The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths by Harry Bingham Read Free Book Online Page A

dress, silver and jet bead necklace, nice shoes.
    I drive there. Make a hash of parking, which isn’t like me, and get a bit lost in Pontcanna before finding my way to the right side of Cathedral Road, where I’m meant to be.
    I realize I’m nervous. I don’t know why.
    I’m first to arrive. Sit all ladylike at the table, while a waiter brings me a menu, a glass tumbler holding breadsticks, and a glass of fizzy water. He lights a candle with a cigarette lighter.
    I watch with professional interest. I wasn’t a particularly good waitress, but I wasn’t working in the candle-’n’-breadstick sort of place. Mine was a Tex-Mex joint that sold beer by the pitcher and had a big Friday night trade in after-work parties. I took orders, carried plates, fetched drinks, didn’t mess anything up too much or too often, and occasionally remembered to smile. I did OK.
    I sit there, waiting for Buzz, counting my breaths and trying to feel my feet.
    A year and four months since I was last here.
    Then all of a sudden, Buzz is here, in front of me. Disconcertingly strange and overwhelmingly familiar at the same time. He crushes me into a hug and smells completely of him.
    ‘You look smashing, love,’ he says, and I feel giddy.
    We slowly settle, or I do. Buzz tells me about how he’s been. I say little bits about the course, though I’m not meant to say too much. Something happens with food. I think I’m probably a bit wooden to start with, but Buzz knows not to take too much notice. I warm up.
    And by the time we’re eating our main course – steak for him, trout for me – Buzz says, ‘OK. Holiday.’
    He says it in a way that makes me realize this isn’t just a welcome-back-Fi evening, it’s something more than that, I’m not quite sure what.
    I give him a big smile and say, ‘Holiday! Tell me more.’
    ‘OK, we wanted sunny, we wanted beaches, we wanted hot.’
    I nod. ‘Yes.’ Another big smile, unloaded for free.
    ‘Turkey, Greece, Morocco. All lovely, but they’d probably have been better last month than next month, so’ – pause for dramatic effect – ‘I’m thinking the Caribbean. Either Florida, Mexico, or one of the islands.’
    I’m all ready and primed to give him the response he wants, but I’m not sure what that is. Delight, I assume, and I give out plenty of that, but I have a feeling I’m missing something. Buzz spreads brochures over the table. Colored pictures, blue seas, white sands. Men in red shorts chasing balls. Lots of women, with legs much longer than mine, wearing bikinis and smiling like Moonies.
    I say, ‘Oh Buzz, this looks amazing.’ Turn some pages, say it again, or some variant of the same thing.
    I still think I’m missing something, but I’m not sure what. Buzz doesn’t give any clues or, if he does, I can’t read them.
    ‘So,’ he says, once the plates have been cleared and someone has asked us about puddings, and we’ve said no, just coffee, except that I’ll have peppermint tea instead of coffee, and can we have the bill at the same time, please. ‘So?’
    ‘It looks amazing.’
    ‘But which one?’ He sorts out the brochures. Shows me the best Florida option, the best Yucatan one, the best island one, which is apparently a resort hotel in Saint Lucia.
    He wants me to choose.
    I interrogate his face, trying to figure out which one he likes. He sees me doing that and says, ‘No, Fi. I want you to choose. Whichever one you like. Let’s make it special.’
    That last phrase, I’ve learned, is code for doesn’t-matter-if-it’s-expensive, but that is itself, I think, code for doesn’t-matter-if-it’s-expensive-but-let’s-not-go-crazy-now.
    The Saint Lucia place is the most expensive, the Yucatan place is the cheapest, so I put my hands down on Florida and say, ‘I love this.’
    He does that Buzz thing of looking into my eyes and saying, ‘Are you sure now? It’s what you want?’
    I say yes, say it emphatically. And in saying it, it becomes true, or true