Michelle Kelly - When I Wasn't Watching

Ricky’s head snapped up, the glint of tears gone. Matt wondered if he had imagined them.

‘I’m not your son,’ he said in a raised voice, then slumped back, defeated, and mumbled his address. Matt shook his head as he pulled away. Another kid with an absent father and the world on his shoulders. He was probably headed for the police cells anyway, one way or the other.

They didn’t speak on the brief journey to Ricky’s house and the boy walked before him, his swagger replaced by a surly expression as Matt knocked the door, wondering what the mother would be like. A typical overworked single mother, no doubt. He prayed she wouldn’t be a woman like his own mother, so wrapped up in her grief or whatever issues she had that she didn’t know or care where her son was.

Matt remembered a time when, not long after his father’s death, he had stayed out past midnight, hours after his curfew. He was just eleven.

One of his mates had stolen their older brother’s cheap cider and even a bit of weed and a gang of them had sat in the field pretending that the cider wasn’t making them feel sick and attempting to roll a joint. After five aborted attempts a roll-up the size of a tampon was passed around, inducing various coughing fits and, in the case of one boy, the emptying of his stomach all over his brand new Rockport shoes. Matt had been the last to leave; it was a mild night and after his friends had gone he had lain back on the grass, watching the stars and wondering if his Dad was up there. Was anywhere, other than six feet underground, withering away.

He must have dozed off because when he had looked at his watch it was nearly midnight. His first thought was that his Dad would kill him, and he had run home at a crazy speed, bursting through the front door with an instant ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ springing to his lips.

His mother, curled up on the sofa in her dressing gown and staring dead-eyed at the TV, had simply looked over her shoulder and smiled weakly at him. As Matt trudged up to bed he realised she hadn’t even known he was still out, hadn’t even looked at the time or checked his room. She was still on the sofa in the exact spot she had been sitting in when he had gone back out after school. Although he should have been relieved he had escaped a grounding, Matt had only felt a gnawing sense of emptiness, a feeling of the ground shifting as he realised there was no one at home worrying about him any more. No one to keep him safe. Now, sitting next to this surly boy, he had to wonder what he would find when he took him back to his own mother.

The woman who opened the door was certainly not what he was expecting. He stared at her, recognition and then incredulity dawning as Ricky pushed his way inside and ran up the stairs.

‘What’s going on? Ricky?’ She turned back to Matt, a question in her eyes that gave way to recognition and then more confusion.

‘Inspector?’ It was evident from the tone of her voice that she had knew who he was.

‘Mrs Randall.’

They stared at each other for a few moments before Lucy shook her head as if to clear it, breaking eye contact. She still had those beautiful eyes, hypnotic as whirlpools, and now wide with concern.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I'm afraid I caught Ricky shoplifting.’ He cleared his throat, self-conscious under her gaze.

‘Shoplifting? Ricky?’ She frowned as though trying to process what he was telling her, then sighed and opened the door further, ushering him in.

With Ricky out of sight, no doubt hiding in his bedroom, Matt filled her in on what had happened at the shop, but at the last minute substituted a chocolate bar for the ill-fated bottle of Bud. Lucy looked as if she was at the end of her nerves, and once again Matt wished he had left well alone.

Not least because he was attracted to her. Even in this, the most inappropriate situation, he felt the pull of her, wanted to take her in his arms and soothe her. Then he remembered Jack, and immediately berated himself. There was no denying the jolt of electricity that had raced through him when she had opened the door and their eyes met. But it was laced through with the same protective instinct he had felt in the pub two days before.

‘How is everything?’ he asked. ‘I had no idea who Ricky was, but perhaps it makes sense that he would be acting out. It must be a distressing time for you all.’

‘I never got to thank you,’ she said, ‘for catching him.’ There was no need to ask which him she referred to.

‘And now they’re letting him out,’ he said with a flat voice. He didn’t deserve her thanks.

‘That’s not your fault.’ Her tone was soft, compassionate even, and Matt wondered how at a time like this she could find it in her to care about anyone else’s feelings.

‘I know you did all you could.’

She stepped forward, placing a hand on his arm, and a warm tingling ran through him that had nothing to do with comfort. Their eyes met again, and Matt swallowed hard. Then she swung away from him, an expression he couldn’t read on her face.

‘I should go,’ he said, making no move to go anywhere. 'I thought I could have a chat with Ricky, but under the circumstances…’

Lucy shook her head.

‘Stay, if you want to? I was just boiling the kettle.’

Matt caught a hint of vulnerability in the question, a need for adult companionship perhaps, and so he nodded, watching her move around the kitchen with unconscious grace. She truly was lovely, if fragile.Then he wondered why that word popped so immediately to mind. Fragile. It suited her slim, ethereal beauty, he supposed, and certainly she was slimmer and more ethereal-looking than the last time he had seen her, but then it had been eight years. Nearly a decade. But nothing in her tone or demeanour suggested she was at all frail; if anything she seemed to have coped admirably. It was his own preconceptions, his own knowledge of the horrors she had been through, that had made him attach that description to her. Just as most people no doubt looked at him and attached certain words, based on what they knew of him and his lifestyle choices. Words like jaded now , or once maybe hot-head . And what was it Carla had said? Egotistical .

He had to ask himself if it was egotistical to be looking at Lucy the way he was, with an uncomfortable mix of desire and admiration as much as sympathy. Perhaps he wanted to think of her as fragile so he could justify coming in and doing the whole alpha male thing.

Shaking his head clear of his thoughts his hands closed around the warm cup of coffee she placed in his hands.

‘Er, I take two sugars,’ he said, certain he hadn’t told her. Lucy smiled.

‘I remember.’

‘Good memory, ’ he said, impressed, then wished he hadn’t spoken as her blue eyes clouded over.

‘I remember everything from that time, inspector. Even the silliest of details. It’s as vivid as if it was yesterday.’ She visibly flinched, and he thought his assessment of her hadn’t been so far off the mark after all. How, as a parent, did you even begin to go about coping with something like that, and still get up and go about your business every day?

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You say sorry a lot.’

She smiled, motioning him towards a chair. He sat, suddenly tired. Rather than sitting at the table next to him she pressed her hands against the kitchen counter and sprang her weight up, perching on the edge with her legs dangling, a girlish movement that unfortunately put her very nice legs at eye level. He looked away, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. Rebounding from Carla perhaps? But even back when he was investigating the boy’s disappearance he had been aware of his attraction to this woman, however inappropriate the circumstances. It was a feeling that unnerved him then and continued to do so now, an attraction that went beyond the superficial and even the sexual. And those feelings were just as inappropriate now as they had been then, he reprimanded himself sharply. Matt drained his coffee quickly and made to stand.