Dead Tomorrow

and said nothing. Then she looked down at her phone and resumed her endless texting.
    ‘Shirley Linsell?’ Lynn asked.
    ‘Yes. And you must be Caitlin’s mum, Lynn.’
    Lynn smiled. ‘Nice to meet you.’
    ‘I’ll take you along to your room. We’ve got a nice single room for you, Caitlin, for the next few days. And we’ve arranged an overnight room nearby for you, Mrs Beckett.’ Addressing them both, she added, ‘I’m here to answer any questions that you have, so please ask anything you like, anything at all that you want to know.’
    Still looking down at her phone, Caitlin said, ‘Am I going to die?’
    ‘No, of coursenot, darling!’ Lynn said.
    ‘I wasn’t asking you,’ Caitlin said. ‘I was asking Shirley.’
    There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Then the transplant coordinator said, ‘What makes you think that, Caitlin?’
    ‘I’d have to be pretty fucking stupid not to, wouldn’t I?’

22
    Roy Grace followed the taillights of the black Audi TT, which was some distance ahead of him and drawing further away all the time. Cleo didn’t seem to fully understand what speed limits were. Nor, as she approached the junction with Sackville and Nevill roads, what traffic lights were for.
    Shit. He felt a stab of fear for her.
    The light turned amber. But her brake lights did not come on.
    His heart was suddenly in his mouth. Being T-boned by a car running a stop light produced some of the worst injuries you could have. And it was not only Cleo in that speeding car now. It was their child too.
    The lights went red. A good two seconds later, the Audi hurtled through them. Roy gripped his steering wheel hard, fearing for her.
    Then she was safely over and continuing along Old Shoreham Road, approaching Hove Park on her left.
    He halted his unmarked Ford Focus estate at the lights, his heart hammering, tempted to call her, to tell her to slow down. But it was no use, this was how she always drove. She was worse, he had come to realize in the five months they had been dating, than his friend and colleague Glenn Branson, who had only recently passed his Police High Speed Pursuit test and liked to demonstrate his skills behind the wheel–or rather, lack of them–to Roy at every opportunity.
    Why did Cleo drive so recklessly when she was so meticulous in everything else she did? Surely, he reasoned, someone who worked in a mortuary and handled, almost every day, the torn and broken bodies of people killed on the roads would take extra care when driving. And yet one of the consultant pathologists for Brighton and Hove, Dr Nigel Churchman, who had recently transferred up north, raced cars at weekends. Perhaps, he sometimes thought, if you worked in such close proximity to death, it made you want to challenge and defy it.
    The lights changed. He checkedthere was no one doing a Cleo coming across, then drove over the junction, accelerating, but mindful that there were two cameras on the next stretch of road. Cleo totally denied that she drove fast, as if she was blind to it. And that scared him. He loved her so much, and even more so tonight than ever. The thought of anything happening to her was more than he could bear.
    For nearly ten years after Sandy vanished, he had been unable to form any relationship with another woman. Until Cleo. During all that time he had constantly been searching for Sandy, waiting for news, hoping for a call, or for her to walk in through the front door of their home one day. But that had begun to change now. He loved Cleo as much as, and maybe even more than, he had ever loved Sandy, and if she did suddenly reappear, no matter how good her explanation, he strongly doubted he would leave Cleo for her. In his mind and in his heart he had moved on.
    And now this most incredible thing of all. Cleo was pregnant! Six weeks. Confirmed this morning, she had told him. She was carrying his child. Their child.
    It was so ironic, he thought. In their life together before her disappearance, Sandy had been unable to conceive. The first few years they hadn’t worried about it, having made a decision to wait a while before starting a family. But then, when they had begun trying, nothing had happened. During that last year before she had disappeared, they had both had fertility tests. The problem turned out to be with Sandy, some biochemistry to do with the viscosity of the mucus in her fallopian tubes that the specialist had explained in detail, and Roy had done his best to