Dreaming of the Bones

reached for the glasses in the cupboard.
    He admired the elongated line of her body as she stretched, and the curves hinted at beneath the bulk of her jumper. Stepping up behind her, he laid his hands lightly on her waist. ”Mmmm, red, I think.”
    Gemma slipped out of his grasp with an abstracted smile. When she’d poured them both a glass of burgundy, she cleared the dishes from the half-moon table while he ran hot water and squirted soap in the basin.
    ”Sit,” he ordered her as he began the soaping and rinsing. ”There’s not room for us both in here—or there is, but it’s quite distracting.” When this mildly flirtatious comment received no response, he looked round as much as his dripping hands would allow. She sat in one of the slatted chairs at the table, booted feet stretched out before her, staring into the wineglass cradled in her lap. He started to speak, then thought better of it, slotting the last of the plates into the drying rack before he wiped his hands and turned to her.
    ”Gemma, what is it?” he asked, taking the other chair so that he could look directly into her face. ”You’ve hardly said a word since we left Cambridge .”
    ”Oh.” She looked at him as if surprised to find him there. ”I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”
    ”So I gathered. Care to elaborate?”
    She frowned. ”I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to put it into words.”
    With some trepidation, he asked, ”Is this about Vic?” He’d thought taking Gemma with him the best way to allay her fears, but perhaps it had been a mistake.
    To his surprise, the comers of Gemma’s mouth turned up in a smile. ”I didn’t expect to like her, you know, but I did. Even though there’s still a connection between the two of you, I found I didn’t mind. I don’t know why I was so frightened of it, or why I expected to be so intimidated by her.”
    ”Intimidated by Vic? Why?”
    Hesitating, Gemma looked away from him, then said slowly, ”You know I did my A levels, but then I decided on the Academy rather than University. I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk to her—that we wouldn’t have a thing in common. Or worse, that she’d talk down to me, be all smug about her education and her career.”
    ”Why on earth should she—”
    ”No, wait, let me finish.” Gemma gave him a quelling look, her brows drawn together again. ”It didn’t turn out that way at all. The things she said made sense to me, and the funny thing is, I think I understood something you didn’t.”
    ”What are you talking about?” he asked, thoroughly puzzled now.
    ”You told her that the end of her book about Lydia didn’t matter. You didn’t see that it’s the end that gives the book its truth.” He must have looked blank, because she shook her head in frustration. ”Look at it this way. Vic’s right about women needing stories about other women’s accomplishments. Do you know how much it would have meant to me when I started out in the Met if I’d had another woman’s experience to guide me?
    ”There were less than a handful of female DCIs then, and they were playing by men’s rules. But I wanted something different. I thought that I could be a good police officer—maybe even a better police officer —because I’m a woman, not in spite of it, and there were times, especially in the beginning, that I almost gave up. There was nobody to reassure me that I had something special to offer, that I wasn’t crazy, that it could be done.”
    ”I’m sorry,” he said, taken aback by her intensity. ”I didn’t know that’s how you felt. You’ve never said.”
    ”Those aren’t things that are considered appropriate to say.” Her smile held little humor. ”And that makes other women’s stories even more important, including Lydia’s. But if Lydia killed herself, it changes her story. I’m not saying that it makes it invalid, but it does make it a different story.”
    ”I don’t understand. Surely she would still have accomplished the same things?”
    ”But they wouldn’t matter in the same way. Suicide is an admission of defeat. It tells us that she couldn’t put all the pieces of her dream together, and if she couldn’t, maybe we can’t, either.”
    ”Are you saying I shouldn’t have told Vic to leave it alone?”
    Gemma took a belated sip of her wine. ”Not exactly. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what you said, because Vic needs Lydia to have not committed suicide, and