(2011) The Gift of Death Read Free Page B

do you think you are doing?’
     
    ‘ Trying to get what I need to do my job, ma’am, that’s all.’ His accent was vaguely Southern. Texan, maybe?
     
    ‘ I told you on the phone that it’s not finished.’
     
    ‘ Can you not show me the work in progress,’ he had said, smiling, a glint of mischievousness in his black, snake-like eyes.
     
    ‘ Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t call security?’
     
    ‘ What, and go to all that trouble? Don’t forget we are all working on the same side, Dr Cramer.’
     
    She gave him one of her withering, icy stares.
     
    ‘ Okay, but remember, I’m only doing this because I pity you,’ she had said. ‘This way.’
     
    She accompanied him to her work desk, where she showed him the model. She talked him through what she had done, tried to make him aware of the intricacies of the process, the importance of not rushing. She caught him looking at her, eyeing her severe hairline. If only she had taken her hair out of that goddamn rubber band, she had thought, before telling herself not to be so pathetically, adolescently stupid. The man clearly was – what was the expression her father always used – a fuckwit. Yet, there was something about him. What was it?
     
    ‘ Well, thank you Dr Cramer, that was – interesting.’
     
    ‘ No problem.’
     
    ‘ And – sorry to ask you this again – but when – realistically - do you think you might be able to release the image to me? I need to get it out to the media as soon as I can.’
     
    ‘ I’ll do my best, okay. I can’t promise, but if I work around the clock you’ll have it by tomorrow a.m.. Is that quick enough.’
     
    ‘ I guess it will have to be,’ he had said, his dark eyes glinting again.
     
    She accompanied him back to the door of the lab. He stopped and turned towards her.
     
    ‘ Look - sorry I behaved like an asshole earlier. But can I take you out to dinner to make up?’
     
    Of course, she had wanted to say ‘yes’. Instead, she looked straight through him, keyed in her code on the security pass and opened the door for him.
     
    ‘ I don’t think that’s such a great idea. Let’s stick to being professional, shall we Detective Harper?’
     
    And with that he had walked out. Not the most promising of beginnings, thought Kate. Maybe she should have taken her own advice. Then she would never have found herself sitting on the john, waiting for the result that would change her life.
     
    ***
     
    She had taken a deep breath as she had picked up the kit. She had closed her eyes for a moment of two. On opening them she had seen the two distinctive pink lines that confirmed that she was pregnant. She should have felt overjoyed. After all, Kate had been trying for a child for two years. But instead she had just felt flat, numb.
     
    What a time for it to happen, she had thought. Just my fucking luck.
     
    How many attempts had there been? First of all naturally – god, those were the days - and then with IVF. They had both been optimistic at first, confident that it would work for them. But as time had dragged on the process seemed to eat away at the foundations of their relationship, undermining it like a plague of termites burrowing beneath a wooden-frame house. From the outside it still looked handsome, healthy, but inside it was decaying. Perhaps she had placed too much pressure on Josh to have a child. Perhaps lovemaking had come to be associated more with mucal temperatures, menstrual cycles and medication than raw passion. Perhaps she had mutated into one of those neurotic women – the type she vowed she would never turn into – that obsess over baby-making to the detriment of everything else.
     
    And yet she still couldn’t forgive him for what he had done. Jules. God, she hated that name.
     
    It made perfect fucking sense now, of course. She had discovered the truth about Josh and Jules less than a month ago, just after their last session with the fertility clinic. The drive back