Gabriel linked his arm through Grace’s and pulled her close. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Caro carrying Olivia, with Gabe’s uncle Hugo just behind, Joseph sleeping on his shoulder. Grace smiled softly and for once she felt at peace.
The following morning, there was a rowdy, good-natured breakfast and as everyone unwrapped their presents, the whole house was full of life and noise. Feeling full after an excellent late lunch, Grace retired to the conservatory, her favourite room in the house, with a glass of brandy. Gabriel had gone into Palumbo for a short visit to a mission and for once, Olivia and Joseph were asleep at the same time.
She sat in a wicker chair and watched as the view beyond the window slowly changed. Light was falling from the sky, and the jungle started to blacken against the ribbons of pink and lavender clouds. She sipped the brandy and thought about the phone call she had just had with her mother. Miles was married! She still couldn’t take it in. She supposed the shock might have been less had his new wife been Sasha Sinclair. She remembered how withdrawn the younger girl had been on that flight back from Nassau after their holiday in Angel Cay, how devastated she had seemed. Grace had almost been moved by her plight. Then again, she recognised Sasha as an operator, so she had often wondered whether she would reunite with Miles – after all, she certainly had leverage because of that night. That secret. But no, Miles had met someone travelling and had fallen in love, just as Grace had done in Australia. Had her brother changed? she wondered. Had he softened? She smiled at the thought. Not Miles.
‘Knock, knock.’
Grace turned to see Caro standing at the door of the conservatory. ‘I come bearing gifts,’ she said, producing a shiny red parcel from behind her back.
‘Ooh!’ said Grace excitedly, tearing off the paper to find a fancy-looking camera inside.
Both women burst out laughing.
‘I couldn’t let your photographic skills die once we left the Highlander, could I?’
Grace gave Caro a reproachful glance.
‘Tell me this is point and shoot.’
‘Nope. It’s got loads of expensive twiddly bits. You can be David Bailey with this piece of kit. You can take pictures of the kids, a photo diary of the election maybe, I don’t know.’
‘Wow. It’s fantastic. Thank you,’ she said, pointing it towards the horizon. It felt good in her hands. It felt like she had a purpose.
‘So where’s Gabe?’ asked Caro, sitting in the chair opposite her friend.
‘In Palumbo, at the mission.’
‘He never stops, does he? You have to hand it to him, campaigning on Christmas Day.’
‘It’s just a goodwill visit.’
‘It’s Christmas! He should be with you.’
Grace smiled to disguise her frustration. Caro had a point. These days she felt completely sidelined in Gabriel’s pursuit of votes. The election was still over a year away and yet he was away from El Esperanza six nights out of seven. Not once had she ever suspected him of unfaithfulness, but what she felt was worse: she felt abandoned. At least with another woman, she would have something tangible to fight against. But how did you compete with a whole country?
‘Join me for a drink?’ she asked, waving her glass in the air.
Caro shook her head. ‘Better not. I’m supposed to call my folks.’
‘In that case, I’m going to start snapping,’ said Grace excitedly. ‘I think Gabe’s got a box of film in a drawer in his study.’
‘Watch out for the porn.’ Caro laughed as she went.
Grace knew Caro was being ironic; it was a running joke of hers that Gabriel – at least, Gabriel the politician – was the most strait-laced man she had ever met. He’d certainly lost a lot of his breezy charm over the past two years. It was understandable, of course: with the pressure to win, the seriousness of Parador’s situation and the constant reminders of the living conditions many of the population were forced to endure, anyone would find it hard to smile. But it didn’t stop Grace from wanting the old Gabriel, the charming, happy, spontaneous man she had met on a street in Australia, to come back.
At the top of the stairs, she paused. Even now, she hesitated before entering Gabriel’s study. It wasn’t officially out of bounds, of course, but her husband liked to see it as his man-cave, his own private space. It’s my house too, after all, she told herself, pushing the door open. She walked across the room and sat at his desk, smiling as she looked at the photograph of them both in front of her.
Putting her camera on the desktop, she opened the bottom drawer. Reaching inside, something familiar caught her eye, hidden between sheafs of paper: Gabriel’s old notebook.
