Chapter Text
Julie wasn’t uncomfortable, she was just agitated. This wasn’t going to plan. There were still good drinking hours left. Merriment to be made. Cards. Dancing. Shouting. Like last year. Last year was a riot. Gill should’ve come last year. Yet another thing scuppered by Dirty Dave.
Gill spent all last year in grief for her marriage, for her career hitting a spike strip because of it. The divorce—the last kind thing that man could’ve done for her—left her utterly rent all through last summer, and autumn, and her birthday, and Christmas, and New Years, and his fucking birthday, and Julie’s fucking birthday, and here they were again. Summer 2008. The start of a new era.
Running a syndicate was a move that would have been life-changing for anyone else in the Manchester Met, but to Gill, it was a demotion. Julie was a DCI herself, but it held nothing to a stint with the Crime Faculty. Those blokes were hotshots. Julie couldn’t blame her. The least she could do was try to cheer her up.
This was the first time Julie managed to get her out of the house for more than an evening, and she’d stacked the odds of success by bringing a few new and friendly faces along, yet all those unreasonable sods hurried back to their lodgings across the pond without imparting more than an ounce of the joy and togetherness she’d demanded of them. Mary Jackson, the last one still awake, gave Julie a look like she was chewing on a yawn, refusing all offers for cards, or dancing, or shouting. Then there were two.
And so it appeared that Julie’s agenda, while altruistic, had no impact whatsoever on the outcome: Gill, left alone with Julie in the living room of their shared cottage in South Cumbria at almost midnight, long before Julie was ready, conversationally or otherwise, to be left alone with Gill.
Julie was sitting on the floor in front of the settee, shoulder-to-shoulder with Gill, pulling at the rug fibres and tossing cards into a hat with her other hand. She was getting one in twenty. When she ran out, she didn’t bother to get up and collect them.
Gill balanced an empty bottle on her knee. She’d let it tip one way, and push it back, and then tip it the other way, and catch it on the way down.
It wasn’t awkward. Not really. They sat around Julie’s house on occasion like this, too much to think about to find any silence uncomfortable. But something was still off. The music, drifting over the half-wall in the kitchen, was too uptempo for the lull in conversation. Everything around them felt like props. Why’d everyone bugger off so fast, anyway?
Julie voiced the last of these thoughts to Gill, who said, “I know why. You brought all your married friends to this thing.”
“What d’you reckon?” Julie asked.
“They’ve all got kids, haven’t they? All these private cabins? Bet they never get a chance to shag without someone listening at the door.” Gill looked twice at Julie. “I don’t know what to tell you, Slap. It was very good scotch.”
Julie blasted out a single laugh. “Well, they’re not normally like this.”
“No?” Gill leaned forward and gathered up stray playing cards.
“There was a lot more staying power last year.”
“Very surprising, given the thrills you cooked up for us tonight.” Gill grabbed a nearby card and whipped it at the hat. Missed. Tutted. “I’m surprised no uniforms turned up to disrupt the rowdy jigsaw puzzle you were goading us into assembling.”
“Right,” Julie said, “and you had a spectacular weekend planned doing—I’m going to guess laundry?”
Gill shrugged a shoulder. “At least then my laundry would be done.”
“Wow.”
Gill smirked and set the cards down, turning her head to catch her eye. “Or maybe,” she continued, “Mary’s just a good mate.”
“I don’t follow.”
“She asked, when you went to the loo, if I wanted her to leave us alone.”
“And what did you say?” Julie asked.
Gill stared at her. “I said ‘ta, and goodnight.”
So she just wanted it over and done with after all. It made no difference. There had to be a way to blame Dave for this, too.
Julie let her disappointment deflate her, her arms falling to her sides. “Are you really not having a good time?”
“No, I am. Everyone’s delightful. Especially that Mary. Doesn’t miss a thing.”
“How d’you mean?”
“I suppose none of them missed it—I mean the way you were looking at me, Slap. I noticed it too, finally, though maybe a little late to bring the right ensemble.”
Gill bit her thumb and smiled, and it knocked ten years off her face. Julie had a flash of what she must have been like at Bruche; or better yet, a million years ago in grammar school, all hair and menthols and sneaking out with boys.
Gill wouldn’t have looked twice at Julie back then—a burgeoning dyke with unkempt hair and no sense of style, who stood a whole head above all the other girls—and certainly not this way, the way she wanted but couldn’t admit she wanted to be looked at by Gill.
Julie felt dizzy, standing on a cliff above herself looking down. The torch in her chest rekindled with a mortifying ease. “You—”
“Honestly I don’t know how to make it any easier for you.”
And then Gill shifted around toward her on the floor and put her hand, curled in a sturdy fist, on the shag carpet between Julie’s knees. Their faces were inches apart. She watched Gill’s eyes flicking down, and up, and down.
“Now,” Gill said, in a slow, quiet earnestness reserved for the walk between pews, “could you please find the courage to kiss me, so I don’t have to?”
To her credit, Julie did not sputter with surprise or ask her to repeat herself. Instead, she leaned in with all the grace and composure she could muster, as if it were the thousandth time instead of the first.
As she closed the gap, she thought, Is this happening? Their eyes meeting for the briefest moment before contact. Do things like this happen?
But a half second later, the questions vanished. Kissing Gill Murray was like startling a flock of birds, a whispering union of feathers and air. It stole from her lungs. It filled her senses until there was nothing else, and then it was up into the sky and gone.
Julie would chase that feeling for the rest of her life—from woman to woman, bed to bed—but it would never come close to this again.
