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The rain was bucketing down outside the car windows, doing nothing to improve an already dull view of parked lorries and industrial buildings. Lu huffed a strand of hair out of her face and sighed. They'd been on this stakeout for hours, and there was still no sign of Clarence Warwick. Not surprising, considering he was hardly the youngest and fittest of burglars.
"He's not going to be out in this, Frank, is he? Realistically," she said. "I mean, he's seventy years old. This has got to be bad for his joints."
"You know what's bad for my joints? Sitting all cramped up in this poky little car," Frank said.
"Yeah, that's not the car, that's just you, Frank." Actually, she was feeling a little stiff herself, but she definitely wasn't going to admit it.
At any rate, Frank refused to be budged. "My information says that the proceeds from the jewel robbery that he pulled with Bill Stanley back in the day are still hidden somewhere here at Stanley Brothers Haulage."
"Yeah, but your information comes from a bloke in a pub called Jimmy the Nose," she said.
"That's a funny name for a pub," he said automatically. "Ey," they both said together as he pointed at her and she mirrored the gesture.
Lu just as quickly dropped the smile. "Seriously, Frank. Just because he told the other prisoners he was going to come and dig it up as soon as he got out doesn't mean he'll be here on the actual night. It's pouring! If it was your first day out of prison, wouldn't you want to put your feet up and have a packet of Jaffa Cakes? Plus he's got, like, five years of BBC iPlayer to catch up on. I wouldn't surface for a month."
"He'll be here," Frank said stubbornly.
She pressed her lips together and continued to study the back of the darkened building. Nothing was moving or making a sound except the rain.
Well, at least until her phone rang. "Ooh. Sebastian." She held the phone out between the seats as she answered it so she and Frank could both listen in.
"Anything to report?" Frank asked him.
"Yes!" Sebastian said. "I'm cold, I'm wet, I'm miserable, and it's actually extremely hard to keep impersonating a parking warden after everybody's taken their cars and gone home. There are only so many times I can keep going back and forth between the same three vans."
"Nobody's going to be out in this rain anyway," Lu said reassuringly.
"Exactly! Including Clarence Warwick, who is clearly not coming."
"Look, one of those vans has got to be his," Frank said. "He's probably been casing the joint all afternoon. Just keep an eye on them." He tapped the screen to end the call.
Lu gave him a flat look as she took the phone back. "That was rude, Frank."
"Ah, he was just complaining," he said, settling back in his seat.
"Yeah, but it's my phone. I decide when to hang it up."
"Well, what else did you want to say?"
"That's not the point, Frank," she said.
He made an irritable noise, and silence settled over the car again.
Briefly.
"If you were a genre of music-" she said.
"No."
"If you were a genre of music, what genre would you be?" She sat back expectantly.
"I'm not playing," he said.
"It's a simple question, Frank."
"It's never a simple question with you." He heaved a put-upon sigh, barely even taking a few moments to contemplate it. "Heavy metal," he said.
Lu snorted. "You're not heavy metal, Frank. You're more sort of..." she considered, "dad rock."
"That's not a genre," he protested.
"If there are Spotify playlists of it, it's a genre, Frank." She straightened up eagerly. "All right, what about me? What am I?"
"Nah, you'll just get annoyed," he said, shaking his head.
"I won't get annoyed. Why would I get annoyed?"
"Because you always get annoyed!"
"I wouldn't get annoyed if you would just answer the question like you're supposed to do, Frank," she said sharply.
He grimaced and shrugged. "Disco?"
"Disco?" she said, outraged. Then her phone sounded again, and she scrambled to answer it.
"The fledgling has left the nest in winter plumage," Sebastian said in a deep whisper.
"What?" she said.
Sebastian sighed and reverted to his normal voice. "Do you two never read those lists of codes I send you?"
"No," Frank said.
"Yeah, they are a bit long, Sebastian," she said.
"Someone," he said, "has just left the building and is heading for the white van on the corner."
"Oh!" Lu scrambled to turn the key in the ignition.
"Start the car!" Frank said.
