All the Lonely People by Geraldine Evans

Author:Geraldine Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery fiction, funny mysteries, cozy mysteries series, murder mystery, funny mysteries in series, boxed set of mystery ebooks, Murder Mystery Series, mystery novels, male detectives, traditional detectives, british detectives, series detective novels, Detective Series, detective novels, detective series with family drama, crimr fiction, crime novels, crime series, british crime series, crime
Publisher: Geraldine Evans
Published: 2017-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Rafferty was relieved, when he reached Llewellyn and Maureen's flat that evening, and was let in, to see that Abra had actually turned up this time.

She was sitting in Llewellyn's minimalist living room clutching a large glass of red wine and smoking a cigarette. Rafferty, who had given up the weed some months before, felt like bumming one off her. Always supposing she’d share one. Her face looked set and unfriendly, as if she were having serious doubts about this meeting. He felt his heart do a backflip at the realisation that he might, after all, have lost her for good.

Yet she had turned up. Surely that meant something? Like that she still had feelings for him.

He watched as she lit another cigarette and he furtively inhaled the smoke. He was surprised that Llewellyn had allowed her to smoke in his home; he and Maureen were pretty hot on maintaining their no-smoking ban. But the palpable tension in the room explained Llewellyn's unusual relaxation of the rule.

Rafferty drew a deep breath and said, 'Hello, Abra. You're looking well.' She wasn't, as it happened. She looked decidedly rough, but Rafferty didn't feel it a good idea to say so.

'There's no need to play the polite stranger routine, Joe. I'm not looking well at all and I know it. I look like shit.'

As the dark shadows under her eyes and their lacklustre dullness attested to this, Rafferty thought it better to say nothing, He just managed to catch himself from nodding an agreement with her statement. Abra's long chestnut hair look dry and lifeless; her nails were bitten to the quick and she had put her make up on with a shaking hand if the traces of mascara on her eyebrow told him anything. I'm not a detective for nothing, he thought. He was relieved that he wasn't the only one feeling sick to the stomach.

'How have you been?' she asked once she had taken a huge gulp of her wine and another drag on her cigarette.

'Lonely. Missing you.'

‘You should have thought of that before.’

‘I know.’ He hoped this wasn’t going to turn out to be all his fault. He tried again. ‘What about you? Have you missed me?’

‘I’ve been far too busy to think about missing anyone’, she retorted, as if to admit to such a weakness would sabotage her game plan.

‘I’ve been busy, too,’ he said. ‘You’ve probably read about my latest murder case in the papers.’

‘I can’t say I have. I’ve been way too busy at work to read the papers or watch the news.’

This was hopeless. He’d thought she’d at least meet him halfway, but she was barely quarter there. He glanced at Llewellyn for some encouragement.

Llewellyn, who could be a bit of a wuss when it came to emotions, escaped into the kitchen under the pretext of fetching more wine. Instead, Maureen took the ball and ran with it.

‘Why don’t you tell him the truth, Abra? You know very well you’ve missed him, too. You told me so.

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