Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [106]
Frightened of what the morning might bring.
'Do you want to go home?' he asked.
Roz shook her head. 'I was dreaming,' she said.
They lay back down under the warm blanket.
A bird woke up in the tree above them and started to warble cheerily.
Bernice brushed her hair and watched her face in the mirror. There were dark lines under her eyes, faint creases at their corners that threatened crow's-feet in the not too distant future. Her diary was open on the dresser, a pen laid across an empty page. The yellow edges of sticky memo sheets poked out from between the pages at the front of the notebook. A pair of figurines faced each other over a line of unopened cosmetic jars: a scowling Roz was jabbing her finger at Chris's chest. An untouched bottle of something industrial stood next to two standard issue medical hypospray capsules. A coffee mug rested on top of a heavy six-ring folder.
It was just a dream, she told herself.
Bernice put down the hairbrush and picked up the hypospray capsules. The skull on the hand-drawn skull and crossbones was smiling but that meant nothing: skulls grinned, it was a well-known cliché. The butterfly was much less detailed: an elongated oval for a body, two single lines on each side, drawn into double curves for the wings, two thinner lines for the antennae.
'You and your big mouth,' she said to her reflection.
A memory reached out and put a hand upon her shoulder; so vividly did she feel it that she unthinkingly dropped the capsules and reached to take Guy's hand in both of her own.
Nothing. She felt nothing but her own skin, her own bone and muscle.
'Pull yourself together, Summerfield,' she said. 'Now is not the time to get maudlin. It wouldn't have worked out and you know it. You're a star-hopping adventurer and he was an ex-Templar. It would have taken you six months just to explain how to operate the vacuum cleaner and another three years to explain why it was his job.'
What would Guy de Carnac say if he could see her now, crying in front of the mirror like a teenager.
It would have worked out, she knew that; they would have made it work. They should have at least got their chance, that was all anyone could really ask for.
She bent down and picked the capsules off the floor and set them back on the dresser.
'I don't owe you any favours, Kadiatu,' she said, 'but I'm damned if I'm going to have your blood on my hands.'
That's it, Doctor, she thought, the bitch lives.
FeLixi squatted on the river bank, the morning sun hot on his naked back and shoulders as he watched Roz easing herself cautiously into the water. 'It's still freezing,' she called.
'Of course it is,' he called back. 'What did you expect?'
Roz gingerly splashed water over her face and shoulders. Sunlight glittered off the rivulets running down the brown slopes of her breasts and around the strangely rounded areolae of her nipples. FeLixi admired the spare angularity of her hips and thighs, the curve of her back as she bent down to wash her face, the uncompromising set of her shoulders.
'Aren't you going to wash?' she asked.
'In that?'
'If you think I'm coming anywhere near you until you've washed,' said Roz, 'you've got another think coming.'
FeLixi sighed and stood up.
'Where are you going?'
'There's soap in the hamper,' he said.
She washed his back. The water was shockingly cold but the sun kept them from freezing. She turned round and he reciprocated, working his thumbs into the permanent knot of tension between her shoulder blades.
'I found a body in a pool once,' said Roz. 'It had six fingers on each hand.'
FeLixi paused with his fingertips resting on her back. Her skin texture was subtly different from his own, not coarser exactly, but somehow thicker, as if it had been designed for a rougher environment.
'Don't stop,' she said. 'I was enjoying that.'
'Your first dead person?' asked feLixi.
'My first murder victim,' she said. 'On a little