"Yes, Frank, I'm starting it, aren't I?" Except she wasn't, because all she got in response was a clicking noise and a slow chugging from the engine. "Oh, no! Robyn! What's wrong?" she said in dismay.
"What's wrong with your stupid car?" Frank demanded.
"Don't shout at her, Frank. That's not going to encourage her, is it?" She took a calming breath and patted the steering wheel. "All right. Come on, Robyn. We can do this." She tried again, to no better result.
Frank growled and snatched up her phone. "Sebastian! Can you get after him?" he said.
"What? No!" Sebastian said. "Chasing criminals is not my department. Anyway, I can't risk getting caught up in an altercation. I have an audition tomorrow."
"It's for radio!" Frank said.
"First impressions are still very important!"
Giving up, Frank threw the door open to head out into the driving rain after Warwick. Before he did, he paused to lean back in and glare at her. "You should have got rid of this car years ago."
"Ahh!" Lu said indignantly, covering Robyn's indicator stalks so she didn't have to listen to this kind of slander. "She is our faithful steed, thank you very much!" All right, a faithful steed with a bit of a cough right now, but everyone had their off days.
At any rate, Robyn didn't seem very willing to cooperate, so after one last failed attempt at starting the engine, Lu gave up on it and jumped out to chase after Frank through the rain. She reached the corner of the office building just in time to see him skid on a mud puddle and go down flailing, landing flat on his back with an almighty splash.
"Frank!" She ran over to check on him.
"Is he getting away?" he asked, staring up at the sky with a level of dazedness he usually only attained after several beers or one of Sebastian's particularly long and involved Shakespeare speeches.
"I wouldn't worry about it, Frank," she said. The man they'd been chasing had turned away from his van and was now heading back towards them, and even in the limited glow of the streetlights she could see he was far too young to be Clarence Warwick. He was also wearing what looked suspiciously like a security guard's uniform.
All in all, not one of their more successful stakeouts - though, embarrassingly, not their worst, either.
*
No one was in the best of moods when they arrived back at the office the next day. Especially not Lu, who'd had to wait an hour in the rain to be towed home, and then wait in again in the morning for someone from the local garage to come and collect the car. Which was now, apparently, waiting on a part.
"Why didn't you get a hire car?" Frank said.
"Because I'm not made of money, Frank," she said. "Anyway, the man from the garage said I should have her back by this afternoon."
"Yeah, but they always say that."
"Yes, well, Robyn just so happens to be a very reliable car, actually," she said, a bit stung.
"Considering her very advanced age," Sebastian said in an undertone.
"Erm, if it wasn't for me and Robyn, you two would still be walking everywhere," Lu reminded them.
"Probably get there faster," Frank said.
"Not at your walking speed, Frank," she said.
"Look, I used to do just fine on my own before you came along," he insisted.
"You never used to manage to actually pay me," Sebastian reminded him.
"Well, you never used to do anything!"
"Ha! If I wasn't here doing your tech support, you wouldn't even be able to get into your email," he said.
"Yeah, that is true, actually, Frank," Lu said.
"I can do all the computer stuff that I need to!" he said. "I found the address for Stanley Brothers Haulage, didn't I?"
"You typed 'Stanley brothers' into Google," she said. "You're hardly Angelina Jolie in Hackers."
"That's a great film," Sebastian put in.
"That is a great film," she agreed, nodding.
"Neither of you would get anywhere without me," Frank said, raising his chin. "I'm the one with all of the experience and police contacts."
"Actually, Frank, you literally wouldn't get anywhere without me, since I'm the one who does all the driving," she said.
"Not if you haven't got a car!" he said.
"And I am out there every day risking life and limb to go undercover!" Sebastian said.
Okay, that was a bit strong. "Yeah, it's not really life and limb, though is it?" Lu said, wrinkling her nose dubiously. "More sort of risking mild embarrassment and a chance of people thinking that you're a bit weird."
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless co-worker," he said loftily, rising from his seat. "Well, you'll soon see just how much I do around here, because I'm off to my audition. Try not to let the place fall apart completely while I'm gone."
"I know how to answer a phone!" Frank sneered after him as he swept out dramatically.
