Ayesha stopped talking. She and Lucy stared at me.
‘Me too, I have mountains of work,’ Harry said, following me out of the booth. ‘Tricky client. Needs a lot of stroking.’
Ayesha’s jaw hung open.
‘Brilliant evening,’ I said, hugging her. ‘But I promised the babysitter I wouldn’t be late.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ Harry said.
I turned away to kiss Lucy on the cheek. Unlike Ayesha, who looked openly shocked, Lucy had covered her initial confusion with a smile, though she didn’t meet my eyes.
I waved at Dex as Harry and I passed the bar. He winked at me, then turned back to his blonde.
I started to feel nervous again as Harry hailed a cab. He talked about his sister as the taxi drove us to Southfields, how concerned he was that she hadn’t answered when he’d called earlier, how he didn’t want to miss her if she rang back.
He only fell silent when we reached my house. I dealt with the sitter, then offered him a drink. Butterflies zoomed around my stomach as I gave him a glass of wine and went up to check on the kids. They were both fast asleep: Ruby curled tightly into a ball in her bed, Rufus flat on his back, making soft snuffling noises like a small animal. I drew the covers over his shoulders. He looked so young still when he was asleep, so innocent. Like the small boy he had been until very recently.
I came downstairs. It wasn’t too late to tell Harry I wasn’t ready to sleep with him, that perhaps we should go on a proper date, just the two of us, first. Hopefully I wouldn’t need to spell it out. If I held myself back, maybe he’d get the hint, finish his drink and leave.
It was past eleven as I walked back into the kitchen. Harry was standing in front of the sink, his drink on the counter beside him, untouched. His eyes gleamed – all dark heat under the dimmed lights.
‘Don’t you want your wine?’ I asked. My throat felt dry.
‘I want you.’ He said it in the same straightforward way that, I realised, he said everything.
‘I’m scared.’ The truth slipped out of me without warning. I felt myself blushing and looked down.
‘Me too.’ he said it so simply that my breath caught in my throat.
And I knew then without a doubt that I wanted him to stay.
Afterwards I couldn’t work out if it had been good because it was us or because it had been such a long time since anyone had touched and held me. I hadn’t been with anyone except Caspian since my early twenties and, though I felt guilty for thinking it, my sex life with him had always been a bit dull, even at the start.
What I didn’t feel guilty about, much to my surprise, was sleeping with Harry in the bed I’d once shared with my husband. Strangely, that felt like the most natural thing in the world. I curled up in his arms, enjoying the sensation of his skin on mine, and we spoke softly of our families. Harry stroked my hair as I told him how much I missed Mum and how ill-prepared I was for Caspian to die so suddenly just three years after I lost her. Harry, in turn, spoke of his own mother’s cancer and how he and his sister had been devastated by the possibility she might die.
‘Mum’s in remission now,’ he said. ‘But the doctors made it clear the cancer could come back. I think my sister finds it really hard. I mean, we both do, but my sister leans on Mum a lot because of the kids.’
‘It’s the uncertainty,’ I said softly. ‘The loss of control. Particularly hard when there’s only one parent left.’
I tried to imagine life without my own father. He had dominated my childhood – his brooding presence changing the atmosphere at home every time he walked through the front door. We’d moved to the house in Kensington when I was just twelve and Lucy six and a half. I had few proper memories of our life before then. I knew that Dad had made a lot of money, allowing for the purchase of the house and private school for me and Lucy plus the swimming pool and music lessons and all the other upper-middle-class trappings we enjoyed. But he was also strict – insistent that we remember our good fortune did not make us better than anyone else and putting a premium on good manners, modest dress and decorous behaviour at all times.
