High-Wired by Andrea Frazer Page B

straight to the horse’s mouth (or, rather, its arse) to demand an explanation. He had found the friend gone and Ben barely conscious.
    ‘Well, he’s never seeing that lad again. He’s obviously trouble, although I thought he was so well-spoken, and he had a good address,’ commented Olivia.
    ‘A nice accent and good address are no indication of character though, are they, Liv? If his mother’s place is stuffed with Valium and old-fashioned sleeping pills there must be something wrong in the household,’ countered Hal.
    ‘We have sleeping pills in our medicine cabinet,’ Olivia rounded on him.
    ‘We do indeed, but they were left by your mother on her last visit to us before she fell off her perch. They’re probably wildly out of date, and work more by luck than efficacy.’
    ‘We could send him over to visit your parents?’
    ‘You’ve got to be joking. The last thing we need is for him to be left to his own devices on an island that isn’t unknown for its supply of marijuana.’
    ‘God, I didn’t even think of that. Well, we’ll have to do something.’
    ‘Not until we’ve talked it over with him. Remember, we’ve got to start treating him as an adult if he wants to be viewed as one.’
    Ben was awake and gave them a weak smile when he saw them come through the doorway of his room. ‘I kinda screwed up badly, didn’t I?’ he asked weakly.
    Olivia immediately rushed to his bed, unable to contain her sobbing, and threw her arms round him, just grateful to see that he didn’t seem to be suffering from any long-term damage after his close brush with death.
    Hal walked over more slowly, tears of gratitude rolling down his cheeks. Olivia moved away slightly, and Hal took Ben’s light brown face in his large dark brown hands. He leaned over and kissed his son’s forehead with a tenderness that belied his size. ‘My son,’ was all he said, repeating it several times before he took his palms from the boy’s cheeks.
    DS Groves had had more than enough to distract her mind from her chaotic and catastrophic domestic situation that day, and when she could delay going home no longer, she packed up, put on her fiercest expression of determination, and headed for Home Farm Barn. Things couldn’t be allowed to fall into any pattern other than one of her own devising.
    Although her hands shook on the steering wheel as she drove, she found that when she approached the front door, she was icily calm. Fortunately her key still let her in, and she went into the house calling out to Kenneth so that they could talk this situation out. She had phoned her solicitor that afternoon and asked him to start divorce proceedings, and she knew exactly what she wanted, domestically.
    Kenneth looked a bit grey about the gills and sheepish without the wine inside him and the bravado of the night before with which it had imbued him, and Gerda looked half triumphant, half scared.
    Gathering her courage, like scattered troops, Lauren glared as fiercely as she could and said, ‘Right! This needs sorting, and it needs sorting now. You, Kenneth’ – she pointed at him – ‘are hardly ever here, so I suggest that you move into the granny annexe while you are. That will keep me where I need to be for contacts from work and postage et cetera, and when the children are here, it’s easy access for you.
    ‘I shall live in the main house. And you’ – she pointed to Gerda – ‘can get out of here. Pack your bags and bugger off. I know you’ll understand that expression because your English is so very good.’
    At this point she was interrupted by Kenneth. ‘Gerda’s going nowhere,’ he announced. ‘I’ll bow to your wish to move into the annexe, but Gerda comes with me, and when I go away again she’ll be coming with me too. You haven’t fired her; she simply doesn’t work for you anymore. She and I will be living together.’
    ‘Well, you’d better not try to get the house or the children,’ said Lauren anxiously.