"He is good at sweeping out dramatically, isn't he?" Lu said admiringly. She'd never really mastered the art. All she could do was storm out in a huff, which just made her feel like a teenager arguing with her mother.
"Mm." Frank gave a grumpy shrug. "We'll get on fine without him," he said.
"Yeah, we will, probably," she said, nodding. Then she remembered that she wasn't actually getting on with Frank, either. "And as for you, Francis Hathaway, you'll soon see how much you need me when I get out there and solve this case by myself while you stay here and answer the phone."
"You'll come back and find I've already solved it with my superior online research skills," he said.
"Ha! Yeah, good luck with that, Frank," she said. "You'll still be trying to figure out your password by the time I come back with all the information on Clarence Warwick and the stolen jewellery - and with Robyn back in one piece, actually."
Not quite as dramatic as Sebastian's exit, but still, she thought she'd done all right.
*
When Lu came back several hours later, it was without Robyn, without having caught so much as a long-distance glimpse of Clarence Warwick, and without any better leads on the stolen jewellery than the one that Frank had got from Jimmy the Nose. On the other hand, she did have sore feet, wet, bedraggled hair, and the local garage's terrible hold music looping in her head.
"Tell me you've got good news, Frank," she said as she slumped down in her seat and puffed her cheeks out wearily.
"No," he admitted.
"I've been everywhere!" she said. "No sign of Clarence at his sister's, or his old cellmate's, or any of his old hangouts. He is sneaky for a seventy-year-old. Then I went all the way back out to Stanley Brothers Haulage, but nobody there knows anything either. The site manager said the actual Stanley brothers haven't been part of the business since 2003. So then I had to walk all the way back, and let me tell you, Frank, I am knackered. I can see why they call it legwork. I definitely don't need to go to the gym this week. Not that I do any week, to be honest."
"I did some online research about the Stanley brothers," Frank said, opening up his laptop.
Oh, bless him. "It's all right, Frank, you don't need to pretend," she said. "I admit defeat. I should have got the hire car."
"No, I did." He looked sheepish. "Turns out Stanley Brothers Haulage was only their first business. They opened another one after that called SB Warehousing."
Lu scooted her chair round next to him, bumping shoulders with him as she peered over at the laptop screen. Apparently while she was out he'd been mastering advanced search techniques like not just looking at the first result.
"So we've probably been staking out the wrong place?" she said.
"Sorry," he said.
She couldn't stay mad at that hangdog look for long. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you about the garage," she said.
"I'm sorry I called you disco," he said.
"Yeah, why did you call me disco, actually?" That had been bugging her all day.
"Well, you're sort of bouncy," he said. "And get stuck in my head even when I'm trying to ignore you."
"Aw." That was sort of sweet, really, in a very Frank kind of way. "And glamorous?" she fished, twirling a strand of damp hair around her finger in a vain attempt to restore some of its former springiness.
"Well, not at the moment. You look like a half-drowned Cocker Spaniel," he said.
"Oh, thank you very much, Frank," she said crossly, giving up on her hair. "You really do know how to make a woman feel special."
He looked appropriately contrite, and opened his desk drawer. "I got you this," he said, and solemnly presented her with a greasy paper bag. It proved, on inspection, to contain a bacon and cheese turnover, which, if possibly not actually the greatest gift she'd ever been given in her life, was one that definitely felt like it was up there right at this moment.
"Oh, Frank!" She impulsively threw her arms around him and gave him a big kiss. Then realised this was not actually something she customarily did, and backed rather awkwardly out of the embrace with an embarrassed laugh. "Ooh. Er..."
They stared at each other, mutually baffled as to how to proceed from here. Lu snuck in a bite of the turnover while she was at it, because accidentally kissing your partner who was not actually that kind of partner was really no reason to let delicious savoury baked goods go to waste. Besides, she could use some cheese- and bacon-fuelled inspiration for the perfect thing to say that would be totally casual and normal while also being just a teensy bit bold and flirty, just in case Frank felt like going anywhere with that. At all.
Erm...
Fortunately or unfortunately, before the silence could stretch on for much longer the office door opened.