‘I was such a rebel,’ I told Harry, smiling to myself as I remembered the endless round of teenage arguments with Dad over music and make-up and clothes, with Mum always trying to negotiate a peace between us. At the time I was trying hard to be as different from my father as possible. Now I could see that his existence defined mine. ‘At least with Dad I knew where I stood. He was always rigid in his morals.’ I glanced at Harry, his suspicions about my dad and PAAUL flitting into my head. ‘I know you think differently, but—’
‘Wait, Fran,’ Harry said, disentangling himself and sitting up in the bed. ‘There’s something I need to tell you before we talk any more about that. Remember? I mentioned it at the bar?’
I nodded. ‘Go on.’
Harry hesitated. He reached for his boxers and put them on.
I watched, confused. ‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘Just to the bog, though maybe I should leave before morning. I don’t want to confuse your kids.’
‘Was that what you wanted to talk about?’ I asked, feeling more and more bemused. ‘The kids?’
‘No.’ Harry made a face. ‘I’ll be back in a sec, then I promise I’ll explain.’ He disappeared into the en suite and I had a sudden flashback to Caspian doing the same thing, every morning, for a shower and a shave. Again I felt no guilt whatsoever. Which was surely a good sign – a good omen.
Grinning to myself, I lay back against the pillows, wondering idly what Harry wanted to talk about. The sound of his phone softly ringing drifted up from the floor by the bed. It was coming from his jeans pocket. I glanced at the bathroom door. It was shut, the water running from the sink tap clearly drowning out the ringtone. I reached down and drew the mobile out of the pocket. The screen said:
Alexandra calling.
Was that Harry’s sister? He hadn’t, I realised, told me her name.
I stared at the phone as it rang a third time. He’d said he was expecting her to call him back and I’d got the impression she would be upset if he didn’t answer. Perhaps I should take the call, then ask her to hold while I fetched him.
Without thinking about it any further I swiped the screen and put the phone to my ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Where’s Harry?’ a taut female voice snapped. She sounded posh and totally in control of herself. Not a trace of anxiety or indeed a Manchester accent like his.
‘Hi there,’ I stammered, feeling self-conscious, already sure this wasn’t his sister. ‘Harry’s in the bathroom, he’ll be out in a second.’
Silence on the end of the line.
Shit. It hit me like a slap.
He was married after all, in spite of what he’d told me.
This was his wife. Had to be.
Shit, shit, shit.
‘Er, may I say who’s calling?’ I stammered.
Still silence. It was definitely a wife. Or at the very least a girlfriend. And then the woman spoke and my world turned upside down.
‘Tell Harry it’s his bloody news editor asking: where’s my effing story on Jayson Carr?’
CIPHER
Friday 15 January 2016 –
Sunday 17 January 2016
HARRY
Harry was having a great time at the bar until Dex turned up. Not only was he enjoying his three extremely attractive drinking companions; each of them appeared to be enjoying him too: Ayesha was hot and mildly flirtatious while Lucy was coy but clearly interested . . . if things had been different who knows what might have happened. Not that Harry was bothered about either Lucy or Ayesha. Still, it was flattering to feel them watching him, knowing he could go there if he wanted.
Of course, above and beyond all that, there was Fran: hot and beautiful and with the sexiest smile he’d ever seen.
She was the reason he was here.
She was the reason he was feeling so nervous.
And she was the reaso
n he was going to blow open his cover story.
He was just waiting for the right moment but it was hard. Talking with Fran was great. And easy. And fun. All of which the truth would change – at least temporarily. Still. It had to be done . . . every time he mentioned any aspect of his Harry Dunbar legend to her he felt horribly uncomfortable in the lie. Which had never, ever happened to him before.
It was as if he had known her for ages, like he could look into those almond-shaped eyes of hers and see what she was feeling. The more they spoke, the less interest he felt in the other women. Ayesha became brash and obvious while Lucy looked more and more like the angel off his mum’s Christmas tree: pretty but insipid.
Fran, on the other hand, seemed alight with life. She intrigued him. Wherever she was he wanted to look. Whatever she said he wanted to hear. Whenever she moved he wanted to follow. Harry had never met anyone – male or female – so effortlessly cool before.
