Necessary as Blood

bright.
    Drowsily, her mind went round and round, trying to make sense of the confluence of geography. Columbia Road, the centre point, the vanishing point. Around it, like uneven spokes on a wheel, Lou Phillips‘s flat... Naz and Lou‘s office... Gail Gilles‘s council flat... Pippa Nightingale‘s gallery. All within a veritable stone‘s throw, a five-minute walk from each other.
    Were they connected by more than coincidence? Where had Sandra gone that day? If she had gone to confront her brothers, had it been at her mum‘s flat? If they had killed her, had Gail Gilles been a party to it, or at least an accessory after the fact?
    And if Naz had come to the same conclusion, would he have gone to talk to them, alone, and allowed them to drug him without putting up a fight? There had been no mark of violence on his body.
    And if any of these things were true, where did Lucas Ritchie come into it? Or Ahmed Azad?
    No, Gemma thought, there was something that she was missing, some part of the pattern she couldn‘t see. Sandra‘s decision to leave Charlotte with Roy Blakely, when there were only a few minutes before she was to meet Naz for lunch, had surely been spur of the moment. What had happened to Sandra that Sunday afternoon, between Fournier Street and Columbia Road? And there was something about Sandra‘s collage, the one on her work table... Why did the girls have no faces? Why...
    The next thing Gemma knew, Duncan was lifting Charlotte from her arms, and the room had grown dim. She reached out, making a little sound of protest, but Duncan said, ‘Shhh. Betty‘s here. Go back to sleep.‘
    But now the space beside her seemed empty, and she felt oddly bereft. Voices drifted up the stairs, then the front door slammed — Toby‘s doing, no doubt. Gemma sat up, switching on the light against the dusk, trying to bring back the remnants of an interrupted dream.
    The phone rang and she swore. Whatever it had been, the fragment of clarity was gone. The ringing went on. Duncan and the boys must still be outside talking to Betty, Gemma thought. She stretched towards the night-stand and picked up the handset.

    When Duncan came upstairs a few minutes later, she was still crying. The tears had come unexpectedly, uncontrollably, when she‘d hung up the phone, and she had been horrified to find herself sobbing.
    ‘Gemma! What‘s happened?‘ He hurried to her and sat down on the bed, peering at her anxiously. Are you all right?‘
    ‘Yes. No,‘ she said, on a hiccup. ‘I mean, it‘s not me. That was Jack. Winnie‘s not doing well. They‘ve admitted her to hospital. Enforced bed rest, and the baby‘s not due for another month.‘ She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.
    Duncan handed her a tissue from the night-stand and she blew her nose. ‘But she‘ll be okay,‘ he said, ‘now they‘re looking after her.‘
    ‘They‘ve managed to stop the contractions, but her blood pressure‘s up... I can‘t bear thinking they might lose the baby — not Jack and Winnie, after everything they‘ve been through. And not after — yesterday, the hospital — ‘ She couldn‘t finish.
    He pulled her to him gently, and stroked her back. ‘Oh, love, I know,‘ he said, and his voice was rough. ‘But try not to worry. Are you sure you feel all right?‘ Gemma gave a strangled laugh. ‘I think this stupid head injury is making me daft. I never cry like this.‘ She pulled away so that she could look at him. ‘And the worst thing is, it‘s not just because I‘m worried about Winnie. Part of it is just because I‘m selfish. I so wanted Winnie and Jack to be here for the wedding, and now it seems everything‘s gone wrong...‘
    He glanced away, his face very still. When he spoke, his voice was flat, colourless. ‘I understand if you don‘t want to go through with it, Gemma.‘
    ‘No, no,‘ she said, taking his hand and rubbing her thumb across the fine skin between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It‘s not that at all.‘ He looked at her then, but she wasn‘t sure she could read the expression in his grey eyes. ‘The thing is...‘ She struggled to find the words. ‘I just want us to go on as we are. I don‘t want to get married. I want to be married. It‘s the wedding I can‘t cope with, and my bloody family. But I can‘t bear to disappoint my mum, and I‘m so afraid... I‘m so afraid she won‘t—‘
    ‘Oh, Gemma.‘ This time he pulled her to him so tightly it hurt her head, but she