"Sebastian!" Lu jumped up in relief. "You're back!" She swept him up in a big hug and kissed him on the cheek.
He held her off at arm's length and gave her the hairy eyeball. "Why are you kissing me?" he demanded.
She glowered at him. "Because I kiss people, Sebastian. It's a spontaneous thing that I do sometimes that isn't at all weird."
"Well, firstly, no, you don't, and secondly, yes, it is," he said.
"Anyway," she said, hastily changing the subject, "how did your audition go?"
"Are you going to be a famous radio star?" Frank asked, finally and belatedly stirring himself out of his daze.
Lu was briefly annoyed at his complete failure to say anything when it might have actually counted, but then got distracted. "Do we still have famous radio stars?" she wondered.
"Actually, it was an audition for a podcast ad," Sebastian admitted with a rueful wince.
"Oh. Well, loads of people listen to those," she said encouragingly. "I personally have heard the same ad for mattresses six hundred billion times while I'm listening to my knitting podcast."
"You knit?" Frank said sceptically.
"Well, I listen to a podcast about it," she said.
Sebastian sighed wistfully. "Alas, they felt my dulcet tones were unsuited to," he put on a nasal, slightly Americanised twang, "Wild Earl's deals, deals, deals!"
"Well, if you put on that accent, I can see why," Frank said.
"Oh, well, never mind." Lu gave him a comforting pat. "You wouldn't want to be in one of those annoying podcast ads everybody hates getting all the time, anyway."
"Does that mean you'll be free for another stakeout tonight?" Frank asked.
"Not if it's at Stanley Brothers Haulage again," he warned them.
"No, it's somewhere else."
"Totally different," Lu said, nodding along and keeping her fingers crossed under the desk.
"Well, all right." Sebastian wrinkled his nose. "But I'm not being a parking warden again. I still have a red mark on my forehead from that hat." He traced an illustrative hand across his brow, where no such mark was remotely visible. "And now I think I deserve an Earl Grey and a nice sit down to decompress." He headed through into the next room to put the kettle on.
"Ooh, make mine a builder's. Ta!" Frank called after him. "Let's just hope Clarence really was put off his burglary by all that rain last night," he said to Lu.
"Oh, now you're taking my ideas, Frank?" she said, a bit crossly.
He shrugged. "Well. Sometimes you have good ones."
She eyed him sideways, wondering if that was some kind of meaningful remark. He eyed her back just as warily, both of them waiting to see if the other one was going to break the increasingly strained silence.
Eventually, Frank did.
"Are you going to eat the rest of that bacon and cheese turnover?"
"Yes, I am, Frank!" she said, snatching it up protectively.
"I was just asking!"
Honestly, not a romantic bone in that man's body.
*
The garage predictably failed to come through on their promises, so Lu was forced to secure them a hire car, a little Ford Focus that she was trying to ignore was actually quite nice.
"Well, this is... roomy," Frank noted, as they sat watching from the layby opposite the SB Warehousing site.
"Don't push it, Frank," she said darkly. Anyway, she was loyally sure there was less headroom in here than they would have had with Robyn.
They sat in silence for a while. It somehow felt heavier than their usual silences. She was sure Frank was looking at her more than normal, but confirming that would require looking at him more than normal, and she was trying to act... well, normal. Probably Sebastian would had have a better way of phrasing that, but that would require telling Sebastian what was going on, and that would have involved there being something out of the ordinary going on, which there definitely wasn't. So, really, a whole lot of things not going on there.
She tapped her fingers on the dashboard in front of her. Just... testing the quality of the materials, and definitely not nervous about anything in any way.
"So what are you calling this one?" Frank asked after a while.
"I'm not calling her anything, Frank. We are merely passing acquaintances," she said. She was not going to get attached to Robyn's temporary replacement. It was just like having a temp in the office for a few days.
Actually, no, that was a terrible analogy. She would totally get attached if they had a temp.
"Well, even passing acquaintances have still got names," he said.
"Yes, well, Fiona and I are just not going to be that close, Frank, okay?"
