Page 16 of Murder Most Actual

“I think it’ll make a really good episode. And also, it might be … I don’t know, helpful? To the police?”

“Don’t pretend you’re doing this out of civic duty. You’re doing this because you’ve always wanted to solve a murder.”

That was the problem with being married to somebody: after a while they knew you too well and, worse, knew you couldn’t easily dump them for showing it. “Is that—is that really so wrong? Solving murders is good. It’s a good thing.”

“Show me.”

Liza didn’t really know why she hesitated, but hesitate she did. Then she picked her phone up from the bedside table where she had laid it—but forgotten to charge it, she realised—last night, and played back her notes.

“... a mysterious seductress is trying to get me to follow her.” The recording ended there—clearly, she had remembered to turn it off after all, which was probably for the best in a lot of ways.

“Liza.” There was a wavering tone in Hanna’s voice that Liza thought could jump at any second from concern to anger.

“Nothing happened.”

Liza’s reply had come too quickly to be entirely innocent, and now Hanna was looking at her with well-justified suspicion. “What do you mean, nothing happened?”

“I mean with Ruby.”

That hadn’t helped. “Who’s Ruby?”

“The mysterious seductress.”

Pulling on the black polo neck and a pair of dark grey jeans that were her concession to not being in the city, Hanna came to join Liza at the window. “Are you trying to reassure me by denying that you had sex with a woman who ten seconds ago I didn’t know existed?”

“Yes? And I didn’t. I mean, I think I probably could have.” And, if Liza was honest, maybe she had wanted to a little bit. And liked that she could have. And maybe even liked wanting to.

Hanna rolled her eyes. “Oh, good. Nice to know. I suppose I’m lucky really. After all, having a wife lots of people want to fuck is a pretty big status symbol where I work.”

“We just talked. She was flirty, but I think she’s flirty with everyone. It’s her thing. You know, like Caitlyn at university.”

There was a pause, and Hanna seemed momentarily mollified. But only momentarily. “Hold on. You did have sex with Caitlyn at university.”

“Before I met you.”

“No, after you met me. Before we started dating, but we’d definitely met. You probably hadn’t noticed me.”

“I noticed you.”

Hanna scoffed. “Sure you did.”

Things had been tough recently. Liza would have been the first to admit that. But she wasn’t going to let her past self take the blame for her current self’s problems. “It was at the housewarming for that place that Rob, Tom, and Gabby had in their second year,” Liza said. “You were in the kitchen talking to some guy or some girl or something, and you were wearing—well, you were wearing the exact same thing you’re wearing now because you’ve had one casual outfit for your entire life—but I remember they said something and you laughed, but like, once, like, hah, and you looked so … so everything. And I remember saying to myself, ‘If I don’t talk to that girl by the end of the evening I’ll hate myself forever.’”

For a moment, Hanna was quiet. Then she said: “I didn’t speak to you at that party.”

“And I hated myself forever. Or for a couple of weeks, anyway. Then we actually met in the pub at that thing with Dill and Evan.” An inconvenient recollection wormed its way into Liza’s mind. “Then … okay then, I think I did fuck Caitlyn that weekend, but then there was Rita’s Christmas party and I was dressed as a slutty reindeer and you were—actually, you were still wearing the same thing you’re wearing now—and …”

“And you walked up to me and just stood there saying nothing.” Hanna was almost smiling now. Almost.

“And so you said, ‘That outfit is unnecessarily sexualised, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re the most beautiful woman I have seen in my life and I would very much like to kiss you.’” It felt at once so recent and so long ago that it almost hurt to talk about it. Because that was the woman Liza had fallen in love with, and somewhere deep down, it was still the woman Hanna was. It was just that after ten years she’d turned out to be a whole lot more complicated. “And then you did.”

Outside the snow was dancing a waltz with the wind.

“We should …”—Hanna bit her lip—”we should go to breakfast.”

Liza wanted to say that they shouldn’t. That they should stay and talk and that she’d forget about the murder and the woman in red and everything else if they could just get back to how things were, but that wasn’t a one-morning job. And if they stayed, probably reminiscence would turn into recrimination, which would turn into a straight-up yelling match.

So they went to breakfast. Which, like all of the other parts of the holiday that didn’t involve corpses, mysterious women in cupboards, or wondering where it all went wrong, was divine. Besides the usual range of cereals, full fried breakfast, and toast, there were also options like “whiskey-cured smoked salmon and scrambled eggs” and “poached peat-smoked haddock.”

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