like a … dog on a bone.’
Molly resisted the urge to snigger. Ewan might be a genius, and gorgeous, but he was shit at similes.
‘You know what will happen, if some clever dick from the papers gets a whiff of our work before we’re ready to announce it publicly, it will end up splashed on the pages of some rag as a “sex bullet” next to a picture of Brian Cox showing his …’
‘Calm down. Our work is under wraps for now and the Love Bug will still be here tomorrow,’ she said, deliberately using the despised descriptor again and dumping her gloves in the waste bin. ‘But the party and your adoring fans won’t.’
‘I do not have adoring fans.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Molly mischievously. ‘What about Mrs Choudhry from admin and that guy from the equipment supplier with the hooked nose who smells like chloroform?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? Well, I’m going and if I don’t see you at the party, I’ll see you next year.’
Molly made a meal of taking off her onesie, in the hope Ewan might change his mind and leave the lab with her but he pulled up his hood again and started tapping away at his laptop.
‘Maybe I can just fit in one more run of tests …’
One day you will be found dead in this lab, Ewan Baxter, and eaten by fruit flies. In fact, it may be that someone – probably me – kills you out of sheer sexual frustration.
‘Up to you,’ said Molly through gritted teeth, ‘but I have to get down to the fancy-dress shop and find a costume before it closes.’
At first she thought he hadn’t heard her but then, slowly and very deliberately, he swivelled round again. There was genuine terror in his eyes and she thought his face had definitely turned a shade paler.
‘The fancy-dress shop? Why would I need a costume?’
Power surged through Molly’s veins. ‘Didn’t you realise?’ she said, picking up her backpack. ‘It’s a fancy-dress party. The theme is movie heroes and heroines. Good luck with what you can find in the next half hour.’
Five miles northwest of Molly’s lab, in the village of Fenham, Sarah Havers inched open the drawer of the dressing table in the cottage bedroom. The white test stick still lay on top of her frilly red thong – the same one that had got her into trouble in the first place.
The face of her partner appeared in the mirror behind her. ‘Is that feckin’ fireworks going off already?’ he said, fastening the top button of his uniform shirt.
Sarah nudged the drawer shut. ‘It’s only six o’clock – surely they aren’t setting them off this early?’ Her heart thudded. She hadn’t heard Niall come out of the en suite.
‘Believe me, it’s never too early to set fire to your dad’s shed or blow your fingers off.’
‘Eww. Spare me the image, Mr McCafferty.’
Niall ran his fingers through his quiff. Sarah thought he’d overdone the gel for work, but Niall’s “thing” about his hair was a small price to pay for living with a real-life hero, not that she’d ever tell him that of course. ‘Hey, I’ll be delighted if all we get tonight is a few lost fingers and some burns,’ he said, teasing his hair into an impressive ski slope. ‘It’s more likely that we’ll have someone die of alcohol poisoning or a juicy stabbing but as long as it’s not me, I can cope.’
Sarah twisted the stool around to face him. ‘I wish you didn’t have to work on New Year’s Eve. You’ve already done the Christmas Day shift.’
Niall frowned as he dabbed at a tiny shaving cut on his chin. ‘Most of the other crew have kids. It doesn’t seem right not to give them time with their families and you know we need all the overtime I can get these days.’
‘I’ll still miss you like mad. It means the world to me that you’ve been behind me giving up my job to start the business, especially a tiara-making business.’
‘You won’t miss me. You’ll have a fantastic time with Molly at the scientists’ ball.’
Sarah laughed. ‘I’m not sure what it’ll be like with eighty geeks bopping away.’
Niall flicked one of the crystals on her tiara and they shimmered in the lamplight. ‘And I’m sure you’ll liven it up, darlin’, though I’m not happy about letting my sexy fairy out of my sight.’
‘Actually, I’m a princess. The party theme is “movie heroes and heroines” and I decided that Anastasia counts as a heroine. Some people say she survived when the rest of the Russian royal family were murdered.’
‘You can be a sexy princess, then, I don’t really mind.’
She traced a nail down the open V of his shirt, enjoying the softness of his chest hair under her fingertip. ‘And I love a sexy paramedic.’
‘Now, now, it wouldn’t do for Cambridgeshire County ambulance service to send a staff member out with a massive hard-on, would it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It would add a little frisson for the patients.’
‘Not with the kind of patients I’m likely to encounter on New Year’s Eve. You’ll get me into trouble … Now, I really have to go. Be careful out there and enjoy yourself. What time do you want picking up from Molly’s place tomorrow morning?’
‘Oh, erm … whenever you like.’ Sarah felt guilty about lying but she didn’t want to drop a momentous bombshell on him just before he headed out on his shift. New Year’s Eve was his busiest night of the year and he’d need every ounce of concentration as he hurtled along the roads of Cambridgeshire on his way to a shout. OK, she might be paranoid and sound like an old fogey, but surely anyone would be after what happened to her and Molly’s parents? You never lost the anxiety after a tragedy like that: part of you always knew that the worst could happen no matter how unlikely.
‘I know you worry but we’re trained professionals, remember? And if anything does happen, well, at least we’d have the paramedics on site.’
‘Don’t joke, Ni!’ said Sarah, then softened her tone. She was being silly and she knew Niall’s black humour was designed to jolly her out of her fears about him hurtling round the roads at top speed. The banter was the only way he and his colleagues could deal with their jobs most of the time.
He kissed her again. ‘Sorry, babe … bad taste but honestly, my love, nothing is going to happen to me tonight, I promise you. I’ll text you if I can but it’s going to be a manic night. I’ll be back around four a.m. but it could be lunchtime before I surface properly.’
‘I suppose I can hang on until then to give you your New Year’s present,’ she said, growing excited again at the prospect of sharing her news and focusing on new life, not the past.
‘My