"Okay!" he said, shrinking back in his chair in exaggerated apology.
Was she being too snappish? No, she was not. She was a perfectly normal amount of irritated. Especially considering certain people were being hopelessly uncommunicative even by their standards, naming no names, Francis Hathaway.
Silence fell over the car again. Stakeouts always had long stretches of silence, mostly filled by her, so it was a bit mystifying how this one seemed to somehow have extra silence in it. Had to be the car. That added legroom Frank was going on about was making it echoey.
"We should check in with Sebastian," she said a few moments later. "Just, you know, to see how he's getting on."
Frank nodded emphatically.
This time, at Sebastian's request - well, more like whining - they'd managed to actually get him inside the building, under the pretext of a surprise inspection where he could place some hidden cameras in the hopes of catching Clarence in the act. Quite why he'd decided he needed to be Welsh and have a little tufty beard to achieve this was more of a mystery, but who were they to question Sebastian's process?
"Hugh Evans, Warehouse Safety Executive," he said in low melodic tones as he answered the phone.
"Oh, that is good. He is good, isn't he?" she said to Frank.
"Sebastian. How are you getting along with those cameras?" Frank asked.
He dropped back into his normal voice at an irritable hiss as he found a discreet corner to take the call in. "Well, I'd be getting on a lot better if you two didn't keep calling me every few minutes to ask how I was getting on! What in the world is up with the pair of you tonight? You're like my mother in my first week after I moved out to go to drama school."
"Just... checking in, really," Lu said with a shrug. "You were complaining about feeling neglected last night."
"Yes, well, now I'm feeling quite smothered! I've already had to apologise for my micromanaging boss who won't stop calling me while I'm out on a job."
"Good cover," Frank said.
"Yes, I wouldn't really call it a cover as such," Sebastian said. "Anyway, I've got one more camera to place on the rear door, and then we'll have full coverage of all of the entrances and exits. Then can I go home?"
"No! You can come and sit in the car with us," Frank said.
"What? But I never come and sit in the car with you," he said.
"Well, this one's got more legroom," he said.
"Frank!" Lu protested indignantly.
*
Now there were three of them in the car being oddly quiet. Well, two of them in the front being oddly quiet and Sebastian in the back practising his melodramatic sighs as he did a very half-hearted job of swiping through the camera feeds on his tablet.
"Is this what you do on these stakeouts?" he said. "Sit around in silence, staring at the building in the dark?"
"Well, sometimes we have snacks," Frank said.
"Yeah, but we forgot them in the other car, so..."
They lapsed into silence again.
"You are both being weirdly quiet," Sebastian said, narrowing his eyes at them from the back seat.
"Just don't have anything to say, really," Lu said with a shrug.
"I can never think of anything to say," Frank said.
"Yes, I have noticed that, Frank," she said rather sharply.
"Did something happen while I was out at my audition?" Sebastian asked.
"Like what? What could have possibly happened, Sebastian?" she demanded. "What kind of thing could anybody in this car imagine having happened that might lead me to be, oh, I don't know, expecting Frank to say something?"
Frank continued to stare blankly out through the windscreen, apparently oblivious to the idea that this might be any sort of subtle hint aimed in his direction.
"Well, you do seem a bit- ooh, action," Sebastian said, abruptly sitting upright.
"I seem a bit 'ooh, action'?" she said irritably. "What does that even mean?"
"No, action!" He flailed towards the building and at the tablet in his hand. "Someone's just climbed over the back fence!"
"Is it him?" Frank said.
"Well, I don't know," Sebastian said. "He is wearing a balaclava, so, really, it could be just about any geriatric burglar who felt like breaking into a business that used to belong to Bill Stanley."
"Come on, let's go." Frank opened the car door. "Call Keeler," he said to Sebastian.
"Oh, no, why do I have to be the one to call Keeler?" he said, slumping down in his seat.
"Because you didn't want to have to be the one doing the chasing!"
"Yeah, I don't really want to have to do the chasing either, Frank, to be honest," Lu said. But she got out of the car to follow him anyway. "Look after Fiona," she said to Sebastian.
