Jackson Lamb x Diana Taverner
'The First Desk stood completely naked before Lamb, and neither of them seemed to care.'
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Diana was already on the verge of screaming.
She was sobbing, her voice breaking between a pleading whisper and raised tones.
Jackson used to enjoy bursting into her flat unannounced, making surprises, giving his Joe a jolt of nerves for fun.
But today there was a special reason — for both of them.
And now Lamb was standing in her bathroom, reeking of booze and cigarettes, listening to Diana trying to outshout the running shower. Her short hair, still dry in places, clung to her forehead in damp strands, and she brushed them aside nervously, gesticulating wildly as she spoke.
The First Desk stood completely naked before Lamb, and neither of them seemed to care. The shouting was so fierce it felt as if the whole house might shake: any moment now, the mirror would crack, Lamb would start hurling those ridiculously expensive towels with the embroidered letter D, and his immediate superior — Taverner herself — would slap him twice across the face.
They loved needling each other, pushing the limits of what was allowed. Testing the ground, sometimes shooting blindly. It was their game.
But they hadn’t sunk into such chaos for a very long time.
The truth was, someone had gone after Lamb’s people. There had already been one casualty, and they were forced to stay hidden, barely able to tell who was a friend and who wasn’t.
It was a terrifying time.
Jackson had burst into Lady D’s place without even leaving his usual warning sign — a cigarette butt by the door.
And when Taverner said she was going for a shower, Lamb followed her — just like the old days.
‘People have tried to kill me more than once, Diana. I’ve even been tortured. But stabbing me in the back this brazenly, you cold-hearted bitch — that’s low, even for you!’ he bellowed, shoving the door open so hard it almost hit her shoulder.
‘What the hell are you doing? Close the damn door!’
And on it went like that.
But Diana’s strength ran out soon enough.
At some point she simply crumpled, slowly sinking to her knees, pressing one hand against her face. It wasn’t clear whether she was trying to muffle her sobs or force herself to stop them, but in that moment a tomb-like silence fell, and Lamb, taken aback, just stared at the woman before him.
Once, they had shared not only work but the first rays of dawn on their faces, and now they were tearing each other apart, spitting the dirtiest, lowest words they could find.
Jackson suddenly realised he’d driven Diana to tears: she was crouched under the shower, trembling. The water really was cold — and it was late October outside — so, with some effort, the “last bastard”, as Taverner liked to call him, braced one hand against the wet wall and gently turned the tap towards the red circle.
Then he froze, looming over Lady D, who at least had stopped shaking.
He might have imagined it, but Diana repeated:
‘A bit hotter… please. I’m cold.’
Obediently, he turned the tap a little further and exhaled, standing upright again. After a while, Lamb thought of another cutting remark, and as if sensing it, Taverner hissed at him, looking up from the floor:
‘Say one more word, and I’ll strangle you with this hose.’
The head of Slough House wanted a cigarette. He automatically patted his trousers, searching for a window nearby, but finding neither, he stared instead at the slowly fogging mirror.
The voice came again from the shower floor.
It had been a long time since he’d heard that version of his name. Lamb gave a faint smirk, but something jabbed at his chest, and the smile vanished from his face. He remembered.
He remembered the first time he’d heard it.
A girl — eyes of blue and green, like a hidden lake deep in a virgin forest.
The words had come from lips that opened like two blooming roses on her youthful face.
That had been his Diana of the woods. The ancient Roman goddess of the hunt, of nature, of the animal world. And she had awakened in him something equally primal — a kind of survival instinct that collapsed every time he, the lamb, ran out into the meadows in search of his goddess.
It had been long ago — two thousand years ago, it seemed.
And now those same eyes were looking at him with open disgust and hurt.
Jackson’s legs gave way, and nausea rose in his throat. His health had been poor for a while, and this quarrel had finished him off.
Taverner noticed it and tilted her head slightly to one side in surprise.
‘If you drop dead right now, I’ll leave your bloody corpse in this bathroom and flee the country.’
‘I’d rather die in a ditch,’ he muttered.
Jackson, disoriented and adrift in a storm of emotions, tried to fix his gaze on something.
‘Five things you can hear, touch, see,’
on the leaflet once left on a desk by Catherine.
Not that Lamb had frequent panic attacks, but right now he felt dangerously close to one. He carefully sat down on the floor, now face to face with Taverner. The only thing separating them was the metal edge of the shower enclosure.
Diana, a little calmer now, sat sideways, knees drawn up, her head resting against the wall. She glanced at Lamb. She liked the effect her words had had — the way they’d shaken him. It gave her a sobering sense of a small victory.
Jackson was ready for another round, but just as their fragile truce ended, Lady D spoke:
Her slender wrist reached out to him — like in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam.
The mirror fogged even more, and Lamb suddenly felt unbearably hot. He loosened his tie — already hanging lifelessly around his neck — and swallowed hard.
‘They say you’re the devil’s envoy, Di. Even boiling water doesn’t burn you. That infernal pot… You crawled out of it once, didn’t you?’
She didn’t lower her hand. But after those words, the spark in her eyes dimmed, and now Diana just looked at him wearily.
Lamb touched her fingers — and in that moment, closing the space between them, he kissed her greedily, tasting the drops of that same infernal boiling water.
Soon his tie lay outside the metal frame — along with his shirt and belt. They left only his trousers and discounted boxers.
When Jackson woke very early the next morning, Diana was still asleep beside him.
Her short, pale-blond hair, the colour of vanilla ice cream, partly covered her trembling eyelashes.
He hadn’t yet decided what to do next. It didn’t matter for now. There was still time. The streets weren’t awake yet, and the pubs were still closed.
For now, there was only the dawn — and the two of them. So he stroked Diana’s cheek, gently brushing her hair from her forehead — just as she had done in the shower the night before — and kissed her Roman nose.
