StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (20 page)

We stepped out into the air—suddenly it had become dark, although I didn’t remember dusk—and I looked up at Luke. “Can I talk now?”

He nodded. “So long as you don’t keep mentioning someone’s tried to kill you once already today.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“The car? Remember? The brake pedal this morning…”

God, yes. Maybe I’m mildly concussed. I’d forgotten about poor Ted.

“I really think I need a drink,” I said, breaking away towards the sports bar.

“Is that good for you?” Luke asked.

“I don’t care. I need something strong. I’m in shock. Get me brandy.”

“You hate br—” Luke began, but I glared at him and he obediently trotted off to the bar. I found a squashy sofa and curled up in it. Funny, you’d think I’d hurt more after being chucked off a horse. If that was supposed to have killed me then it was a lame attempt. What about hard hats, eh? This was not the sixteenth century; I wasn't going to die from an undetected brain hemorrhage.

Luke came back with a pint for himself, a brandy for me and a large glass of Diet Coke.

“Who’s that for?”

“You. To get rid of the taste of brandy.”

I scowled at him, but he was right. The brandy ran a warm shock right through me and left a foul taste in my mouth. I shuddered and reached for the Coke. I hate it when he’s right.

“So,” he said, looking at me from an armchair three feet away, “theories?”

“
E=mc
²
,” I said smoothly. “Or Sam Vimes’s Theory of Boots. I always quite liked that one.”

Luke blinked at me.

“Terry Pratchett,” I explained. “Never mind.”

Still a blank look. No, not totally blank—slightly wary, as if he was trying not to show how nervous he was at what I was going to say next.

“Just trying to lighten the atmosphere,” I muttered.

“No more brandy for you,” Luke said, and I stuck my tongue out. “I mean, Sophie, sweetheart, who do you think cut the saddle girth?”

I lifted my shoulders and let them fall. They felt a little tight, but then they usually do. Maybe I worry too much.

“It could have been an accident,” I said.

“Yeah, sure, the saddle just happened to fall on a pair of scissors. Ivan was trying to scratch his belly on some barbed wire.”

“Well, he could have,” I said.

“Or someone could have cut it deliberately, knowing that you were an inexperienced rider and Ivan was a horny bugger. I still can’t believe they put you on a horse like that.”

“It’s because I’m tall,” I said. “I always get the big, black, insane horses.”

“He wasn’t suitable for a beginner.” Luke sipped moodily at his pint. “You could sue them, you know.”

“Yeah, ’cos I really need someone else hating me. Luke, in one year, four different people have tried to kill me.”

He shrugged. “Five, if you count that half-arsed Swedish bloke.”

“Norwegian. And he was just pretending, anyway.”

“To be Norwegian, or to kill you?”

I made a face. “Column A.”

“Ah, Soph.” He came to sit beside me. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Oh, so they don’t want to kill me because I’ve personally offended them? I feel so much better.”

He put an arm around me. “It’s just because of what you do.”

“Yes, but I don’t even do it any more.”

We both regarded our drinks gloomily. I was starting to wish I’d stuck with the brandy. Coke wasn’t doing much for me.

“Did I tell you I got a job offer?” Luke said, and I felt even more depressed.

“From?”

“MI6. Out in Saudi. Nothing interesting, just surveillance. A couple of months’ work.”

I looked at the rain outside and thought that a couple of months in the desert sounded very interesting to me.

“Are you going to take it?”

“I don’t know yet. Have you found anything?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t really looked. Well, I tried Ace, obviously, and they don’t want me. I might look for, I don’t know, a bookshop or something.”

Luke looked horrified, as if I’d just told him I was thinking of getting out my patent leather boots and walking the streets for money. “A
bookshop
? Sophie, you’ve been an international spy—”

“And now I need to pay my rent or I’ll have to live with my parents.” God, my life was depressing. No job, nearly no home, no car, no boyfriend—well, that one was my own fault, but still—and someone was trying to kill me.

I looked at Luke and the thought occurred to me, not for the first time, that he could cheer me up. But now he had this new job in the Middle East and if I went and got myself back into his life…

No. I’ve memorised this tune. It would not be smart to get involved with Luke again.

