Page 5 of The Player

chapter

two

The soundof the front door slamming jerks me and Joan back to life as if we’ve been electrified. For a second, we look wide-eyed at each other, and then Joan pats my arm.

“I’ll go,” she says.

I shake my head and then pin a big smile on my face. “No need. It’s just Con.” There’s a long pause, and I add briskly, “And his guest. It’ll beverynice to meet him.”

Joan rolls her eyes. “If you say so.”

“Ido,” I jerk out and stop to take a breath. “I do,” I say in a more moderate tone. “I’ll go and see what’s happening, and will you make them a coffee or something?”

She nods and walks off, muttering something that sounds very much like “arsenic” under her breath. I hope I misheard. With Joan’s knowledge of crimes and that sweet face of hers, she’d make an extremely successful serial killer.

I wipe my palms on my trousers and walk towards the foyer. I can hear the sound of murmured voices and then Con’s husky laugh, and I stop dead in my tracks.I don’t want to meet this new man who Con kisses,I think furiously.I don’t want to talk to someone who makes him laugh like that. Then I shake my head. “Don’t be silly, Frankie,” I mutter. “It’s just Con.”

I take a deep, steadying breath and pull open the door. Con and the redhead are standing close together by Mandy’s desk. She must have come in while Joan and I were talking, and now she’s putting her bag away and smiling at the two men. As I step into the room, the redhead says something, and Mandy laughs loudly. It rankles a little, which is ridiculous. But she’s our receptionist: mine and Con’s. Not his.

Con smiles at the two of them and then must catch my movement because his head turns towards me. His familiar, easy smile drops away when he sees me, and an odd expression crosses his face. I’ve seen it a lot lately, but it usually vanishes so quickly that I haven’t been able to catalogue it. It seems to combine sadness mixed with a bit of anger, and it makes my already uneasy stomach turn over when it’s directed at me.

I don’t know what I’ve done to Con. I’ve spent hours trying to work out what is wrong, but I can’t pinpoint it. One minute, he was my best friend, the person I spoke to most in the world, the one who’s got me through the last three years. And then the next, he was cross with me. I can’t ask him, though. I’ve tried to talk over the last few months, but he shuts me down each time and instantly becomes the old easygoing Con again. And I’m so relieved to see that version that I immediately forget everything. Until the next time it happens.

As if on cue, Con’s expression smooths out, and he gives me the wide smile that I’d first seen when David brought me home.

I met my husband at a concert. He was older than me and very handsome with black hair and bright blue eyes. He spotted me at the bar, and we spent the entire concert talking. I’d been immensely flattered that he’d noticed me at all. After all, I was scrawny, a quirky dresser, and had a very sharp tongue that one ex had said made me shrewish. So, not automatically a draw to most gay men. However, David had treated me as if I was the most fascinating and funny man he’d ever met.

I went home with him that night, and I never left. We didn’t get out of bed for a few weeks, and a month later, we were married—the result of another impulsive gesture from David. He proposed in bed and wouldn’t hear any of the arguments I put forward about getting to know each other outside bed first.

At the time, I saw it as him being head over heels in love and not wanting anything to stand in his way of keeping me. It would be a while before I realised that it was just the latest feckless gesture from a charismatic charmer and that his stubborn determination was nothing more than someone who’d been spoilt his whole life and never heard the word “no.”

Straight after the wedding, he brought me to the village to meet his best friend. I remember walking into the old pub, feeling my hands shake with nervousness and seeing this tall, broad-shouldered man stand up. He was tattooed and off-puttingly trendy-looking in a way that suggested he wasn’t even trying to be that. However, his smile was warm, and his brown eyes were kind, and I’d instantly felt at ease.

There’s just something very warm and steady about Con—a sense that he’s someone who will take care of you. And that’s been proved over and over again in the years since we lost David. I’ve never deviated from my first impression of Con despite having to overhaul my image of my own husband drastically.

“Frankie?” Con’s voice recalls me to the present. He’s once again giving me that affable smile of his that, for some reason, irritates me today. It’s like a prickling under my skin as if I’ve swallowed nettles.

“Con,” I say. There’s an edge to my voice that I don’t think has ever been there before when I talk to him and when his eyes widen, I make haste to smile at him. Then, I extend the smile to the redhead, who’s watching us curiously. “And?”

Con jerks. “Oh, this is Tim.”

“Very nice to meet you,” I say, but he just shrugs.

“Yeah, same,” he says with a casualness that’s within a hairsbreadth of being rude.

He turns his back on me to speak to Mandy, and there’s an awkward silence. I blink, but Con sprints into the conversation to save the day like a scruffy superhero destroying all conversational problems.

“I wanted to show Tim the workshop.”

“Oh.” I search for something to say. Anything would do as he watches me with that funny stare again. I settle for banality. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”

“It was time to come back. Gene played the last gig, and he’s off to Barbados. He seemed very happy.”

“That’ll last for the next five minutes,” I say waspishly. “He wouldn’t stay happy if he was married to Pamela Anderson and had Delia Smith catering his dinners.”

He laughs, and just for a second, I feel at ease again—that old familiar feeling like coming through the door of my cottage and kicking my shoes off.

Then Tim comes up next to him and wraps his arm around Con’s waist.

---