Free Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid Page B

Oxford on Saturday to see my parents. I need to tell them about us.'
    'I thought your mother already knew? You said she kept digging away at you about me when you were home last month.'
    'She knows because she's guessed. I've not actually told her. Not in so many words. And Dad is completely oblivious. He's going to be a nightmare.' Magda drew away slightly, tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling. 'I can already hear the Catholic fundamentalist rant. Honestly, he makes His Holiness Benny One Six look liberal.'
    'Would it help if I came with you?' Jay reached up to stroke Magda's hair.
    Magda gave a fake laugh. 'Not in any sense of the word "help" that I'm familiar with. Have you forgotten that my mother barred you from the house all those years ago when she discovered you were gay? No, I've just got to grit my teeth and get through it. Hopefully, the fallout won't be too horrendous. And Wheelie's coming up with me, so I will have someone in my corner.'
    'Poor Maggot,' Jay said. 'Maybe I should sit outside in the car in case you get cast out like a Victorian fallen woman.'
    'It's not beyond the bounds of possibility.' Magda propped herself up on her elbows. 'Enough of this. We're supposed to be celebrating. Is there any food in the house or do we need to order takeaway? I'm starving.'
    'All that loving. It makes a woman hungry. How does pizza sound?'
    Magda grinned. 'Perfect. We can eat it in bed. Then we don't have far to go afterwards.'
    'That's right. We need to make the most of the next few days if you're going to abandon me for Oxford.'
    Magda raised one eyebrow. 'Maybe you should sit outside in the car after all.'

11
    Saturday

    C harlie hadn't planned to revisit St Scholastika's, but to get to the Newsams' house from the guest house she'd booked herself into meant passing the college gates. And she couldn't resist her old haunts. Some people, she knew, never quite cut the umbilical cord with their Oxford colleges, continually returning for whatever excuse they could come up with - a lecture, a guest dinner, a gaudy - but she had never been one of them. She'd mostly loved her time at Schollie's, but she'd been ready for the less cosseted world outside. The only time she'd been back had been for her ten-year gaudy, an event that had depressed her beyond words.
    Returning to Schollie's then had been strange. Almost schizophrenic. Charlie had felt like her real-time self-a successful professional whose opinions were sought and respected by her peers, a woman who had made the transition from infatuations to love, someone at home in her own skin - and, simultaneously, like that awkward creature on the cusp of adolescence and adulthood, hiding uncertainty behind arrogance, desperately trying to figure out the shape of her future. Encountering people who knew only what she had been rather than what she had become had been a disorienting experience. She'd felt like a shape-shifter by the end of the evening, glad to escape to the Spartan college room with its grimly single bed. It had not been an experience that filled her with a desire to repeat it.
    So wandering round her old stamping grounds hadn't been on Charlie's agenda. For most of the three-hour drive from Manchester to Oxford, she'd alternated between a fantasy that involved Lisa Kent and not much sleep, and castigating herself for even allowing the thought to cross her mind. What she couldn't deny was that she'd put herself in temptation's way.
    As soon as she'd manoeuvred herself into a trip to Oxford without Maria, Charlie had texted Lisa. Am in Oxford Friday/ Saturday, possibly Sunday. Get together? Lisa had simply texted back, Will email l8r, leaving Charlie in a ferment of impatience. The email, when it arrived, was a disappointment. But Charlie had to acknowledge that in her present frame of mind, almost any response would have been. According to Lisa, most of her weekend was regrettably spoken for: training sessions with those chosen to spread the