"Wait, who's Fiona?" he said in bewilderment as she left.
She followed Frank around the side of the darkened building, though he stopped before they reached the yard around the back.
"We need to wait for him to start digging so we know where the missing jewellery is," he said. That was the part they'd actually been hired for, by the daughter of the original robbery victim. Catching Clarence in the act of breaking his parole wasn't technically their job.
So, with that in mind... "Couldn't we have just have watched this on the tablet in the car?" It had stopped bucketing down, at least, but there was still a bit of drizzle in the air, and it was freezing. She huddled a bit closer to Frank in the shadows.
"No! We need to be ready to leap into action in case he gets away with the jewels before the police get here," he said.
"You don't leap into action, Frank," she pointed out. "You can barely get up out of a chair without groaning."
m
To be fair, Clarence Warwick wasn't exactly the fastest burglar on the block, either. He seemed to be pacing out the directions given by some kind of memorised map, but either he wasn't very confident which direction he was supposed to be going in or he kept losing count.
"Not sure he can actually remember where the jewellery's buried, Frank," she said. "I mean, how long's it been since the robbery? And I bet he didn't write it down while he was in prison."
Frank shoved his hands in his coat pockets grumpily. "Well, he'd better find it before Keeler shows up and arrests him, or he'll go back to prison and we'll lose our chance at solving the case."
They watched Clarence as he continued to dither. "He's going to be a while, isn't he?" Lu said. She leaned up against Frank to use him as a windbreak.
"Why're you leaning on me?" he asked after a while.
"Because you're there?" she said with a shrug. "And you're warm."
He seemed to accept this explanation without further comment, and they continued to watch Clarence. Finally the elderly burglar retrieved his spade, and, after a bit of clanging and swearing, made it past the gravel surface of the yard to start making some progress on digging in his chosen spot.
"Think he's deaf as well," Lu said. And slow. Definitely slow. "I really wish I'd brought my hat."
Frank placed a hand on top of her head, which didn't really help, but was quite nice anyway.
All right, come on, Luella. Time to be brave.
"Frank..." she started to say.
That was when the yard in front of them flooded with bright lights. "Police! Freeze!" Sergeant Keeler barked through a loudhailer from somewhere off on the sidelines. "Drop your weapon!" There was a brief pause, possibly for a whispered debate on the police side over whether a spade that was very clearly being used to dig a hole strictly qualified as a weapon. "Implement!" he corrected himself, still through the loudhailer.
"God, he is useless," Frank said in weary despair.
Still, it was enough to convince Clarence to toss the spade down. He spat on the ground in disgust. "Bloody coppers. Always turning up at the worst possible time," he said.
Too right, Clarence. She knew the feeling.
*
Of course, one useful thing about having the police on the scene was that the three of them were able to just stand around and watch while a luckless young uniform constable was stuck with the job of actually digging the jewellery up. He'd managed to make a pretty deep hole in the ground by the time he finally gave up. "There's nothing here, sarge," he said.
"Where's this stolen jewellery supposed to be, then?" Keeler demanded, glowering at Frank as if they'd deliberately called him to the wrong place.
"That thieving git," Clarence burst out, which was a bit rich coming from a burglar, really. "Bill told me that he'd buried it here! Twenty-three paces from the gate at the old Stanley yard. Years I've been waiting to come and dig this up!"
"The old Stanley yard." Lu straightened up. "Frank! We were in the right place last night after all! But Clarence wasn't."
"Congratulations, Frank," Sebastian said. "You have slightly better online research skills than a seventy-year-old man who's spent the last few decades in and out of prison."
Frank turned to Keeler. "You need to tell your people to get over to Stanley Brothers Haulage and start digging twenty-three paces from the back gate."
"I don't need you to tell me what to do, Frank, all right?" Keeler said irritably. Then he turned around to address his team of uniformed officers. "Get over to Stanley Brothers Haulage and start digging twenty-three paces from the back gate."
*
The stash of stolen jewellery did indeed turn out to be buried at the Stanley Brothers Haulage site, and while the police immediately seized it as evidence, their client was still pleased enough to pay up when they went to see her the next day. Another case successfully closed. However, as Lu drove Frank back to the office, things still felt somehow off-kilter in the world of Shakespeare and Hathaway, Private Investigators.