But then, all of a sudden, bloody Dex was there, standing at the end of the booth with his slightly wild hair and piercing green eyes and his expensive suit with the sleeves hitched up just enough to reveal a tattoo of a yin-yang symbol on the inside of his forearm. Within seconds, all three of the women changed their behaviour, as if Dex was a sun that had pulled them out of Harry’s orbit and into his own.
With Ayesha this meant she redirected her flirting. After an ear-splitting squeal she’d breathed a ‘Hey you’ at Dex, giving him a white-toothed smile then virtually batting her eyelids at him, glancing over even after he went to the bar and talking about him to Harry in breathless tones. ‘Franny’s cousin . . . such a charmer . . .’
The sisters’ reactions to their cousin were just as strong as Ayesha’s though not in any way sexual, at least as far as Harry could make out. Lucy just seemed shyer than before: sitting silently with her head bowed and definitely no longer hanging on Harry’s every word.
But it was Fran whose reaction was strongest. She hurtled out of her seat to envelop Dex in an enormous hug, then dragged him off to the bar without a backward glance.
‘Christ, but he’s handsome,’ Ayesha had said with a smile, watching Dex cross the room.
For God’s sake, Harry growled silently. What was the man’s bloody secret? He glanced over at the bar. Dex and Fran certainly looked good together. They had that upper-class secret of knowing how to wear clothes so they looked effortlessly thrown together. Fran was in an elegant green top and a black pencil skirt that curved tantalisingly over her hips. She leaned into Dex as they spoke, surrounded by a bunch of other equally beautiful people.
Harry frowned. The two of them were clearly close, but he wasn’t getting the sense they were sexually interested in each other. Anyway, in Harry’s experience, men who were keen to get a woman into bed didn’t usually address them as ‘Dumpy’ in that brotherly teasing way Dex had. Still, he’d noticed Dex at that memorial service and the way women’s heads turned as he walked past. Harry had never spoken to the man but he was certain he knew the type: privately educated and posh as a test cricketer’s armpit but eager to give the impression that they were men of the people. On the surface they were all charm and politeness, but Dex must have seen Harry was at the table . . . How much passive aggression had been in that ‘Drinks, ladies?’ and the fact that he hadn’t even looked at Harry directly.
‘Ooh, look!’ Ayesha’s attention had wandered from Dex and she was now pointing to the man in the booth across the room. ‘Do you think that’s a toupee?’ she giggled.
‘Definitely,’ Harry said. But he was only pretending to look. He was still watching Fran, who was on her way back from the bar – without Dex – and with a deep frown across her forehead. Had Dex put that there? He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world: surrounded at the bar by beautiful women, laughing and chatting. Harry felt a stab of jealousy as Fran returned to the table, clearly preoccupied.
Ayesha started talking about London versus Manchester as places to live. A minute later Dex rejoined them and the conversation shifted to the artwork in the bar, which Harry thought was okay but overdone. Then Lucy suddenly came out with the fact that she thought it was blasphemous, which put everyone on edge.
Harry felt lost. As Dex held court his resentment built. And then he looked across at Fran and saw she was looking at him and suddenly he knew what was really bothering him.
He couldn’t lie to her any longer.
He built up to his revelation, his stomach twisting into knots.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he’d said at last. But then Fran had held him with those caramel eyes and invited him back to her house and there was no way Harry was going to turn that down. He would tell her afterwards.
And as he walked out of her bathroom several hours later he was, finally, ready.
Except by then, of course, it was too late.
Fran was holding up his phone, her face stricken.
‘It’s your news editor,’ she breathed.
‘Shit.’ Harry could hear Alexandra Spencer’s curt, upper-crust voice shrieking his name. He hurried to the duvet and took the mobile.
‘Not now,’ he growled into the phone, before switching it off, not caring that this was the kind of brush-off guaranteed to spin Spencer into a total fury.