Glancing around, she pulled it out, running her fingers over the leather cover. Gabriel had carried this battered old book around with him all the time in Australia. Just ideas, he’d told her at the time. Maybe something will turn into a novel, who knows? She flicked through the pages and her heart leapt: it was clearly more than ‘just ideas’; it looked like at least a dozen chapters, written in longhand. Moving across to the sofa, she curled her feet under a cushion and began reading. It was a love story set in wartime Australia, and from the first sentence, she was transfixed. It was good, very, very good, one of those raw books that touched your life and made you want to share it with people you cared about.
‘What are you doing?’
She hadn’t even noticed the study door open. Gabriel walked slowly into the room and sat in the chair opposite her. She held up the notebook.
‘I found this when I was looking for film,’ she said.
He frowned and shook his head. ‘Put it away. Please.’
She sat up, clutching the notebook to her chest as if it might be snatched away, as if she did not want to let go of the life they could have had together.
‘But Gabe, this is incredible. Has your agent or editor seen it?’ She knew Gabriel had barely been in contact with his New York-based publisher since he had arrived back in Parador, and despite repeated phone calls from his agent, he seemed content to let that part of his life melt into the past. He waved a dismissive hand.
‘Grace, I haven’t got time for writing.’
‘But it’s such a waste!’
‘It’s not a waste,’ he snapped. ‘I’m trying to achieve something bigger, better here than mere words.’
Frustration boiled inside her. ‘What’s happened to you, Gabriel?’ she said.
‘What do you mean, what’s happened to me? Nothing has happened to me.’
She had avoided this conversation before now because she knew how important politics had become to him, but lately she had been wondering if it was all worth it. They had arrived in Parador with a romantic ideal: Gabriel was going to avenge his brother’s death; he was going to save his country. But over the last year, she had begun to wonder if it was actually possible to save Parador. Corruption seemed to be eating the country from the inside. Gabriel and his mother seemed blind to it – they were too close to the issues – but Grace was able to see the situation from a different angle. Corruption in Parador had become so entrenched, so much a part of everyday life, she doubted that any new government would be able to wash it clean again. And the sad truth was that Gabriel’s CARP party was so stridently anti-corruption, so against playing Parador’s unique little games, it actually stood little chance of success in the 1994 election. The reality was that politics was a dirty game and anyone who tried to play it whiter than white was going to get crushed. Grace had seen it happen in her father’s empire; she’d heard the conversations behind closed doors. Success always came at a price. Deals had to be done, people paid off, the powerful made promises. It was the way the game was played, and if Gabriel wasn’t prepared to get his hands dirty, he was doomed to fail.
‘Do you think you can win, Gabe?’ she asked simply.
‘Yes. If only we can reach more people, work harder, do more.’
‘How much more?’ said Grace, balling her hands into fists.‘You’re missing your children g
row up. We don’t have a life together. You’ve even abandoned your talent, your one-in-a-million gift for writing.’
‘I think it’s worth it.’
‘Nothing is worth this!’ she cried.
He came off his chair and knelt down in front of her, taking the notebook from her hands.
‘Help me, Grace. Help me win. We need one big push, and you can make a difference. You need to get on the campaign trail, be there by my side. Twelve months of your time. That’s all I’m asking.’
She pushed his arms off. ‘Have you been listening to a word of what I have been saying?’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it any more. I don’t want this political life.’
‘But I promise you, once we are in power, then we can have more time together.’
He wrapped his arms around her and for a second she pulled away. He didn’t even smell familiar these days.
‘Listen to me, I can do the presidency for two terms. That’s just ten years, Grace. It’s nothing; you’ll be thirty-three, I’ll be in my mid-forties and then we’ll have the rest of our lives to write, talk, just be together. But life will be better, sweeter, because of the difference we’ve made.’
He looked at her intently. ‘Have you ever done anything bad, Grace?’
The question startled her and she flinched. Anything bad? Her heart was thumping and she could hear the ticking of the study clock getting louder and louder. She had never told him about that night. She had always meant to. He was her husband. They shared everything: a bed, a family, a life, secrets.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly and a look of complicity darted between them.
