Elizabeth George: Careless in Red

When she got to Holsworthy, she opened the cupboard in which she kept her brooms, her mops, and also her wines. She chose a bottle at random and carried it to the kitchen. Red, she discovered. Shiraz. Something from South Africa called Old Goats Roam in Villages. That sounded interesting. She couldn’t recall when or where she’d bought it, but she was fairly certain she’d made the purchase solely because of the name and the label.

She opened it, poured herself a brimming mug, and she sat at the table where her position forced her to contemplate her calendar. This proved to be as depressing as thinking about the last six days, once she considered her most recent Internet date, which had occurred nearly four weeks previously. An architect. He’d looked good on the screen and he’d sounded good on the phone. A bit of chit and a bit of chat and nervous laughter and all that rubbish but that was to be expected, right? After all, this wasn’t the normal way men and women met, whatever went for normal these days, because she didn’t know any longer. A cup of coffee, perhaps? they’d asked each other. A drink somewhere? Certainly, fine. He’d showed up with photos of his holiday home, more photos of his holiday boat, extra photos of his holiday on skis, and additional photos of his car, which may or may not have been a vintage Mercedes, because by the time they’d got to it, Bea hadn’t cared. Me, me, me, his conversation had declared. All me, baby, and all the time. She’d wanted either to weep or to sleep. By the end of the evening, she’d had two martinis and she shouldn’t have driven herself anywhere, but the desire to flee had overcome her sense, so she’d puttered carefully along the road and prayed she’d not get stopped. He’d said to her with an affable smile, “Hell. Talked only about myself, didn’t I? Well, next time…,” and she’d thought, Won’t be a next time, darling. Which was what she’d thought of all of them.

God, how wretched. This couldn’t be how life was meant to be lived. And now…she couldn’t even dredge up his name, just the moniker she’d given him, Boat Wanker, which distinguished him from all the other wankers. Was there a way, she wondered, to find a man in her age group without baggage, or a man who might be a person first and a profession leading up to the acquisition of countless possessions second? She was beginning to think not, unless that man was one of a score of divorcés she’d also met, blokes with nothing to their names but a heap of a car, a bed-sit, and a mountain of credit card bills. Yet there had to be something in between those two extremes of male availability. Or was this how one’s remaining years were intended to go when an unmarried woman reached what had once been coyly referred to as “a certain age”?

Bea downed her wine. She ought to eat, she thought. She wasn’t sure if there was anything in the fridge, but certainly she could rustle up a tin of soup. Or perhaps a few of those beef sticks Pete liked for snacks? An apple? Perhaps. A jar of peanut butter? Well, certainly there was Marmite to spread on mouldy bread. This was England, after all.

She dragged herself to her feet. She opened the fridge. She stared into its cold and heartless depths. There was sticky toffee sponge, she discovered, so she could check pudding off her menu list. And far in the back was an old minced beef and onion roll. This could do as a main course. Now for the starter…? Perhaps Pot Noodle? In the veg department, there had to be a tin of something…Chickpeas? Carrots and turnips? Bea wondered what she’d been thinking when she’d last done the shopping. Probably nothing, she decided. She’d likely been pushing the trolley along the aisles without an idea in her head as to what she might cook. The thought of proper nutrition for Pete had probably prompted a spontaneous visit to the market, but once there, she’d got distracted by something like a call on her mobile and the end result was…this.

She took out the sticky toffee sponge and decided to skip the starter, the entrée, and the veg altogether, getting right down to the pudding, which, after all, everyone knew was the best part of the meal and why should she deny herself that when she wanted cheering up and this had the best potential to do the job?

She was about to tuck into it when bim bim BIM boom BOOM sounded on her front door, followed by the scrape of Ray’s key in the lock. He came in talking. He was saying, “…spirit of compromise, mate,” to which Pete replied, “Pizza is a compromise, Dad, when one’s set on McDonald’s.”

“Don’t you dare buy him a Big Mac,” Bea called.

“You see?” Ray said. “Mum quite agrees.”

They came into the kitchen. They were wearing matching baseball caps, and Pete had his Arsenal sweatshirt on. Ray was in jeans and a paint-stained windcheater. Pete’s jeans had a great hole in the knee.

“Where’re the dogs?” Bea asked them.

“Back at home,” Ray said. “We’ve been-”

“Mum, Dad found this wicked paintball place,” Pete announced. “It was fantastic. Kapowee!” He mimicked shooting his father. “Blim! Blam! Bash! You put on these boiler suits and they load you up and off you go. I got him so good, didn’t I, Dad? I snuck round-”

“Sneaked,” Bea corrected patiently. She watched their son, and she didn’t resist the smile that came to her as he demonstrated the stealth whereby he’d managed to obliterate his father with paint. It was just the sort of game she’d always sworn to herself that her son wouldn’t play: a mimicry of war. And yet, in the end, wouldn’t boys always be just that?

“ You didn’t think I’d be that good, did you?” Pete asked his father, playfully punching him in the arm.

Ray reached out, hooked his arm round Pete’s neck, and pulled him over. He planted a loud kiss on his son’s head and rubbed his knuckles through Pete’s thick hair. “Go get what you came for, Paintball Wizard,” he told him. “We’ve got dinner to attend to.”

“Pizza!”

“Curry or Chinese. That’s the best I’ll offer. Or we can have calves’ liver and onions at home. Served with sprouts and broad beans on the side.”

Pete laughed. He darted out of the room and they heard him dash up the stairs.

“He wanted his CD player,” Ray told Bea. He smiled as they listened to Pete crashing about his room. “Truth is, he wants an iPod and he thinks if he demonstrates how many CDs he’s got to carry round with him when he could be carrying this device the size of…what size are they? I can’t keep up with technology.”

“These days that’s what kids are for. When it comes to technology, I’m utterly out of the loop without Pete.”

Ray watched her for a moment as she spooned up a portion of sticky toffee sponge. She saluted him with it. He said, “Why do I think that’s your dinner, Beatrice?”

“Because you’re a cop.”

“So it is?”

“Hmm.”

“Are you on the fly?”

“Wish,” she said. “But that’s not the word I’d choose to describe where I am or where the case is.”

She decided to tell him. He was going to learn it all sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner and from her. She gave him all the details and waited for his reaction. “Damn,” he said. “That’s a real…” He seemed to look for a word.

“Cock-up?” she offered. “Generated by yours truly?”

“I wasn’t going to say that, exactly.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“The cock-up part, yes. Not the part about you.”

Bea turned away from the expression of friendly compassion on his face. She stared at the window that in daylight would have looked upon a bit of her garden, or what went for her garden, which, she knew, should have been mulched by this time of the year but was instead offering itself to whatever stray seeds were dropped by skylarks and linnets in flight. Those seeds were germinating into weeds, and in another month or two she’d have a right royal mess of work on her hands. Good thing all she saw in the window was her reflection and Ray’s behind her, she thought. They provided a bit of distraction from the work she’d created for herself through lack of attention to her garden.