The piece of bread never made it to her mouth.Lindsay sat down suddenly on a kitchen chair and reread the article, tears pricking her eyes. Mutton slumped against her leg, butting his head against her sympathetically. Lindsay’s hand went to the dog’s head in an automatic movement, rubbing her fingers over the silky ears. Her other hand traced the outline of the newsprint. Penny was dead.
The tears spilled over and trickled down Lindsay’s cheeks. Less than five weeks before, Penny had been sitting on their deck knocking back Sierra Nevada amber ale and bemoaning the end of her relationship with Meredith Miller, the woman she’d been seeing for the previous five years. It had been a shocking conversation. If anyone had asked Lindsay who were the couple most likely to make it work, she’d have answered without hesitation, ‘Meredith and Penny.’ They’d always seemed entirely compatible, a marriage of equals. Even Penny’s need to remain in the closet because of her huge market among teenagers in middle America hadn’t been a bone of contention; it was matched by Meredith’s own requirements. A computer scientist with a defence contractor, she had top-secret clearance, a grading she’d lose immediately her sexuality became known to her professionally paranoid bosses.
The two women had shared a tall Victorian house that had been divided into a duplex; Meredith lived in the two lower floors, Penny above. But the terraced garden at the back was common, allowing them to move freely from one section of the house to the other without being overlooked. So they’d effectively lived together, while maintaining the fiction of being nothing more than friends. In San Francisco, Lindsay had realised a long time ago, it wasn’t always easy to tell who were lovers and who merely friends. It was so easy to be out that everyone assumed anyone who wasn’t had to be straight and sadly lacking a partner.
Although it had been clear from the tone of the conversation that it had been Penny who had given Meredith her marching orders, she had spoken with deep regret about the ending of the relationship. ‘She left me with no choice,’ she’d said sadly, head leaning against Sophie’s shoulder as Lindsay tended the barbecue. ‘Right from the start, we always had borderlines, you know? We had common concepts of what was acceptable in a relationship and what wasn’t. Fidelity was an absolute. She must have known she was leaving me no option, doing what she did.’ She took another pull on her beer and stared into the sunset.
‘Maybe she was testing you,’ Lindsay had tried.
‘I don’t think so,’ Penny said. ‘I think she was in self-destruct mode. And you can’t stop somebody who’s that determined.’
‘No, but you don’t have to give them a shove in the wrong direction,’ Lindsay muttered, knowing she wouldn’t be heard over the hissing of the marinade she’d just used to baste the salmon.
By the end of the evening, Penny had had enough bottles of the dark golden ale for Sophie to insist she stayed the night and Lindsay had had enough of Penny’s grief to slip away on the excuse of checking her e-mail. ‘Tactless toerag,’ Sophie had muttered as she’d slid into bed beside her later.
‘How can I be tactless from my study?’ Lindsay asked plaintively.
‘Have you forgotten who taught you to be computer literate? Who showed you how to surf the Internet?’
‘Oops,’ Lindsay said.
‘Oops is right. You going off to collect your e-mail was the signal for Penny to slide right over into maudlin tears and reminisce about Meredith turning the lesbian community cyberpunk.’
‘But only if they let her wear a bag over her head,’ Lindsay responded. ‘You know, I couldn’t do a job where I had to stay in the closet.’
‘No,’ Sophie sighed. ‘You have many fine qualities, Lindsay, but discretion isn’t even in the top forty.’
And now Penny was dead. Lindsay kept staring at the newspaper. She had no idea what to do next. She supposed she should call Meredith in San Francisco, but she didn’t have any enthusiasm for it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be supportive, rather that she knew she was more use at the practical rather than the emotional side of things. In their partnership, it was Sophie who did emotional support.
Impatient with herself, Lindsay wiped the tears from her face. She’d take the dog for his evening run, then she’d call Meredith. ‘Penny would have taken the piss mercilessly,’ she told Mutton as she walked up to the bedroom and changed into her running uniform of shorts, T-shirt and cross-trainers. ‘“Whatever happened to the tough journalist?” she’d have said. “Thought you could face out anybody? You scared of a bit of raw emotion, Lindsay?” She’d have been a proper monkey on my back, dog,’ she added as Mutton licked her knee.
Lindsay jogged up the street, then cut across towards the beach, avoiding the wiry grasses that would whip her legs raw within minutes. Once on the sand, she headed for the water’s edge, turned her back on Pillar Point and let her rhythm gradually build to a place where it became a part of her she didn’t have to think about. There were fewer people than usual on the beach that evening but Lindsay didn’t notice. Penny Varnavides was at the centre of her mind’s eye, caught in a slo-mo memory replay, playing beach volleyball with Lindsay, Sophie, Meredith and half a dozen other women last Easter. Lindsay could see the ponytail of glossy black hair switch across Penny’s tanned shoulders as she leapt for the ball, the sun glinting on dark eyes and white teeth as she soared into the sky, fingers stretched to the limit to nudge the ball upwards again for one of her team-mates to sweep back over the net.
Never again, Lindsay thought, bitter and sad. Next time they all trooped down to the beach, they’d be one short.
Although she wasn’t consciously checking out her surroundings, part of Lindsay’s mind was on alert. Her evening routine with the dog had been going on sufficiently long for her to be familiar with other locals who ran or walked by the ocean. A stranger was enough in itself to register with her. A stranger walking a north-westerly line that looked as if it were chosen to intersect inevitably with her southerly one was enough to take her mind momentarily off Penny. Lindsay slowed slightly and stared at the approaching figure.
A woman. Height around five six, hair shoulder length and mid-brown. A large leather satchel slung over one hip. Shorts, lightweight shirt and sandals, but the skin too pale to be a Californian. Mutton bounded up to the woman, barking cheerfully. At once, she stopped and crouched to pat him. ‘English,’ Lindsay grunted to herself. She slowed till she was barely faster than walking pace. The woman looked up, met her eyes and straightened up. By then, only a dozen yards separated them.
‘Lindsay Gordon.’ It was a statement, not a question. Two words were enough to confirm Lindsay’s presumption that those pale limbs didn’t belong to an American. Mutton dropped on to his stomach on the sand, head down between his front paws.
Lindsay paused, hands on hips, breathing slightly harder than she needed to. If she was going to have to take off, better that the other woman thought she was more tired than she was. ‘You have the advantage of me, then,’ she said, a frosty imitation of Mel Gibson’s proud Scottish dignity in Braveheart.
‘Meredith Miller sent me. I … I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
The accent was Estuary English. It had never been one of Lindsay’s favourites, always reminding her of spivvy Tory MPs on the make. Distance hadn’t lent it enchantment. She wiped away the sweat that had sprung out on her upper lip. She cocked her head to one side and said, ‘I know Penny’s dead, if that’s what you mean. It made the papers. Who are you?’
The woman opened her satchel and Lindsay rose on to the balls of her feet, ready for fight or flight. The past she’d tried so hard to bury in California had conditioned her responses more than she liked to admit. Especially when she was dealing with people with English accents. But nothing more threatening than a business card emerged from the bag. Lindsay took it and read, ‘DGM Investigations. Sandra Bloom, senior operative.’ There was an address with an East London postcode that would have rendered the whole card a joke before Canary Wharf started to fill