Page 34 of The Unforgiven

“That would be amazing. Are you staying tonight?”

He grinned, boyish and charming. “If you want.”

“I want.” I felt the fizz of chemistry, like a buzz of champagne going to my head, making the evening full of promise all of a sudden.

“Excellent. There’s a bottle of champagne – cheap because we’re teachers – in the fridge. I’ll get you a glass. Shall I bring it to you?” He backed away towards the kitchen, the door opening at the same time and one of Lucy’s friends almost falling through, obviously having gone too heavy on the shots.

“Please.” I went into my room and stripped off the clothes that needed to go to the dry cleaners tomorrow. I had a list of messages to respond to from my foster siblings, and a call to return to Romy, still the world’s best foster mum.

Or just mum. She’d told me often enough that the foster bit didn’t matter, and if we were lucky we got to choose our own families.

My phone was almost dead. I looked around for my charger, then remembered I’d left it in the kitchen the morning before. Throwing on a pair of joggers and an oversized T-shirt that I’d nabbed off Cavan I slipped out of my room and headed to retrieve the charger. The apartment was big and had access to a roof terrace. Given that Manchester had declared it to be False Spring, the sun was also out and it was as if all the rain from last week had never happened. Someone had even mentioned a hosepipe ban in a month or so as rain wasn’t forecast for at leasta week, although those that lived in the city would never trust a weather forecast.

I opened the kitchen door, seeing Cavan and Lucy, Lucy moving quickly to the fridge.

“Have you seen my charger?”

She looked over at me and smiled. “You’re back! You must be knackered.” She swung over and gave me a quick hug.

“It’s been a long couple of days. I’ll get showered and come outside. Is there food?” I’d existed on over-processed food for the last thirty-six hours and needed something that could pretend to be home cooked.

“I’ve done party food. It’s in the dining room, and there’s a chilli for later. Cavan helped me cook.” She gave my boyfriend a little wave. “We added dark chocolate like you do.”

For some reason that detail made me feel off. “Thank you. Be back out in half an hour. Shall I take my drink?” I looked over at Cavan who was putting the champagne – a discount supermarket spesh – back in the fridge.

“I’ll bring it through. I seem to recognise that T-shirt, by the way.”

“Thought you might.”

He followed me back to my bedroom and helped me out of it, and I discovered I wasn’t too gross after all.

There were catcalls and whistles when we finally got outside on the terrace, predictably so. About twenty of Lucy’s friends and colleagues had gathered, high from being on holiday from school, and drunk from the shots and prosecco that were being consumed. I had no doubt that the lounge would be littered with sleeping teachers tomorrow morning, but I didn’t care. I was high myself of the champagne and decent sex, the two combining to help me forget that I was in the middle of a doublemurder enquiry and had piqued someone’s interest in a way that might not be positive.

But for tonight I could be someone else, caught up in a web of teachers’ politics and staffroom gossip which I had no responsibility for.

I was in the middle of sympathising with a geography teacher about the lack of blokes on dating apps who were able to be honest about their interests when I heard my name from below, a haunting melody that sent shivers of abject terror up my spine.

“What the fuck’s he doing here?” I tried to peer over the wall that ringed the terrace without interrupting the geography teacher’s monologue by moving.

I heard my name again. A different voice this time.

There’d be another murder investigation tonight, with a killer known very well to the police, same with the victims.

“Serious?”

The geography teacher stopped talking. “Is something up?”

I nodded. “I think two of my colleagues are here.”

“Oh. Are they single?”

“Very. Very, very single. And very, very dead.” I muttered the last part and walked to the wall.

Lucy’s father had bought the property, an oddly designed building with six apartments and a roof terrace shared with the two penthouse suites, about two decades ago, when house prices had dropped and just before Didsbury became uber-trendy. I paid a peppercorn rent and Lucy had lunch with her dad once a week as payment, and we had one of the best spots in the town.

Unfortunately, my address was well known by my colleagues after Vinny had picked me up one morning to get to a crime scene and found it impossible to believe where I was living, given he was in a hovel in Edgeley.

I’d made the mistake of mentioning to Wrigley that we had a house party tonight, which Wrigley had mentioned on a conference call in the car on the way back from Newcastle.