over, frantically checking for signs of life.
“I don’t think it was the shock of seeing you that made him fall. I think he was angry at being cornered. From the footage, it looks to me like he was reaching for a knife as he moved towards you and lost his footing on the steps.”
Lexi sucked in a hefty breath. “What—?”
The knife had obviously been a shock. She reached for Lexi with her free hand, slipping it inside Lexi’s coat. The warmth of her body was refreshing. It felt so long since they’d been intimate. She missed the tenderness between them.
“There’s more,” Helen continued as she rubbed the back of Lexi’s hand with her thumb as if to soften the blow. “We found some images on a computer storage drive when we searched his place again.”
Lexi frowned. “You went back?”
“I wanted to see if there was any evidence of what he had been doing. Anyway, after I found it, I went to see his mother. I didn’t tell her what we’d found, but I asked her about her son’s private life—never married, no girlfriends, or children. She clammed up straight away. I think she knew, or suspected at least.”
Lexi rested her back against the railing. Her blank gaze was aimed at the mishmash of beach huts in front of her. “Shit.”
Helen had hoped Lexi would see it as good news of a sort—proof, maybe even a little justification, but, still, was it really worth what she’d been driven to do? “With no new information or evidence, the case is still open for now.”
Lexi nodded. “I know. I’ve been keeping tabs on the missing persons register.”
Helen focused on Lexi’s profile as she waited patiently. Considering how they had parted in Warner, Helen felt the need to say how she felt. The sting of betrayal hadn’t totally faded, but her need to have Lexi in her life had grown after her departure. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since I saw you that night in my house.” She took a breath before continuing. “Jarvis was a terrible person. What he did to Leah, and who knows how many others… It’s sickening.” She clenched her free hand into a fist as she thought about the images she seen at Jarvis’s house. “I’m so sorry she didn’t get the justice she deserved the first time around. I understand why you wanted to stop him, make him pay for what he did. I’ve tried to put myself in your position, and sometimes I—I honestly don’t know what I would have done. When I think about Julia and her illness, if there was someone, a person responsible for that, I think I’d feel compelled to react, to fight in her corner. To stop them before they destroyed someone else’s life.”
Lexi’s hand was warm as she gripped Helen’s a little tighter.
“Lex, I’ve had a lot of partners before, work partners,” Helen clarified, “but when you arrived in Warner, you made me realise what was missing in my life.”
Lexi looked up to face Helen, an expression of visible dread on her face.
“I’m not saying I totally agree with what you did, but I understand why you did it, and—I accept it.” Helen took a breath as she waited for a response.
The light was beginning to fade as the grey skies above began to darken. Helen hadn’t realised how long they had been walking and talking. It was too early for dusk; the weather was closing in.
“Where are you staying tonight?”
It wasn’t the response she was expecting. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.” Helen let her voice trail off.
“Come home with me.”
It sounded like a plea rather than a question or a command.
Helen lifted a hand to cup Lexi’s cheek, rubbing the cool skin with her thumb. Exhibiting the briefest of nods, her focus fell to Lexi’s full lips, and she moved her hand to the side of Lexi’s neck and gently pulled her forward, bringing their lips together. A hand slipped inside her coat, landing on her waist as Lexi’s lips parted without dispute.
She quickly pulled Lexi into her arms, the warmth of Lexi’s body falling against hers. Over the last couple of months, Helen had often thought of their physical relationship. She hadn’t experienced that kind of intense desire with anyone else before. She wasn’t sure it would still be there after everything that had happened. But, standing on the promenade, holding Lexi close, she could feel the pull between them.
Lexi’s arms tightened around her, waking her from her thoughts. She couldn’t resist burying her face into Lexi’s hair, breathing in the freshly washed scent.
She’d made her choice. She needed to be with Lexi.
About Charlotte Mills
Charlotte Mills was born and bred in the south of England, after studying Fine Art at Loughborough University she has made the Midlands her home for the last twenty years where she lives with her long term partner.
Her career has bridged several different fields including the arts, edu
cation and construction.
She began creative writing in 2013, taking the plunge with self-publishing in 2014 with her first book Unlikely Places. This was followed up with Out of The Blue and its sequel Latent Memories in 2016 for which she won a gold medal at the Global EBook Awards for LGBT fiction in 2017.
When she is not writing she enjoys watching films and day dreaming about living in the middle of nowhere without any neighbors in earshot.
CONNECT WITH CHARLOTTE
E-Mail: [email protected]
Other Books from Ylva Publishing
www.ylva-publishing.com
Requiem for Immortals
Lee Winter
ISBN: 978-3-95533-711-7 (mobi), 978-3-95533-712-4 (epub)
Length: 86,000 words (263 pages)
Professional cellist Natalya Tsvetnenko moves seamlessly among the elite where she fills the souls of symphony patrons with beauty even as she takes the lives of the corrupt of Australia’s ruthless underworld. The cold, exacting assassin is hired to kill a woman who seems so innocent that Natalya can’t understand why anyone would want her dead. As she gets to know her target, she can’t work out why she even cares.
Collide-O-Scope
2nd editon
(Norfolk Coast Investigation Story – Book 1)
Andrea Bramhall
ISBN: 978-3-95533-574-8 (mobi), 978-3-95533-575-5 (epub)
Length: 90,000 words (291 pages)
An unidentified woman is found murdered on the North Norfolk Coastal Path and newly promoted Detective Sergeant Kate Brannon and King’s Lynn CID have the task of figuring out whom, how, and why. A job that’s made more difficult when everyone of the forty residents in the village has something to hide and answers her questions with a string of lies.
Payback Page 24