“So who do you think is trying to kill you this time?” Luke asked, and I nearly burst into tears of incredible patheticness.

Somehow I managed to hold them off until we got outside, where it was still raining. More than raining, it was throwing it down. Real power shower stuff. But it had been raining for the last three drinks, and there was no sign of it slackening. I pushed my bike up the hill, watching Luke soar away easily, the sooner to make coffee and get the heating on, and I arrived home fifteen minutes later, soaked through but at least having got rid of some cathartic tears.

Luke had lit the log in the little fireplace and the villa was gorgeously warm. He’d even started some pasta cooking, bless him. Norma Jean had been fed and was lying by the fire, looking like a fat blonde rug. There was an air of cosiness to the place, homeliness, comfort.

But my warm feelings soon evaporated when he came down the stairs, saw my obviously hilarious impression of a drowned rat, and bit his lip.

“What, you didn’t get wet?” I asked grumpily.

“A little bit,” he grinned, “but I got changed.”

“Yeah, well, I forgot to put my spare clothes in my saddlebags,” I said, squelching past him to the stairs. “I’m going to take a bath.”

“I was going to cook—”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Did you eat any lunch?”

I was about to lie that I had, when my treacherous stomach gave a loud growl.

“You never eat properly,” Luke chastised.

“When did you turn into my mother?”

“When you started getting death threats.” He went into the kitchen area and switched off the hob. “Okay, we’ll eat later.”

“You can eat now if you—”

“We’ll eat later,” Luke repeated, his voice steely, and I wondered what I’d done to annoy him. But then, it could be anything. Luke-baiting is one of my favourite hobbies.

Bubble bath has always had the power to cheer me up immensely, and when it’s coupled with a bath that
produces its own bubbles
, well, let me tell you, there’s no end to the fun. I stayed in the water until it got cold—this was quite quickly, the bath being the size of a small swimming pool with a surface area of about fifty square feet—and then I ran some more.

By the time I’d finished my book, Luke was knocking on the door.

“Sophie? Are you still breathing?”

“Of course I am,” I called back, puzzled.

“It’s just I know what you’re like with deep water. Are you coming out any time soon? I’m starving.”

Just for that, he could wait a while. “No,” I said, “I think that fall seized my back up a bit; I’m going to stay in here a while longer.”

His voice sounded closer to the door. “Are you okay? Can you get out on your own?”

At the thought of Luke coming in to share my bubbly heaven, I shivered. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just going to wash my hair.” And see how powerful that shower attachment is.

I woke on Tuesday morning with a slight headache and blamed the brandy. I just can’t drink spirits. Anything stronger than wine and I start to get hung over while I’m still drinking. Luke had magnanimously offered to take the sofa as I played up the injuries I hadn’t yet felt, so I snuggled down in the big soft bed, duvet wrapped around me, bunched in my arms for something to cuddle, glad Luke couldn’t see me from downstairs.

I sat up, and immediately my back punched out in pain. “Ow!” I yelled, tears forming in my eyes. That hadn’t hurt yesterday! Why did it hurt today? Waah!

Luke bounded up the stairs, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Sophie! What is it?”

I shoved him away, because he was making it worse. It didn’t hurt too much, it was just horribly unexpected.

“Nothing,” I said. “My shoulder hurt a bit. That’s all. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“Let me see,” he started to push away my shirt, and I pulled it back up, trying not to wince.

“I’m okay, I’m fine. I’ll be okay once I’ve stretched out a bit.” I scrambled out of bed and into the bathroom before he could stop me.

I heard a sigh. “You want some coffee?”

“Yes, please. And can you let Norma out for a sec?”

Luke said he would and I heard him go back down the stairs. I checked the door was locked, then gingerly peeled off my PJs. I took a deep breath and turned to look in the mirror.

And then I stopped, because my neck hurt so much I couldn’t turn my head to look over my shoulder. Fantastic. I grabbed some ibuprofen from my toiletry bag, got my little hand mirror out, and used it to look at my back.

There was hardly a mark there at all, despite how much it hurt. No fair! If I was going to be in pain, I wanted something to show for it. No doubt it’d show up next time I wanted to wear something pretty.