He shoved the phone back into his jeans pocket, then hurriedly pulled his clothes on. The atmosphere in Fran’s bedroom was taut with tension. Harry fixed his gaze on the soft grey blinds at the window, at a loss for what to say. The room was unfussy and elegant, much like Fran herself. Harry was overwhelmed by how much he liked her. And how comprehensively he had screwed things up.
Fran’s mouth was open in shock. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I was about to tell you,’ he said, squirming inside. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you.’
Jesus, could he sound more pathetic?
Fran’s eyes hardened.
‘Tell me then,’ she said.
‘My real name is Harry elliot and I’m a freelance reporter,’ Harry confessed. ‘I do a lot of stuff for the Record and . . . and I’ve been investigating rumours about your father.’
Fran blinked. ‘Rumours?’
‘That he was head of PAAUL, that they were using his family home in Suffolk as a headquarters, that he’d sanctioned a new campaign of assassinations against individual doctors . . . all the stuff I showed you on the dark net.’
Fran gasped. ‘You knew about all that before you came to see me at the memorial?’
Harry nodded, a dull weight settling in his gut.
‘So if you’re not a sales rep, then you weren’t at the paris conference and you didn’t talk to Caspian at the bar . . .’ Fran gulped. ‘Did . . . did you ever actually meet my husband?’
There was a long pause. Harry shook his head.
‘And the threat he supposedly told you about . . . that whole conversation between the two of you . . . it was all a lie?’
‘Yes.’ Harry held his breath. Shame filled him, tightening his chest, flooding his face with heat. He sat down on Fran’s bed. She got off it and backed away, across the room.
‘Fran . . .’ he started.
‘Bastard.’
‘Fran, I know I made some things up but it was so you’d find things out more gradually, more gently,’ he said quickly. ‘If I’d come straight out and said I was a journalist who thought your dad was involved in your husband’s death then you’d never have spoken to me.’
‘That’s not the point,’ she snapped.
‘At the time it was the only way,’ Harry went on. He had the horrible sinking feeling that he was digging his way deeper and deeper into a hole, but he was desperate to make Fran understand. ‘You know how your family hates journalists, your dad especially. He’s famous for it.’
‘Of course he is,’ she snarled. ‘When Lucy’s abortion came out in the press it might have looked like a . . . a passing “pop” of interest to you, but it was a massive bomb for my parents. And Lucy. And me. It expl
oded in our lives, changed everything.’
‘I get that it’s awful I lied,’ Harry said, still intent on explaining. ‘But you have to see that if I’d told you everything I knew straight off you’d have cut me off and warned your dad. You’d certainly never have taken me with you to the house in Suffolk. And we both know that all the evidence we found there, added to everything else, suggests I’m right.’
‘I don’t know that,’ Fran snapped. Her breaths came out in angry heaves. ‘All I know is that you’ve lied to me. That all your crap about being scared and how this – you and me – meant something . . . you just said all that in order to fit in a quick shag before going back to—’
‘No.’ Harry’s head spun. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. I like you. I was planning on telling you everything so that we could . . . I was about to tell you at the bar before . . . before . . .’
‘Get out.’
‘You mean far . . . far more to me than the story,’ Harry persisted. ‘I swear.’
‘Get out!’ Fran’s voice rose. She reached behind her and picked up a stone Buddha that stood on the dressing table.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said, backing to the door.
Fran’s mouth trembled as she raised her arm, ready to throw.
Feeling worse than he ever had in his life, Harry had no choice but to turn and leave.
FRAN
I sank onto my bed as Harry’s footsteps echoed down the stairs, across the hall and out of the house. Silence fell.
He had lied to me.
Lied and lied . . . about meeting Caspian, about Caspian being threatened, about Dad . . .
I put my head in my hands. I had been such an idiot, I’d actually led Harry to all those reports on PAAUL at Uncle Perry’s house and he’d added to them with other bits and pieces of information, twisting everything we’d found to make Dad look guilty. It was all a set-up. Harry was a liar. He had used me to manipulate his way to a story on Dad. And then, to add insult to injury, he had tricked me into bed.
The Black Sheep Page 10