Page 41 of Goodnight
‘Okay … right, it’s done.’
Nick didn’t bother saying goodbye, he just hung up and moved to his laptop. The new email was there waiting for him. He hesitated before clicking open the attachment. As the image filled the screen he sucked in a deep breath, and then stopped breathing altogether. He sat completely frozen for at least a minute before he finally breathed out in a rush. He reached forward as if to touch the screen with his finger, but pulled back when he realized what he was doing. His hand instead went to his face and he was shocked when it came away wet from his cheeks. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried.
‘Hey, big man,’ Bertie’s voice sounded through the monitor, and Nick started in his chair, wiping the tears from his face and slamming down the lid of his laptop. ‘Anything you need me to get ready?’
Nick cleared his throat and straightened his tie, then pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Send Goodie in,’ he told Bertie.
‘You called, High Commander,’ Goodie said as she pushed into the office.
‘Shut the door,’ Nick told her, his voice still rough from the emotion he was fighting to hold back. Goodie frowned at him, but shut the door behind her, walked to his desk and cocked her head to the side.
‘There is problem?’ she asked, and he stood abruptly from his chair to stalk around his desk.
‘Nick?’ she asked as he came towards her, a determined look on his face. When she was within reaching distance he made a grab for her and pulled her into him for a bone-crushing hug. Something eased in his chest as he felt her small body, warm in his arms.
She was alive.
She was here.
She would never be hurt again.
He repeated those three things over and over as he held her. His heart was hammering as if he’d run a marathon, and he was fighting the renewed stinging behind his eyes. It took him a minute but he managed to push it back. When he pulled away a fraction and looked down at her face, he saw the soft expression mixed with confusion in her beautiful ice-blue eyes, and a small, bewildered smile on her lips. He felt a shot of pride go through him. Before the last few weeks she did not giveanyonesoft expressions, she did not allow physical affection, and she never, never smiled. He had done that. He gave her a short, brief, hard kiss, then pulled back again.
‘Are you mentally unstable?’ she asked him, and he laughed, breaking the tension.
‘Maybe a little.’ He kissed the end of her nose and searched her face again before tracing the small crescent scar next to her eye with his fingers. His jaw clenched for a moment before he repeated in his mind the three statements from earlier to calm him.
‘You are weird,’ she told him, and he nodded.
‘You’re not exactly the poster child for normal,’ he shot back, and then watched the smile fade from her face.
‘No, I’m not,’ she told him, her voice back to cold and expressionless as she tried to pull away from him.
‘I’m teasing,’ he said, keeping his arms around her with some difficulty. ‘Normal’s boring.’ She rolled her eyes and he felt the constriction in his chest lighten; eye-rolling was another sign of the new and improved, more human Goodie. ‘Listen, once we’re done with this next meeting would you come over to mine? I need to talk to you about something.’
Goodie shrugged. ‘Okay … is it about your mental health problems?’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Your biscuit addiction?’ she asked, eyeing the nearly empty basket of biscuits and muffins he’d received earlier from a client. ‘Bertie’s red trouser addiction? Your mustard-yellow trouser addiction?’
‘Not all of us dress almost exclusively in black, Goodie.’ She snorted and he smiled. ‘Tell me you’ll come over later.’
‘Of course I will,’ she said, giving him a squeeze and then pushing away from him. ‘Now get your shit together or you’ll be late.’ As she left the room Nick closed his eyes, brought one hand up to the back of his neck and the other to rub his forehead. It was no good. That image was there to stay. It would haunt him until he died.
Thousands of miles away in a brutally cold, unrelentingly depressing part of Cherepovets City, Walker stared at the photograph in his hand and shuddered. The little girl standing in the centre of the photo was looking straight at the camera. The one eye not swollen shut was cold and blank. She was covered in blood, and it was only just possible to make out the white blonde of her hair. Her feet were bare and her torn, dirty, blood-soaked clothes hung off her tiny frame. Her jaw was tight and her mouth was a thin stubborn line. Instead of the fear and pain you would expect to see in her face there was anger, defiance. But that didn’t change the fact that she was just a little girl. Walker took a deep breath and stared instead at the other image he was holding. The woman in it had the same white blonde hair as the child, the same defiant expression.
‘I hope you’ve found your peace,’ he muttered at the image before shoving them both into the file he had compiled. Nick better know what the fuck he was doing.
* * *
Casual affection.
Goodie had had so little of this in her life that it was coming as a bit of a shock to the system. Nick seemed to thrive on it, and slowly – very slowly – Goodie was starting to see why. The Night of the Gogol Mogol had been a turning point for her. Since then she had been allowing Nick to gradually chip away at her defences. And since the night with his friends she was starting to trust him. He cared about her. It didn’t help that all day it was her job to watch him. She found very small things about him were ridiculously attractive: his forearms as he pushed his shirt up, his hair ruffled at the end of the day, his five o’clock shadow, his fucking dimple. So Goodie had made a decision: she wanted Nick; all that was holding her back was fear; and Goodie was no coward. Katie’s words from three years ago had been drifting through her brain more frequently now: ‘You can feel, just like anyone else. You could live a different life if you wanted.’Could she? After all this time, could she try for a different life?
‘Yo,’ she called as she pushed through the door to Nick’s flat. He emerged from the kitchen looking harassed.
‘Shit,’ he said, poking his head around the corner from the kitchen, ‘hold on.’ He ducked back out of sight and Goodie frowned at the smell of burning as she walked down the corridor.
‘What happened here?’ she asked. All the kitchen counters were covered with debris, every single pot and pan was dirty, and a stressed-looking Nick was extracting something ominously black from the oven. He scowled down at the offending casserole dish and then heaved a huge sigh.
‘I wanted to make you a Coulibiac.’ He shrugged as her eyebrows went up. ‘I mean, you seemed to like the Gogol Mogol and you said you wanted to remember more about your mother, so I called Mum and this was the only Russian dish she knew to talk me through.’
