John Harvey - Ash & Bone

'It's not that, it's just… you know…'

'Not still nursing a crush for him, are you?'

'Christ, no!'

'Then what's the big mystery?'

'There's no mystery.'

'You just don't want to confide in your best friend, that's all.'

Maddy laughed. 'You don't give up, do you?'

'Not usually, no.'

'All right, but I'm going to need a drink.'

'Here, or the pub?'

'The pub.'

Vanessa turned around and signalled to the young waiter who was leaning back against the wall, texting someone on his mobile, to bring them the bill.

It was quite dark outside, a few people walking by, cars, the occasional bus. The pub was quiet, mostly regulars, one pool table, a television above the bar. They took their drinks to a quiet corner near the window. When Maddy started telling her story, she thought how mundane it sounded, how everyday.

Terry had been working just up the street from where she'd been living with her parents when she first met him, a builder, plasterer to be more exact, most of the houses in that part of Stevenage being renovated, made good. Maddy had taken a shine right off. Cheeky bugger, Terry, but not as bad as some of them, not crude. Nice body without his shirt, she'd noticed that. Nice hands, considering the work he did, not too rough.

After a week of hints and innuendo, he'd come out with it, asked her to meet him for a drink Friday night and she'd thought yes, why not? She'd been working in London then, Capital Radio, in reception, taking the train in every day to King's Cross, then the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square. Exciting at first, all that buzz and noise.

They'd gone on holiday together, that first summer, Majorca, and he'd proposed, not down on one knee but as good as, rolling around on the sand outside their hotel, six days' half board. She'd thought it was the drink talking, that he'd try to pass it off next day as some kind of a joke, but that wasn't the way of it at all. Three months later there they were outside the registry office, Maddy in a nice little suit from Next, new shoes that were killing her, the look on her mum's face sour enough to turn milk. Whatever expectations she'd been nurturing about a future son-in-law it was clear Terry didn't live up to them.

What she did say: 'You watch out, my girl, he'll have you pregnant this side of Christmas and where's your independence then? Where's your bloody life?'

It hadn't worked out like that, but not for lack of trying.

Maddy had thought the problem might lie with Terry, but it turned out it was with her. Terry had one kid already, a boy, four years old, living in Milton Keynes with his mother, a part-time hair stylist called Bethan. Maddy found out quite by chance.

It turned out that when she'd thought Terry was away working on some housing project in Northampton, he was in a two-bed flat in Milton Keynes with Bethan and the boy, playing happy families.

'None of your fucking business, is it?' Terry said when she confronted him.

Maddy told him he had to choose, her or Bethan, and he began packing his bag.

'What the hell did you marry me for?' Maddy asked.

'Fuck knows!'

When she said she wanted a divorce he said fine.

When she got home from work that evening he'd gone. She'd not been married much more than two years and, in retrospect, she was amazed it had held together that long.

'Was that when you joined the police?' Vanessa asked, as Maddy reached for her glass.

Maddy nodded. 'I was bored, wanted to get away. The look on my mum's face whenever I came in, a mixture of pity and I-told-you-so.' She laughed. 'We'd been to Lincoln a few times, when we were up in Skegness on holiday, driven over to look at the cathedral, mooch around. I thought it was a nice enough place.' She laughed again. 'At least it wasn't Stevenage.'

'What made you leave Lincoln and come down here, to the Met?'

'Bored again, I suppose.'

'And now this Grant business, the inquiry. It's getting you all stressed out. No wonder you're seeing things.'

'Thank you, doctor.'

'I used to be a nurse, you know.'

'I know.'

'You know what you ought to do,' Vanessa said. 'The perfect solution.'

'Go back to Lincolnshire?'

'Nothing that extreme. Take up yoga instead.'

'Me? Yoga? You're joking.'

'I don't see why.'

'Can you see me sitting cross-legged in some draughty room like a Buddha in tights?'

'It's not like that. That's meditation if it's anything. Yoga's brilliant. Helps you relax. And it's really good exercise.' She grinned. 'Look at me.'

'I don't know.'

'Go on. There's a new class just started. Where I go, that community centre by Crouch Hill. Introduction to Yoga. Give it a try.'

'I'll see. No promises, mind.'

'Okay. Now drink up and I'll walk you home. Make sure there's no bogeymen under the bed.'

The first evening Maddy went along she almost packed it in during the warm-up. All these women – they were all women – taking it in turns to stand with their back to the wall with one leg outstretched and raised as high as possible, their partner holding it by the ankle. One or two actually got their legs high enough to rest their feet on their partners' shoulders, while it was all Maddy could do to manage forty-five degrees for seconds at a time.

It didn't seem to get any easier. Reaching the required position was difficult enough – Dog Head Down or The Pose of the Child – but holding it was even harder. Maddy was acutely conscious of her muscles stretching, legs and arms quivering, the instructor bending over her from time to time and moving her gently but firmly into position. 'That's it, Maddy. Wider, wider. Wider still.'

When it was over she limped home and into a hot bath and vowed never to return. But she did. The next Wednesday and the next and the Wednesday after that. By then it had even stopped hurting.

Miracle of miracles, his connection pulled into Nottingham station no more than twenty minutes late. The young taxi-driver chatted amiably as he drove, apologising for the detour necessitated by the tram tracks along Canal Street and up Maid Marian Way. 'Testing 'em, know what I mean? Putting 'em down, pulling 'em up, putting ' em down. Trams they got goin' round, five mile an hour you're lucky. First ones 'posed to be startin' next year. Same they said last year, innit?'

The house was in the Park, a large and rambling private estate near the castle. Victorian mansions originally built for those who had profited from mining and manufacturing, the sweat and labour of others. Now it was barristers and retired CEOs, new heroes of IT and dot.com.

Martyn Miles had made his money from women's fashion and a chain of hair and beauty salons, in one of which Elder's wife, Joanne, had been working when her affair with Miles began.

Miles had bought a tranche of land near the northern edge of the estate, carved out of some burgher's tennis courts and grounds, and commissioned an architect friend to design something modern yet self-effacing, a curve of concrete frontage borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright and the New York Guggenheim. The emphasis inside was on space and light, everything arranged around a living room of double height, separated from the stone patio and garden by a wall of glass.

When her marriage to Elder had broken down, Miles had moved Joanne in. Since then, things between them had been rocky: the last Elder had heard, Miles, having moved out and magnanimously left Joanne with the keys, had thought better of it and moved back in. But things might have changed again.

Joanne's Freelander was parked outside. No sign of whatever Martyn might have currently been driving, but there he was, stretched out on the sofa, legs crossed at the ankles, pale blue linen shirt toning in with the blue-grey of the room.