I got washed and dressed quickly, on the far side of the bedroom so Luke wouldn’t see me through the galleried side of the room. Then I realised I’d been giving a free show to the family in the next villa and hurried downstairs, my face pink.

“Okay,” Luke said, as between us we set the table with cereal, fruit, toast, all sorts of healthy crap that made me reach for the chocolate spread immediately, “so today I’m working on our friend Jon, and you’ve got Eleanor Duvalle.”

“This is going to be about aerobics, isn’t it?” I made a face, and Luke laughed.

“Don't tell me you forgot your sports bra?”

I was about to tell him that I had, unfortunately, so any strenuous activity was a no-no, when I realised that if I hadn’t had it with me, I’d need to explain what I was wearing to go riding yesterday.

“Rats,” I said crossly, reaching for more chocolate spread.

“Therefore I booked you in for aerobics at ten, followed by a Step class at eleven—what is a Step class?”

“Evil,” I said, and shoved some calories into my mouth for later use.

“Okay. After lunch—”

“Let me guess, grilled chicken or fish with steamed vegetables, no dressing?”

He gave me a don’t-get-snarky look. “After lunch you have yoga and t’ai-chi.”

“If I’m still alive by then. What are you doing all day?”

“Two hours of tennis tuition in the morning. Then bungee jumping in the afternoon. Then I found out he also does windsurfing, so I'm doing that later too. I was going to book you in for that—”

I gave him a murderous look.

“—but I knew you’d look at me like that, so I thought I’d better not. Ditto the bungee.”

“I’d take one look at how high it is and fall off.”

“That, and it’s easy to sabotage a bungee cord,” Luke said grimly. “Be careful today.”

“Well.” I toyed hopefully with my coffee cup. “It could be said that aerobics could kill me.”

“Nice try.”

Rats.

The cycle ride to the sports hall nearly killed me. I’d never last through two hours of exercise. At school I came up with the most elaborate excuses for getting out of games. I hated it, mostly because at my school on games day, it always, against all laws of probability, rained, it was always cold and windy and I was always made to do hockey. The hockey teacher hated me with almost the same passion I despised her, and yet whenever I was asked which sport I wanted to do at the beginning of the year (I always said something like badminton or gym, something that was at least inside), I asked to do anything but hockey, and always got lobbed in the hockey class.

After a while I just started turning up with no kit so I couldn’t do games. I once used the period excuse, but the very capable head of games gave me a sanitary pad and a Feminax and told me the exercise would do me good.

What it did was instill in me a lifetime of loathing for anything more strenuous than picking up the telly control.

Therefore after two hours of hell, sweating my way through the worst torture ever designed for man—or should I say woman—I was in no state, fit or otherwise, to talk to Eleanor Duvalle. She’d been perfectly cheerful and competent, marching through all those exercises as if she was taking a gentle nap. She had a perky brown ponytail and tiny little bee-sting boobs, and she never broke a sweat. Not once in two hours.

I loathed her.

I staggered out to the sports bar and ordered the biggest Diet Coke known to man. Then I spotted Luke sitting there in tennis whites, looking like he’d maybe run up a flight of stairs, nothing harder.

I stumbled over, fell onto the sofa and lay with my head in his lap, moaning that I was dying.

“I’ll never move again.”

Luke looked down at where my head was, grinned, and said, “Suits me just fine.”

I made a grimace of disgust and sat up. “I hate you.”

“Why, what have I done?”

Made me do two hours of aerobics while you never broke a sweat, you bastard. “Have fun in your tennis lesson?”

He shrugged. “It was okay. He’s not bad.”

“But you had to hold back so you didn’t humiliate him, right?”

Luke grinned. “Looking forward to your yoga class after lunch?”

“Like a hole in the head.”

“Where do you want to eat?”

I felt bad about making him pay for lunch, because he knew I could hardly afford to, but I wasn’t about to break my neck cycling home for something cheaper.

“Here,” I said. “I can’t move any further than the bar.”

We ordered jacket potatoes, and I tipped another pint of Coke down my throat and asked Luke if he’d got any more info from Jon.

He shrugged. “Not a huge amount. He said they’d been down there with friends, all worked here…”

“He told me that too. I don’t think any of them liked Molly.”