Critical Incidents. Lucie Whitehouse

Studley, I think. Your father likes it.’

      Robin flipped off the cap and took a sip. ‘Yeah, I can see why. What?’

      ‘At least use a glass. And take that jacket off before we sit down, please. And those boots. You look like …’

      She couldn’t help herself. ‘A dyke?’

      Christine suppressed a shudder. ‘Like you’re going yomping across the Falklands.’

      They managed the soufflés without major incident. As he’d pulled out her chair, her dad had murmured, ‘Don’t have a fight, will you? For your mother’s sake,’ and he’d done his best, steering the conversation towards such anodyne topics as the decking that Natalie and Luke were laying in their garden – or rather Natalie’s brother was relaying, Luke having botched it – and the restaurant in Moseley where they’d been for their anniversary, which now had a Michelin star, apparently.

      ‘A Michelin star in Birmingham – who’da thunk it?’ Robin said.

      ‘Actually,’ said Natalie, tight-lipped, ‘there’s five.’

      The main course proved a bridge too far. The temperature in the room seemed to be rising, the oxygen level decreasing in inverse proportion. Robin had had the same piece of beef in her mouth for a minute but her stomach was drum-taut, painful when it met the table-edge. Glancing to her right, she saw Lennie – genius! – disappear a roast potato into a piece of kitchen roll on her lap. She pushed back her chair to go and get a piece for herself but Luke, obviously afraid of losing his sitting target, cut Dennis off mid-sentence.

      ‘So, Robin,’ he said, ‘Mum and Dad told me, obviously, but I’m still having problems getting my head around your … situation.’

      ‘Which part is troubling you?’

      ‘Well, for a start, how did you actually get fired? We thought, me and Nat, that you were some sort of golden girl down there, the great white hope of Scotland Yard.’ They looked at each other, struggling not to snicker.

      ‘Luke,’ warned Dennis.

      ‘What? I’m trying to understand.’

      In another situation – any situation with no Lennie – she’d grab him by the collar and bounce his head off the wall. He’d done it to her enough times when his two-year advantage still counted. But then she’d turned eleven and knocked one of his front teeth out and that had been the end of it. The beatings, anyway.

      ‘Well,’ she said, ‘in layman’s terms, to help you get your head around it, my boss wanted to charge a bad man with a murder he didn’t commit just because he was bad and the public would be better off if he was inside, but I didn’t think it was right, so I said so and he – my boss – didn’t like it.’

      ‘And you got fired for that?’

      ‘Yes. They’re quite hot on insubordination in the police. I’m guessing it’s not such a big deal at Carphone Warehouse. Or is it T-Mobile these days?’

      ‘Robin.’ Dennis put a hand on her arm, calming or admonitory, she wasn’t sure.

      ‘But from what Mum told me,’ Luke said, ‘it wasn’t just that your boss didn’t like it. The guy – the bad man,’ he made a face that Robin yearned to plunge her fist into, ‘has gone AWOL, hasn’t he? So he’s out there somewhere, a known killer, because of you.’

      ‘He didn’t do it.’

      ‘But you don’t know that.’

      ‘I didn’t have evidence to prove it – I needed more time – but I’m pretty sure.’

      ‘And that’s enough, is it? The great Robin Lyons says so? “Oh, I’m pretty sure he didn’t do it, let him go – oh look, he’s killed someone else, that’s a shame.”’

      ‘Beyond reasonable doubt – heard of that? You can’t just lock people up because you think they’re bad apples.’

      ‘I don’t know why not,’ said Christine. ‘That always seems like a good idea to me. Put them away before they can do the damage.’

      Robin gave herself credit for not rising. Even a couple of years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to let that pass.

      ‘But, sorry,’ Natalie took a prim sip of her water, ‘if you really were highly thought of’ – Princess Di eyes over the rim of the glass – ‘would one thing like that be enough to get you fired?’

      ‘Ah, that’s the bit she’s not telling us, isn’t it?’ Luke grinned. ‘It wasn’t just one thing – she was on a written warning before. She’s been busting that poor guy’s balls from the moment he started there. This was just the final straw.’

      ‘Language.’

      ‘Sorry, Mum, but I’m right, aren’t I? She couldn’t keep her mouth shut and this is what happened. With Adrian, too, I bet – no wonder he dumped her. That poor bas—’

      ‘Luke!’

      A moment of seething silence in which Robin could sense Lennie gathering herself. She put her hand out – Don’t – but it was too late. ‘Ade loves Mum,’ Lennie said, voice tight. ‘He asked her to marry him.’

      ‘Len, it’s okay. You don’t—’

      ‘But it’s true. You were the one who said no so even if you had a fight, it doesn’t change that, does it?’

      ‘He asked you to marry him?’ Christine was staring. ‘And you said no? For god’s sake, why?’

      ‘Because I couldn’t … I just didn’t …’

      ‘Oh, you,’ her mother cried, ‘you, you, you. What about anyone else? What about poor Elena? Do you ever give her a second’s thought in all this, when you’re going around acting like you’re—’

      ‘What? How could you even—’

      ‘Robin – be quiet. Christine.’ Dennis had his hands out to the sides, boxing-ref style.

      Her mother closed her eyes against the cruelty of the world, and the burden it had put upon her.

      ‘I’m fine, Gran,’ Lennie said. ‘Honestly.’

      A hiatus, this time ended by Natalie. ‘So how long will you be here then? Your dad said you’re going to work for Maggie Hammond. That doesn’t mean you’re going to stay, does it?’

      ‘No.’ Please fucking god. ‘Maggie’s got a lot on so I’m going to help her until I straighten things out at the Met.’

      ‘Doesn’t she work for the council?’

      ‘She’s self-employed, they’re just one of her clients. It’s not just benefit fraud; there’s suspect insurance claims and—’

      ‘From Homicide Command in London to catching scroungers on the sick in Sparkhill,’ crowed Luke. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

      ‘Luke, for the last time,’ said Dennis.

      Cheeks flaming, Robin stood up. Blood pulsed in the backs of her hands. ‘Better to have fallen than to never even have tried to stand on your own two feet. You …’ The swirl of words and arguments and fury bottlenecked in her throat – she couldn’t choke them out. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she managed. ‘Just …’ She remembered Lennie. ‘Bugger off.’

      She swung out of the room and took the stairs two at a time, her mother jabbering away behind her, a diatribe unchanged in twenty years: ‘I won’t have that language in this house; this is my home; I won’t have her behaving like this, Dennis; I just won’t.’

      Robin slammed the bedroom door as she’d done a thousand times before, the wall shuddering