The Perfect Widow. A.M. Castle

he wanted. He seemed so honest and free, unafraid to aim for the top, unabashed about looking at me. He wasn’t, like my mother’s men, giving me sneaky little glances, opportunistic, speculative. He had no reason to hide, nothing to feel guilty about. He made me feel clean, instead of dirty. He was the chance of a new life, the hero who would, finally, save me from the fiery dragon.

      So when I saw the ring sparkling as hard as it could on Jen’s freshly manicured hand, I suddenly saw my own future in those glittering facets. This would be me! Me and Patrick. I mouthed all the right things, oohed and ahed at the proposal (actually not bad – Tim had got down on one knee at an up-and-coming Soho club, managing to fuse the arty and the traditional in a way that couldn’t fail to melt Jen’s heart) and pledged to help her arrange the wedding. After all, it would be good practice for my own.

      Jen’s success, again, had shown me the path. I could get what she had. And I would. All I needed was a strategy to follow. I’d been idling away until now, not realising how serious the game was, not conscious that everything, including me, had an expiry date. But Jen’s ring had shown me the prize I should be aiming for, and had also reminded me that I needed to get on with it. Things changed. Look at Jen. She’d left the desk, and yes, she’d still thrived and found Tim. But if I left, would I ever see Patrick again?

      I had him near me, five days a week, yet I was relying on chance, fate, kismet, something other than myself, to organise things for me. Everything about my life so far should have told me that wasn’t the way to go. If I wanted something, I had to go out and get it done myself.

       Chapter 13

       Now

       Becca

      Becca threw her biro down onto her cluttered desk. It ricocheted off yesterday’s sandwich wrapper and rolled onto the floor. She grimaced as she rooted for it, but a decision had been made all the same. She needed to sort this out. There was no other way. She’d been worrying at this puzzle for what seemed like forever, after what she’d found online. She’d been going through the motions here, doing her job to the best of her abilities, but her mind was always … elsewhere. All right, on Louise. Checking up on the woman was becoming a habit. Too much of one, people would say. But she knew there was something there. It wasn’t imagination. Nor obsession. Not this time.

      She still didn’t have quite enough at her fingertips to dare to confide in anyone else, though. She stared away from her screen, accidentally catching Burke’s eye. His sandy hair was plastered down today, his usually mild blue eyes giving her a shrewd glance. She bobbed her head back. She could just imagine what he’d say if he knew what she was spending her time doing.

      She yawned and drooped back over the latest report, struggling to fill it in. Registering all this stuff had never seemed so pointless, when she knew that, not more than ten minutes’ drive away, sat a woman who was literally getting away with murder.

      Becca knew Louise Bridges was a bad ’un, she could smell it on her. There was no doubt in her mind that there was more to the whole business than it seemed. So what if the coroner had taken one look at the grieving widow and rubber-stamped everything? So what if no one else seemed to bat an eyelid at the way Mrs Bridges was carrying on with her life as though nothing had happened?

      As usual, the thought of Louise filled her vision and she stood up abruptly. At the desk opposite, a colleague stopped scratching behind her ear with a pen and ran their eyes up and down her, then turned away. Becca felt more conscious than ever of the soft rolls straining against her uniform trousers. Across the way, Burke tutted, then went back to his in-tray. He’d be happy doing paperwork forever. Routine, structure, block capitals on the dotted line. This wasn’t what she’d joined the police for.

      Why had she joined? It was partly something that her mother couldn’t reproach her for. She was never going to get a job doing anything her mother really rated. The sort of glamorous career celebrities dabbled in, between interviews with Hello! The police, though, that was solid, respectable. Her mother could see the point of it. It seemed to cancel out that one brief wobble Becca had had, the depression. She’d been ill, but she was better.

      Unfortunately, it turned out that she didn’t want to do the bits of the job that Mum thought would keep her nicely out of trouble. She wanted to do the tricky stuff. Search out the hidden. Make deductions. And, above all, make sure people didn’t cheat justice.

      One person in particular.

      It was going to be a slog, she could see that. So far, no one had ever seen her potential – apart from poor old Dad. She’d have to claw her way up alone. But this Louise Bridges business could help her. Becca would just have to prove them all wrong about the woman, simple as that. Shatter some illusions.

      And no, it wasn’t going to be like last time. She was perfectly fine now.

      She was just a person who liked to focus.

       Chapter 14

       Then

      I blush to admit it, but at this point I hadn’t really got as far as saying two whole consecutive sentences to Patrick, unless you count stammering and stuttering as conversation.

      At first, Patrick seemed determined to keep a constant distance of three metres from my orbit. Perhaps he sensed that if he got any closer, he’d be sucked into my gravity like a hapless meteorite. I mooned over him twice a day, more often if he was getting a sandwich. I had failed to move up to his floor, though the big bosses hadn’t quite told me no. It was just not yet. I wondered if they were stringing me along. I should have wondered the exact same thing about Patrick, but I was too much in love.

      Because all of a sudden, he was sauntering over. He’d always had a bit of a chat with Jen, and sometimes winked at me. But now he was coming over just for me. Me.

      The first time, I felt like a flower singled out by a bee, every cell of me was alive and producing nectar at a prodigious rate. From a single word, ‘OK?’ we were soon up to a sentence, ‘How’s it going?’ Then, one day, he smiled properly, right at me, and we actually had a real conversation. It was a red-letter day.

      All right, he was only asking if a courier had left a package for him. They hadn’t. If they had, I would have been on the phone to him like a shot. I didn’t say this, of course. I just stammered and blushed like a stupid idiot, shaking my head as though I had some sort of neurological misfortune, while he looked at me, amused blue eyes running over every inch of my overheated face and body. It was a wonder I didn’t spontaneously combust.

      After this, the wink and a little ‘hello’ became our regular thing. I spent hours, at home and in the ladies’ at work, practising responses, acting cool, trying desperately to develop some vestige of nonchalance.

      Then, for no reason that I could divine, things went backwards again overnight. He started passing me by. The whispers and winks dried up. Days and weeks passed and I was in the desert. He still walked by, regular as clockwork, sometimes with his little coterie of admiring colleagues, sometimes on his own with that brisk, purposeful stride I loved, but he didn’t glance over anymore. I was distraught. Had I done something to put him off? Smiled too widely, given myself away somehow?

      I tried everything to lure him back. New perfume. Undoing another button on my blouse, then rapidly doing it up again when I attracted the others instead. I straightened my hair, then plaited it, then put it in a bun. Finally I left it hanging down, as dejected as I was, though I carried on smiling my merry smile.

      But just when I wasn’t expecting it, just when I was resigned, there he was again one fine morning, leaning towards me. I almost swooned into his eyes, they were so blue up close. Even the pores in his skin were beautiful. I was concentrating so hard on not hyperventilating that I forgot to listen.

      ‘Sorry, what?’ I was