Not Dead Yet

option, with all the paraphernalia he would have to carry around once the baby was born. He’d looked at a few but they did not appeal. Now he had seen on a Tates garage forecourt a two-year-old Giulietta, and was totally smitten. It was a hatchback, big enough to take a pushchair.
    ‘What’s troubling you, my love?’ Cleo asked as she sat beside him on the huge red sofa. On the television on the wall opposite, with the sound muted, chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was demonstrating how to fillet a mackerel.
    ‘Cars!’ he said.
    ‘Go with your heart.’
    ‘I need to be practical.’
    She shrugged. ‘You know what? I have so many friends whose lives have been totally changed by their children. They don’t have time for each other any more. They hardly ever make love any more. Their lives are consumed by their kids. I don’t want that to happen to us. Surely we can be good parents, but still find the time for each other? Get the car you want, not the one that you think will be most practical. We can adapt. Bump will have to learn to fit in with us!’
    He smiled again and drank some more of the Martini. On an empty, caffeine fuelled stomach it was hitting the spot, making him more relaxed by the second. It suddenly occurred to him how incredibly understanding Cleo was. If he’d arrived home to Sandy at midnight on a Friday, with the knowledge that he was going to have to work over the weekend, she would have been sound asleep, and extremely bolshie when he’d disturbed her, leaving for work at dawn the next morning. But there was total understanding from Cleo, who was herself liable to be called out in the middle of any night, weekday or weekend.
    ‘You know, the other thing that’s troubling me is…’he paused as Humphrey jumped up on the sofa beside them and then rolled on his back in his favourite position, belly up, expecting his tummy to be rubbed yet again. Grace obliged.
    ‘What’s troubling me is –’ he kissed Cleo’s soft cheek – ‘I love you so much,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, is that what’s troubling you?’
    ‘Uh huh, maybe.’ He kissed her again. Then again, feeling increasingly pleasantly woozy as he drank some more of the massive Martini. ‘I love you and I can’t get enough of you.’
    ‘You never read what it said on the tin,’ she said, smiling. ‘ Use Cleo sparingly with caution .’
    ‘I’m a bloke, I don’t read instructions.’
    He stared into her eyes for some moments, then at the rest of her face. It was true, what he had read, that women could blossom in pregnancy. She looked even lovelier than ever.
    ‘Yep, well, I’m a female, so I read instructions and warning labels. But luckily for you I missed the one that said, Engaging with Detective Superintendent Roy Grace could make you dangerously horny .’
    ‘I think I must have missed a similar one about you.’
    ‘So?’ she leaned across, kissed him on the lips, then lowered her hands between his legs, and pressed, provocatively. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
    ‘I thought – you know – that we weren’t meant to—?’
    ‘We’re not, Detective Superintendent,’ she said. Then she grinned. ‘Well, not really. Are you hungry?’
    ‘No, just horny.’
    She kissed him again. Then after a moment, she said, ‘Tell me something.’
    ‘What?’ he murmured.
    ‘When you made love to Sandy, what did you think of? I mean – who did you think of?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Was it always her – her naked body that aroused you? Or did you think of other women?’
    ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said.
    She kissed each of his eyes. ‘Don’t be evasive, I’m interested.’
    He shrugged. ‘I guess in the early days it was her. But later on, probably other women, too.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘I don’t recall.’
    ‘Movie stars? Models?’
    ‘Some.’
    ‘And when we make love? It can’t be attractive to make love to a plump woman with blue veins all over her breasts. Who do you fantasize about now?’
    ‘You,’ he said. ‘You are a complete and utter turn-on for me.’
    ‘You’re lying, Grace.’
    ‘I’m not!’
    ‘Yeah? Prove it?’
    He gently lowered her right hand down his body. Her eyes widened in surprise and she smiled seductively.
    ‘I rest my case,’ he said.
    She kissed him again. ‘Not sure I want you having any rest, not for a little while, my love!’

17
    He was angry.
    Not many people knew more about anger than he did. That world-class superbitch, formerly known as his wife, and once