Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘True enough,’ Banks agreed. ‘I’m still waiting for the wisdom that’s supposed to come with age.’

‘Me, too.’

They paused to eat in comfortable silence. Banks watched Kay break off flakes of moist sole with the edge of her fork. His venison was good, tender and tasty. He decided he could risk one more drink and asked the waitress to bring him a glass of red wine.

‘How are your parents?’ Kay asked.

‘Fine. Oh, that reminds me: Mum asked me to invite you to drop by tomorrow, if you want.’

Kay nodded slowly. ‘Yes. All right, that would be nice.’

‘About six, OK?’

‘Fine. Just for half an hour or so.’ Kay frowned. ‘You know, there is one thing that puzzles me a bit about Mum,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘It’s nothing, really, but I was going through her finances yesterday, and I noticed she’d withdrawn a hundred pounds from the cash machine the day she died, but I can’t find it. There’s only about six or seven pounds in her purse, and she wasn’t the type to hide her money under the mattress.’

The little scar beside Banks’s right eye began to itch. ‘Maybe she had bills to pay, or she owed it to someone?’

‘Neither a lender nor a borrower be. That was Mum’s motto. And all her bills had been paid. No, it’s a mystery. What do you have to say, O great detective?’

‘I still think there’s probably a logical explanation.’

‘Probably. The other thing that puzzles me, though, is how did she get it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, she was bedridden for the last few days. There was a nurse on call twenty-four hours a day, of course, and Dr Grenville dropped by quite often, but… I just don’t see how she could even have got to the cash machine.’

The itch got stronger. Banks scratched the side of his eye. ‘Have you ever heard of a fellow called Geoff Salisbury?’ he asked her.

Kay frowned. ‘The name sounds vaguely familiar. I think he introduced himself to me at the funeral. A neighbour. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Banks. ‘Nothing important. Dessert?’

‘Would you like some music on?’ Kay asked. They were back at her parents’ house, and Banks had accepted her invitation to come in for a nightcap – a half-bottle of ‘medicinal’ brandy that Kay had found while tidying out the kitchen cupboards. They drank it out of cracked teacups that she had been about to put in the dustbin.

‘Sure,’ said Banks.

Kay walked over to the old stereo system. ‘Let’s see,’ she said, flipping through a box of LPs. ‘I packed these last night but I didn’t really pay much attention. There’s probably not a lot of choice. Dad only liked the stuff he used to listen to in the war, and Mum wasn’t much interested in music at all. As you can see, they don’t own a CD player. I think the last LP they bought was in 1960.’

Banks went over and joined her, looking at the old-fashioned covers. At least he could read what was written on the backs of them, unlike the tiny print on CDs. ‘That’s after 1960,’ he said, pointing to Beatles for Sale.

‘That must be one of mine,’ Kay said. ‘I didn’t even notice it.’

Banks flipped open the cover. Written inside, in tiny blue ballpoint over the photograph, were some words. They were hard to make out, but he thought they said, ‘Kay Summerville loves Alan Banks.’ Banks passed it to Kay, who blushed and put it away. ‘I lent it to Susan Fish,’ she said. ‘The sneaky devil. I didn’t know she’d done that.’ She pulled out another LP. ‘Ah, this will do fine.’

The needle crackled as it hit the groove, a sound that gave Banks an unexpected frisson of delight and nostalgia, and then Billie Holiday started singing ‘Solitude’.

‘Couldn’t do much better,’ he said.

‘Dance?’ Kay asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Banks. ‘Remember the vicar wouldn’t allow dancing at the youth club because he said it led to sex?’

Kay laughed. ‘Yes, I remember.’

Then she was in his arms, Billie was singing about solitude, and they were doing what passed for dancing.

‘A wise man, that vicar,’ said Banks about an hour later, as he lay back on the sofa, Billie Holiday long finished, a naked Kay half on top of him, her head resting on his chest, fingertips trailing languorously over his skin. It had been good – no doubt much better than their youthful fumblings, which he could scarcely remember now – though there had been something a little melancholy and desperate about it, as if both had been straining to capture something that eluded them.

‘What happened to us?’ Kay asked. ‘All those years ago.’

‘We were just kids. What did we know?’

‘I suppose so. But have you ever wondered what would have happened? You know, if we hadn’t-’

‘Of course I have.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine a life without Sandra and the kids.’

‘I know that. I mean, even though it ended badly, me and Keith had some good times. And the kids are marvellous. It’s just a game. Imagining. You know, sometimes I’ve been places or experienced things and thought I’d have liked you there to share it.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. Haven’t you ever felt the same?’

‘I can’t say I have,’ said Banks, who had.

She nudged him in the ribs. ‘Bastard.’

‘There’s something I never told you before,’ Banks said, stroking her silky blonde hair and touching the soft skin on her neck, just below her ear.

‘And you want to tell me now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘The timing seems right.’

‘Why?’

‘No particular reason.’

Kay shifted position. ‘OK. Go ahead.’

‘You know that first time when my parents were out and you came over to the house? The day we’d decided we were finally going to do it?’

‘How could I forget? I was about to lose my virginity. I was scared silly.’

‘Me too. On both counts. Nervous as hell.’

Banks remembered that, as the months went on, he and Kay had graduated from kissing in the bus shelter to touching above the waist, first with clothing intact, then under her jumper, with only the thin bra between his hands and her bare, swollen flesh. After a few weeks of that, and much trouble fumbling with the clasp that held the thing on, he got beyond the bra to the unimaginably firm and tender mounds beneath.

They had been going out nearly a year before the subject of moving to below the waist came up, and both were understandably a bit nervous about it. This might have been the swinging sixties, when kids were making love openly at Woodstock, but Banks and Kay were young, unsophisticated, provincial kids, and the antics of drug-taking pop stars and free-loving hippies seemed as fantastic as Hollywood films.

But they had done it.

‘Well,’ Banks went on. ‘I had to go and get some… you know… Durex.’

‘Rubber Johnnies? Yes, I suppose you did. Do you know, I never really thought about that.’

‘Well, I couldn’t very well go to the local chemist’s or the barber’s, could I? They knew me there. Someone would have been bound to tell my parents.’

Kay propped herself on one elbow and leaned over him, her nipple hard against his chest. He could smell white wine and cheap brandy on her breath, see sparks of light dancing in her dark blue eyes. ‘So what did you do? Where did you go?’ she asked.

‘I walked miles and miles to the other side of town and found a barber’s where I was certain no one would recognize me.’

Kay giggled. ‘Oh, how sweet.’

‘I’m not finished yet.’