Picking up the sausage, Shona took another big bite off the end.
“You must just have a dirty mind,” she told him as she chewed. “Which, you know, I might be interested in hearing some more about.”
Logan picked up his fish, dunked it in the salad cream, then took a bite. He chewed and swallowed before replying. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Shit. Are you pregnant?” Shona asked.
“No.”
“Am I pregnant? Or… wait. You’re not dumping me, are you?”
“What?” Logan shook his head. “No. No, nothing like…” He sighed. “It was just something that Maddie said. And then I was talking to Sinead, and she told me I should… That we should talk. About it.”
Shona stole another chip from his box. “About what?”
“About… I don’t know. About what happened.”
“When?”
“With…” Logan shuffled around on the couch, which was suddenly lumpier and far less comfortable than it had previously seemed. “During the last big case. When you were…”
“Oh. That.” She waved her big sausage and made a sound like a deflating balloon. “Yeah, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about on that front. Like, at all. At all.”
“You sure?”
She made the same pfffft sound again and rolled her eyes. “I’m sure as shoite,” she said, really playing up her Irish accent. “I don’t even give it a second thought. Or a first thought, even. There’s not a thought about it in my head. What are we even talking about again?”
She laughed, but it was so paper-thin he needed none of his detective skills to see through it.
“Is that why you didn’t go home?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t around?”
“What? Haha, no! Get you all full of yourself, ye big eejit!”
“It was your first night alone, wasn’t it? Since I got out of hospital,” Logan realised. “Either you’ve been here, or I’ve been at yours every night since then. Mostly here.”
He reached out for her hand, but she pulled it away. “It’s not that,” she insisted, her paper smile still fastened in place. “I just… I wanted to get ahead with the PM. That’s all.”
“You can talk to me.”
“I am talking to you now. Look.” She pointed to her mouth. “See my lips moving and hear the sound coming out? I am grand on the talking front.”
“Aye, but—”
“Jack.” She barked out his name, the smile falling away like a switch had been flicked off. “Can we just… Can we just not talk about it? Not right now?”
She fell sideways against him, and he put an arm around her shoulder, holding her in close. “OK. If that’s what you want,” Logan said. “But—”
“Pssht!” She put a finger to her lips. “Not tonight, alright? Just… just not tonight. Let’s just be normal.”
Logan plucked one of his chips from his box and dunked it in the sauce. “Do you do normal? If so, you’ve hidden that well.”
Shona smiled. “OK, maybe not normal, exactly. But normal for us.”
“Normal for us is me getting a phone call at the worst possible time, and—”
His phone rang, and he felt Shona tense up against him. Logan looked at the mobile that lay on the coffee table between the briefcase and Shona’s laptop bag. The screen was lit up, but he couldn’t make out the name on it.
“You should get it,” Shona said, after they’d sat staring at it for a while. With some effort, she detached herself from him. “It might be important.”
Logan sighed, set aside his fish supper, then leaned over and picked up the phone. “It’s just Tyler,” he said.
“It might be important,” Shona reiterated.
Logan grunted. “Did you no’ hear what I said? It’s just Tyler.”
Shona let out the first few notes of a laugh, then took a bite out of a pickled egg and nodded to the phone. “Quick, before he hangs up.”
With a sigh, Logan answered the ringing phone. “Tyler. What is it?”
“Alright, boss?” came the reply, chirpy as ever. “How’s it going?”
“It was going fine,” Logan said. “What’s happening?”
“Just got Harris to bed. Thought I’d check in to see what’s happening in the morning.”
Logan tutted. “And you couldn’t have texted?”