Lasting Damage Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’ve offended you and you’ll clam up again, just when I’d got you warmed up.’
    ‘I’m going to have to go bed,’ said Gibbs. ‘I can’t listen to you any more. You’re like a Sunday colour supplement – full of all kinds of shit.’
    Olivia’s eyes widened. She stared at him in silence.
    Fuck. Talk about ending the day on a high note.
    ‘Look, I didn’t mean . . .’
    ‘It’s okay. I probably deserved it,’ said Olivia briskly. ‘Typical – the man who doesn’t speak manages to say one thing, and it turns out to be something horrible about me that I’m going to have to carry around with me and feel rubbish about for at least the next year.’
    ‘I didn’t mean it in a bad way,’ said Gibbs. ‘It was just an observation.’
    ‘You want to know where Simon and Charlie are? Fine. I can do better than tell you – I can show you a picture of their villa.’ Olivia pulled her mobile phone out of her handbag and started to press buttons. Was she expecting Gibbs to say, ‘No, forget it, it doesn’t matter’? If so, she’d be disappointed. If he’d wanted to know before, why should that have changed now, just because she was upset and angry with him?
    After a few seconds of finger-jabbing, Olivia thrust her phone in front of his face. ‘There you go. Los Delfines – the honeymoon villa.’
    Gibbs looked at a small photograph of a long, white two-storey building that might have been designed to accommodate twenty people. There were balconies at most of the windows. Landscaped gardens, an outdoor bar and barbecue area, a swimming pool that looked big enough for an Olympic contest, all glowing in bright sunlight.
    ‘Spain?’ Gibbs guessed.
    ‘Puerto Banus. Near Marbella.’
    ‘All that for just the two of them? Not bad.’
    ‘Insurance against unhappiness,’ said Olivia. She still sounded annoyed. ‘Fifteen grand’s worth. No one could possibly be unhappy in a place like that, right?’
    ‘Why would they be unhappy? They’re on their honeymoon.’
    Gibbs didn’t think she was going to answer. Then she said, ‘For years, Charlie’s mobilising grievance has been not having Simon, in any and every sense. Now that they’re married, she’s got him. Sometimes, when you get something, you stop wanting it.’
    ‘Sometimes you stop wanting it before you get it,’ said Gibbs.
    ‘Do you? I don’t.’
    ‘My wife Debbie’s – what did you call it? – mobilising grievance is not being able to have a baby. I’ve stopped wanting one.’
    ‘Has she?’ Olivia asked.
    ‘No.’ If only .
    ‘There you go, then. And you probably didn’t want one all that much in the first place.’
    ‘Come upstairs with me,’ Gibbs said.
    ‘Upstairs?’
    ‘To my room. Or yours.’
    ‘Why?’ Olivia asked.
    ‘Why do you think?’ What are you playing at, dickhead? Don’t you know a bad idea when you have one?
    ‘Why?’ she asked again.
    ‘I could say, ‘‘Because for once, just for a change, I’d like to have sex with someone who isn’t obsessed with getting pregnant.’’ Or I could say, ‘‘Because I’m drunk and horny’’, or ‘‘Today’s a special occasion and tomorrow it’ll be back to normal life for both of us.’’ How about, ‘‘Because you’re the most beautiful, sexy woman I’ve ever met’’? Risky – you might not believe me.’
    Olivia frowned. ‘Ideally, you ought to be going through your answer options in silence, in the privacy of your own head. Not out loud to me.’
    In the privacy of your own head . It was because of the things she said. Not that he’d ever tell her that.
    He took her glass from her hand and put it down on the table. ‘Say yes,’ he said. ‘It’s easy.’

Chapter 3
    Saturday 17 July 2010
     
    ‘Why did you want to speak to Simon Waterhouse?’ the detective called Sam asks. His surname is something long and unusual beginning with a K – he spelled it for me when he introduced himself. I didn’t take it in, and didn’t feel I could ask