The Kill Call

Like a doctor – you know, someone dependable, reassuring. Someone who actually wants to help you. There are women who would do anything to believe they had a relationship with a man like that. GPs know it well. It’s called dependency syndrome.’
    ‘She’d have to be an obsessive kind of woman.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Cooper put his drink down. ‘Claire, I appreciate that you’re concerned for me, but it
is
my life, you know.’
    Claire sighed. ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘I think you’re missing Mum and Dad a lot more than you let on, Ben. And they do say that you’re often looking for – Well, let’s change the subject.’
    He stared at her, puzzled by what she could mean. But before he could ask her, he saw Liz was making her way back through the crowds from the ladies. And then the moment had passed.
    Watching the two of them in cautious conversation, Cooper tried to analyse his feelings. Sometimes he seriously doubted his ability to pick the right woman. He’d been going out with Liz Petty longer than anyone else he’d ever known. They’d even gone through a Christmas together, and he’d met her parents. Boxing Day lunch at their house in Bakewell. A subtle barrage of questions over the mince pies about his background, his family, his prospects in the police. Old-fashioned parents who desperately wanted to feel that their approval was needed.
    But he hadn’t minded that. It would have been the same the other way round, if he’d been able to take Liz home to meet his father and mother. But that would have to have been years ago, before Dad was killed, before Mum became so ill. He tried to imagine Boxing Day lunch with all of his family there – Dad at the top of the table, upright and solemn like an Old Testament prophet as he carved the joint, Mum fussing about, backwards and forwards to the kitchen, until she’d crammed the huge table to capacity and plates of vegetables threatened to tip off the edge. And there would have been Matt and Kate, of course, and the girls. And maybe Claire, too – though she usually managed to avoid those huge meals and call at less demanding times, when only the sherry and chocolates were on offer.
    Could he imagine introducing Liz into that gathering, subjecting her to the third degree, the iron-jawed interrogation by his father, the more discreet insinuations of his mother, the candid curiosity of Matt, and Kate’s well meaning attempts at intimacy? Would he even have wanted to?
    He couldn’t really explain to himself why the question was important. But it had been preying on his mind ever since that Boxing Day visit. He thought he had probably passed the test with Mr and Mrs Petty. But would Liz have survived the same ordeal among the Coopers at Bridge End Farm?
    And what was it that Claire had been about to tell him people said? Could it be that when you chose a partner in life, you were subconsciously looking for someone who was just like your mother?
    Ben was used to being told that he was trying too hard to emulate his father, that he would be forever standing in the shadow of Sergeant Joe Cooper, the model copper who’d died in the course of his duty, kicked to death on the streets of Edendale. The last thing he needed was a mother figure. That definitely wasn’t what he was looking for in Liz.
    It was a funny thing, though. It actually seemed to be Claire who was starting to turn into his mother.
       
    That night, Claire had emailed copies of the photos she’d taken at the National Memorial Arboretum. While Cooper waited for them to download on to his PC, he spooned some tuna-flavoured Whiskas into a bowl for Randy, hoping the cat might be tempted by his favourite food.
    He smiled to himself as he recalled the scene at Watersaw House stables, with the horse passing its opinion on Fry in a way that the owners had been a little too polite to do. He’d never seen Fry quite so angry before. Her nostrils had flared wider than the horse’s.
    Alicia Forbes had been all right, though, hadn’t she? Well, for a pony girl. He wasn’t sure what she’d meant about giving the wrong impression, though. Lots of men his age weren’t married – either because they hadn’t decided to settle down yet, or because marriage just wasn’t regarded as the social obligation it once was. Perhaps it was different in the circles that the Forbes moved in. But what had owning a cat got to do with it?
    Then Cooper looked at the cat, and the cat stared back at him in