DSI Julie Dodson sat up on her settee, sending the half-finished TV Times on her chest sliding to the floor. Her mobile was buzzing its way off the coffee table, its cheerful chiptune on mute for the better part of the five years since the night she’d just been peacefully dreaming about, and the bloody thing had taken a rogue fork hostage, clattering her awake. She threw her hand on them both, dampening the sound, and picked up her mobile.
At this hour, which she could tell by the eerie glow of the BBC news crawl on the telly was very late indeed, there were about six scenarios to explain why she could be getting a call from Gill right now, but she didn’t like any of them. Julie hadn’t seen or heard from her in almost two weeks, just a few stray texts. Maybe this was accidental. Wouldn’t be the first time.
“What’s the matter?” Julie asked. Hellos were for after sunrise.
“Did I wake you?”
“It’s fine. Is everything all right?”
“I’ll survive,” Gill said, and sighed, “I dunno why I even rang, you don’t need this and I don’t need—”
“Oh go on, it must’ve been important,” Julie said.
“It’s Rachel.”
Julie plummeted back to the pillow. Fucking hell, she changed her mind. She didn’t want any part in any unfolding sapphic disasters at this hour.
Is there another term for ‘U-Hauling’ where the only things you pack are emotional baggage?
“What’s she done this time?” Julie asked.
“Nothing. It’s me.”
“I’m sure she deserved whatever it was.”
How long had those two been at it, six weeks? Eight? She was glad she’d not placed any bets. She would be trying to win it all back at the racecourses.
“It’s not like that.”
“Well what is it, then?”
“Nothing,” Gill said again, “I can’t sleep, and this gin is—well, I’ve brought it to bed, which should tell you enough.”
Now that she mentioned it, Gill did have the telltale monosyllabic lilt of the sloshed about her.
“What’s Bailey driving you to drink for?”
Gill didn’t respond. There was enough silence on the other end that she started to pay attention to the telly again. Nelson Mandela memorial service to commence in Johannesburg. David Cameron, Tony Abbott, Bono to attend.
Julie groaned. “Am I going to have to find a spade and excavate this little digsite myself? Because I was enjoying an almost decent night’s sleep and I’d just as soon—”
“I’m in love with her.”
Julie read the name ‘Bono’ about ten more times until it blinked away to something else, her insides like ice. Was she serious?
“You’re drunk,” Julie said.
“I can be both.”
Julie considered this, staring at the fork still on the table, the half-disbelieving feeling of waking up to strange problems in the middle of the night, problems that weren’t yours and shouldn’t be yours and ended up yours anyway.
“I just—” Gill continued, when Julie did not respond, “now I’ve thought the thing, I wish I hadn’t. Thought it. At all. Once there’s love, then there’s—you know.”
“I know,” Julie said.
“The endless fucking misery.”
“Yep.”
But that was supposed to be Julie’s line, not Gill’s. Gill’s thoughts before ringing her must have touched on something much further down than usual. What was going on in that head of hers?
“It just changes everything,” Gill said.
Julie tried to readjust her blanket but it was trapped underneath her. Her feet were freezing. Draughty old house. She wrestled some of it out.
“Well so why have you rung me then?” Julie asked.
“Dunno. I guess—I just thought that you might tell me if I’m absolutely out of my mind.”
“You are absolutely out of your mind,” Julie said.
“Thank you.”
Julie sighed. “You know I’m the wrong person to—”
“No, I know. I know.”
“You didn’t have to confirm that so fast.”
“Sorry,” Gill said.
“Didn’t even finish my sentence.”
“Give me the end of it, then.”
Julie stared at the cold fireplace, its embers snuffed out ages ago.
What she wanted to say was that love wasn’t the sort of thing that should make you panic and run home and drink yourself stupid. It’s supposed to be elation. Feet can’t touch the ground, songs make sense, initials joined by ampersands elation. Of course, Gill’s romantic path wound through a lot more dark forests than your average fairy tale, and Julie had more than one reason to know all about it.
Still, wasn’t this supposed to be the clearing? The summit? The whole damn reason anyone bothered down the road to start with?
Julie decided a heart-to-heart with the level of nuance this needed was irresponsible when one person was exhausted and the other was half-pickled and stuck humming along to the same old blues. The rest of her thoughts were a jumbled mess, none of them uplifting, and Gill in this state was liable to take every single one of them as gospel.
“I don’t know, love,” Julie said, “I think you should get some sleep.”
“No, I can’t. That’s the problem. I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t sleep.”
Julie yawned. “If I can, you can.”
The news crawl had moved on. Snow flurries tomorrow. Christmas Markets in Albert Square. Julie tried to negotiate her way back to a sitting position.
“Promise me something?” Gill asked.
“What?”
“You won’t tell Rachel?”
“What do you mean, don’t tell—you haven’t told her?”
“God no,” Gill said, “what a horrifying thought. Just promise me you won’t say anything.”
Jesus Christ. Julie got the first confession. She supposed she should feel honoured, but it was like eavesdropping on a soliloquy. Enlightening, but misguided. Was Gill even going to remember this tomorrow?
“When am I ever going to be left alone with Rachel Bailey?” Julie asked. “Let alone long enough to disclose such a horrific secret?”
“Promise me,” Gill said, again.
“All right, all right, I promise.”
They said their goodnights, and Julie dragged herself upstairs to her bedroom.
She’d left her date gently snoring on the far side of the bed, Julie’s chronic back pains striking at another inconvenient time. The woman stirred when she slid under the covers but did not wake.
Julie laid on her back, arms folded under her head, willing her thoughts toward soft things: snow, and peace, and birds. But after a while, she found herself wishing she’d just put that fucking fork in the dishwasher in the first place.