Page 39 of Play Our Song

“It’s alright,” Sophie said calmly. “It’s alright. I can see that you’re angry.”

“Angry?” Tilly said, feeling the beat of it inside her. “Angry? I can’t even…” She took a breath and another breath, trying to make some sense out of all this.

Sophie was a Farmer. As in the Farmers that she was pretty sure had something to do with the car theft ring. And she’d… she’d kissed her. Another very shaky breath. Then Tilly did the only thing she could think of doing.

“I can’t be here,” she said. “I can’t be this close to you.” And she walked out without looking back.

THE HOUSE WAS quiet went she got back. She’d gotten into the habit of coming in through the front, rather than using her own door. It felt strange to feel such silence in this house, and she thought she was alone until she heard a rustle of papers from the living room.

Out of politeness more than anything, she stuck her head around the door. Mila was sitting on the floor, the coffee table covered with papers, a calculator in her hand. She looked up in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Tilly said. She was still in shock, she supposed, still not able to believe that Sophie hadn’t told her before, that she hadn’t figured it out herself, that she’d practically thrown herself at the daughter of what could be Whitebridge’s biggest crime family.

“Oh dear,” Mila said. “You look like you’ve had quite the day.” She put her calculator down. “How about a drink?”

“A drink?” Tilly said, like she’d barely heard of the word.

Mila laughed. “Sit down on that couch right there. Max has taken the kids to see a film. They won’t be back for ages. I’ll be right with you.”

Tilly did as she was told. How could she have kissed Sophie? How could she not have known? How could she have potentially compromised her investigation like that? But it wasn’t her fault, was it? Not that that would wash in any kind of internal investigation. She couldn’t prove that she hadn’t known who Sophie was.

But then, maybe Sophie knew nothing about anything. Or perhaps she knew everything, and she was just stringing Tilly along, trying to find out how the investigation was going. Maybe this was all a set-up.

Tilly blinked away hot tears. She wasn’t going to cry over this. She just wasn’t.

“Here,” Mila said, coming back in and handing her a glass. “Drink that.” She clinked her glass against Tilly’s and then sat back down on the carpet in front of the coffee table. “Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t think I can,” Tilly said.

Mila blew a raspberry. “Course you can. You can do whatever you like. Would it help if I agreed to be sworn to secrecy? I won’t tell Max, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She considered this for a second. “I mean, as long as he doesn’t need to know, that is.”

Tilly looked at her glass, it was filled with a dark-colored liquid that smelled suspiciously sweet. Glancing over at Mila, she could see that her glass was a much lighter color, something else entirely. “What is this?”

“Gin and Dubonnet,” Mila said, pulling a face. “It’s too strong for me, but Max likes it when he’s had a long day. And you can tell me things if you need to. There’s no need to keep things bottled up.”

Tilly sipped at the drink. It was strong. But it was sweet and sticky and quite satisfying at the same time. “I think I might be involved in a conflict of interest,” she said.

Mila raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound at all like you, at least from what I know about you.”

“It wasn’t an intentional one,” said Tilly firmly. She sighed and tried a different tack. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to say. “How do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Stay with Max. When he’s a policeman and you’re not, and you live in this town too and… And just how does it work?”

“Well, I’m not exactly a criminal mastermind,” Mila laughed. “It’s not like Max has to arrest me once a month.”

“Isn’t it hard though?”

“Of course it is,” Mila said. She was looking down at the papers as she said this and Tilly could see that they were the bank papers she’d seen Mila with before. “But there are advantages. Besides, neither of us wanted to move away from here. This is where I was born, where I want to bring up my children.”

“But what if, say, your business partner was a criminal?”

“Ant?” said Mila. “She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Anyway, she’s far too busy for committing crimes. Plus, her favorite crime is murder, so that’s the one she’d want to do and I don’t think she’s got the stomach for it, to be honest.”

“Murder?” Tilly asked.

“We run a crime bookshop,” said Mila. “And Ant knows a lot about crime. Maybe even more than Max does.”

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