‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she says, blustering in and taking her coat off immediately, ‘had an issue with my neighbour, had to help her with something.’

It’s been raining outside; I can see the droplets on her coat and a few in her hair, and I can smell it. I love the smell of rain; it evokes memories and makes me think of Rachel. But then again, most things make me think of her.

‘Horrible weather,’ she says, ‘shitty in fact… I’ve just washed my hair as well.’ She raises her eyebrows, which are a different colour to her highlighted hair and a bit bushy. I like bushy.

‘Job well done,’ I say, referring to her hair. I could’ve said it looks nice but that seems too schmaltzy and might make her think that she sounded like she was fishing for a compliment; which I don’t think she was really.

She smiles though and it lights up her whole face.

‘Been here long?’

I shake my head. ‘Not at all. Can I get you a coffee?’

‘Mmmm, please. A latte with almond syrup would be lovely.’ She reaches into her handbag, shuffles around for her purse.

‘I’m surprised you can find anything in there,’ I joke and she laughs.

‘I’m a woman,’ she shrugs, ‘I need things. Just in case—’

‘In case of what?’

‘In case of anything,’ she says, still rifling around. It reminds me of the bag on the CCTV footage, large and bucket-shaped, a ‘tote’, Davis called it.

‘Nice bag,’ I remark, ‘designer?’

‘Thanks,’ she beams, ‘birthday gift a few years ago. A friend bought it back from Thailand for me. Although I admit I can’t be positive of its authenticity. She brought a few back as gifts. I like it, I can get all my shi— all my stuff in it.’

‘It’s nice,’ I say, ‘all the rage aren’t they – tote bags?’ I wince. I sound like my father.

She shoots me a puzzled look.

‘That coffee then…’

---

I make my way to the counter. I imagine she’s looking at me from behind and I wonder what she’s thinking now that she’s seen me in person, aside from the fact that I’m a dickhead who makes small talk about handbags. I didn’t think too hard about how to dress for our meeting simply because I couldn’t; I wasn’t granted the luxury of procrastination, which may be just as well. I’ve come straight from the nick and I need a distraction from the Baxter case, from teddy bears and forensic reports, CCTV and post-mortems and dead-end leads. I need a distraction full stop, either that or a real break. So, I’m dressed in my work get-up: plain shirt and black fitted trousers, a leather jacket; ‘smart casual’ I think they call it, whoever they are, the fashion police I suppose. I had a little brush-up in the bathroom before I left though, cleaned my teeth and splashed on a little Bleu de Chanel that I keep in a washbag in my desk drawer. It was the best I could do.

My heart’s beating a little quicker than usual as I place my order with the overworked and underpaid barista. I’m not entirely sure why. I didn’t get palpitations when I met Keen Shirl, or the other two dates, if you can call them that, so I’m wondering if subconsciously I already like her. She’s very pretty. I remember the first time I met Rach; she worked in a restaurant around the corner from where I used to live and we joked about how we were so close to each other for all that time before our fates collided. It was a Thai place, Gili’s, upmarket fast food really. And, like her, it’s no longer there today. She was the head chef. My order had been messed up and she came out from the kitchen to apologise personally. That was Rach – professional, and never afraid to admit when she’d cocked up. I was kind of pissed off at the time because the service had been slow and then the wrong plate arrived… but the moment she came to the table, well, I’m not one to complain in restaurants anyway, unless it’s really dire and unavoidable because chefs are a ruthless yet sensitive bunch of bastards and I’m always of the mind that they’ll do something horrible to your food if you make a fuss. I suppose it was one of those ‘eyes met’ moments, the kind that only exist in films and books and songs, the kind of moment that you know doesn’t really happen in real life. Only it does: it did. And it happened to me. I can’t explain it any better than that and when I try to it sounds saccharine and stomach-turning, and I imagine people groaning and simulating sticking two fingers down their throats. But that’s how it happened. I looked at her face and that was that. It’s a strange feeling, when you meet a person and you know, somehow, deep inside on a level neither of you can comprehend, that you were supposed to love them. I knew all about strange coincidence and the irony of timing thanks to my job, but I’d never been big on fate, not until April 2003, not until that day. I made love to her that same night; I used to rib her about how quickly I got her knickers off, unfair of me I know, double standards definitely. But it was only playful and she knew it. Rachel wasn’t promiscuous, her morals were fierce, her boundaries well established. It had just been the logical conclusion of fate. We met, fell in love on sight, went to bed together that same night and she never left. Neither of us were ever embarrassed about admitting it; we never censored our story. That’s how it happened.

The harassed barista slides the coffee in my direction and I make an instinctive decision not to tell my ‘date’ what I do for a living. Not yet anyway.

She takes a mouthful of coffee, licking the milk foam from her pale lips. Her hair is different to how it looked in her profile photograph; it’s darker, shorter perhaps. She glances at me from over her coffee cup with low eyes and says, ‘shall we sack coffee off and go and get something stronger?’