"Still not got your car back?" Frank asked, halfway through the drive.
"Garage said sometime today."
He nodded, and they lapsed back into awkward silence.
By the time she'd parked Fiona in the courtyard outside the office, she'd had enough.
"Right," she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. "Francis Hathaway, we are getting this out of our systems."
"What?" he said.
As if he didn't know very well what she was talking about. "The- incident!" she said.
"I thought we were ignoring that," he said.
"No, Frank, you were ignoring that. I was waiting for you to say something."
"I was waiting for you to say something," he countered.
"Well, I've said something!" she said, flailing her arms.
"Well, now what?" he said.
Good question. "We should... re-enact the incident, in order to... investigate how to proceed," Lu said, and then went on with increasing confidence. "Because that's what we do. We investigate things."
"Sounds dangerous," Frank said.
"Yeah, well, I think you'll survive, Frank," she said, with a touch of acid. And then either it would be hideously awkward and best forgotten forever, or... not, but at least they'd know one way or the other, and then they could... get on with things. In one direction or another.
He still had his face wrinkled up dubiously.
"Come on," Lu said, wheedling. "What have we got to lose?"
"I don't know. Everything?" he said.
"Aw, that's really sweet, actually," she said, touched. "Am I your everything, Frank?"
He made vaguely negative embarrassed mumbling noises, but she wasn't fooled.
"So, are we going to get on with this or what?" he said gruffly.
"Well, I'm ready when you are." That was a lie. She was not remotely ready, but she doubted that Frank was either, so that was all right.
He puckered up in response, and she grimaced in dismay. "Oh, no, don't make that face, Frank," she said. "That is not an attractive face."
"Well, it's the only one I've got," he said, affronted.
"Yeah, but you don't have to do that with it, do you?"
"Oh, this is stupid." He opened the car door to get out.
Lu jumped out too and rounded the car to intercept him. "It's not stupid," she said.
"It'll never work," he said, shaking his head.
"You said that about us being partners. And updating the company website. And Sebastian trying to get you to add more colour to your wardrobe."
"That one didn't work!" he said stubbornly.
"You are just a grumpy old cynic," she accused him, prodding him in the chest.
"Yeah, well, you're just... annoying!" he retorted.
"You're really not a man of words, Frank, are you?" Lu said.
"No. I'm a man of action," he said, raising his chin proudly.
"Oh, are you?" she said sceptically. "Are you really?"
"Yes!" he said hotly, and kissed her.
She let out a startled little meep noise and clung on to him in what was, all right, not her smoothest moment of romantic suavity ever, but it was only Frank, so that didn't matter. And anyway, she was soon distracted by the fact that he was actually quite good at this kissing thing, or maybe they were good at it, in that way they'd always had of working perfectly together.
In fact, it really was all going quite well until they were interrupted by a scandalised gasp from the direction of the archway leading into the courtyard. She turned her head, still clutching the front of Frank's jacket, to see Sebastian standing there with a cup of takeaway coffee and an open mouth.
"Luella May Shakespeare! Francis I-don't-know-your-middle-name Hathaway! What is going on here?" he demanded.
"I would have thought that was fairly self-explanatory, Sebastian," Lu said, perhaps a little tetchily.
"What are you doing out here?" Frank said. "You're supposed to be in there, manning the phones."
"Never mind what I'm doing out here, what are you doing out here?" He stared between the two of them. "How long has this been going on? Tell me everything!" Then he reconsidered. "Actually, no, don't tell me everything. Tell me as little detail as possible. But tell me!"
That was when Lu's phone chimed in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the screen. "Ooh, my car's ready." She made a dash back to the Ford Focus. "You can explain this one, Frank," she called back over her shoulder.
"What?" he said.
She left him behind making helpless guppy mouth movements as she drove off to the garage to be reunited with Robyn, smiling to herself all the way. Things were definitely looking up compared to the last couple of days.
Even if she didn't have a bacon and cheese turnover.