Death in the Family

Chapter One Judy Hill had never been afraid of another person in her life. In her childhood and adolescence, there had been no cause for fear, but not even in her twenty-odd-year career as a police officer had she ever been truly afraid of someone else. She had found herself in potentially violent situations; she had even been injured in the line of duty. She had dealt with aggressive drunks and the odd deeply disturbing psychopath, but she had always had complete confidence in her own ability to deal with whatever and whoever crossed her path. Until now. And the monster who had achieved what no rapist or murderer had yet managed was toothless, helpless, asleep . . . and barely two hours old. "Charlotte," said Lloyd, sitting down on the bed. Predictably, they had been unable to agree on a name; Judy thought that they had considered everything from Abigail to Zoe and back again, but she couldn't remember them discussing Charlotte. Names were very important to Lloyd, since he had been given one that so appalled him that everyone called him by his surname, and he was worried about inflicting that trauma on the baby. "That's nice," she said. "Yes? I thought of it when her head appeared. She looks like a Charlotte." Judy nodded. "She does. Of course she's got French blood. What about a middle name?" She smiled. "We could always name her after you." Lloyd's French grandmother had been responsible for his awful name, which he said made him sound like a cross between a stripper and a potato. "Just put an extra e on the end." "We could," he agreed. "Over your dead body." She laughed. "How about after your grandmother?" "Charlotte Francoise," he murmured, then shook his head. "No-no one would ever get it right. If people can't even use apostrophes, there's no point in expecting them to cope with a cedilla. And she might not like it. Make it plain Frances, and you've got a deal." "As long as you promise not to go on about people spelling it c-i-s at the end, because they will." "Done. Other people won't have much call to spell her middle name, anyway. Charlotte might go on about it, though, if she takes after me." He looked at her, his head to one side. "Charlotte Frances Lloyd. Yes. I like that. Perhaps she looks like Grandma Pritchard-that might have been what suggested a French name in the first place." He bent closer and scrutinized her. "Does she look like either of us, do you think?" "Well, given that she's bald and blue-eyed . . ." "Very funny. I think she'll have brown eyes like you. And she's pretty well bound to have dark hair. And she's definitely got your jawline." "She hasn't got a jawline." "Can I hold her?" Judy was only too pleased to pass the tiny, fragile bundle to Lloyd, who had at least been through this before and presumably knew a little more than she did about the whole alarming thing, and watch him as he cradled his brand-new daughter. It had been a long labor, and bearable only because Lloyd was there. Judy had seriously doubted that he would be; Barbara, the mother of his other two children-both adults now-had not been accorded the same measure of support. He had conveniently been too deeply involved in police business to be pres- ent at the births and hadn't even seen either Peter or Linda until they had been in the world for several more hours than Charlotte had. But he had been there for Judy, and he had even made her laugh, something she would have thought impossible in her imaginings of what it was going to be like. "Wouldn't it have been easier just to go through with the wedding?" he'd asked her, at the height of the discomfort. Charlotte had decided to announce hMcGown, Jill is the author of 'Death in the Family', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345458483 and ISBN 0345458486.