‘We all have,’ he nodded, taking her hands. ‘I left my family, I moved to New York. I was selfish and pursued my own dreams and ambitions and didn’t once think of the bigger picture. Everybody has regrets, things they wish they could change. But it’s never too late to put things right.’
She looked at him, and a surge of hope filled her. Was that the answer? Since Angel Cay, she had felt as if she had been running, constantly on the move, never once daring to stop and look back. She was weighed down by the guilt of what she had done – what she had failed to do – that night. She had never believed that the boy on the beach had got up and walked away, much less stolen a boat and run off to a nearby island. It was all too convenient. No, that whole terrible mess had her father’s filthy fingerprints all over it; it was a glittering illustration of the corruption Gabriel was fighting against, a horrible example of all the deals done to make things go away and to keep things the same. Perhaps Gabriel was right, perhaps this was a way to atone for that one mistake. Maybe it would lift the weight that was pushing her down, bending her double. She looked into his eyes and nodded.
‘OK, I’ll help you,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, kissing her forehead. ‘Thank you, my love.’
She held up one finger. ‘But on one condition.’
‘Name it,’ he said.
‘Promise me that when we’re done and all this is over, you’ll get that sexy ass back on that chair and finish your novel.’
He threw his head back and laughed, and as he did so, he looked younger, more like the man she had seen that balmy night on Macrossan Street.
‘You’ve got a deal,’ he said. ‘Now come on downstairs and let’s grab some champagne.’
27
‘Should I wear this, or this?’ asked Chrissy, holding up a slinky black dress in one hand and a tiny scarlet one in the other. Lying across the bed of their Capital Hotel suite, Miles barely looked up from the copy of The Times he had been reading. Neither dress was from their Harvey Nichols shopping trip before Christmas and both of them looked tarty. Then again, he was a long way past caring.
‘The black one,’ he said, his eyes not straying from the article he had become engrossed in: a review of a gig Year Zero had done the night before at the Brixton Academy. Rereading the text and examining the photo of the ‘hot Manchester four-piece’, Miles found himself becoming very irritable. Alex bloody Doyle, making the papers before him – and The Times at that! He pushed himself up and stalked to the minibar, unscrewing two bottles of Jack Daniel’s and pouring them into a glass simultaneously. It was the second time this week he’d felt a stab of envy: a Christmas card from Grace he’d seen propped up on the mantelpiece at Ashford Park had had the same effect. It was an expensive embossed affair featuring a black and white photograph of Grace, Gabriel and the children. Who did she think she was, Princess Diana? It didn’t seem two minutes ago that Alex was living with his mother in some horrid northern town and Grace was working as a deckhand in Australia, but that had all changed, hadn’t it? The grandeur of the Christmas card and the size of the review in The Times spelt out one thing in big capital letters: SUCCESS. His sister and his former best friend had found it, Miles hadn’t. Things weren’t supposed to have played out like this. He was Miles Ashford. A leader, an achiever. But honestly, what had he ever done? Burnt down a house in Oxfordshire?
Chrissy emerged from the bathroom in the red dress, tottering on a pair of very high black heels.
‘Come on, we’re late,’ she said, prodding Miles in the side with her cheap clutch bag.
‘No we’re not. It’s New Year’s Eve. Nothing is going to get going until ten at the earliest.’
‘By which point we won’t be able to find a taxi and the tubes will be packed.’
‘I’m not getting the tube,’ said Miles with disdain.
‘I forgot,’ said Chrissy sarcastically. ‘It’s beneath you.’
‘No, I just have standards,’ he said, pulling on his coat.
She touched his cheek, but he flinched away. ‘What is it, honey?’ she asked. ‘Are you still pissed off about your dad?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Well, you’ve been in a bad mood since the party,’ she said.‘You’re not still thinking about it, are you? He was just angry about the wedding. He’ll come round.’
Miles was trying to put a brave face on it, but the truth was he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the party. Nor had he told Chrissy about his father’s ultimatum. Annul the marriage or you’re out of Ash Corp. You have until New Year to think about it. He still didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to annul the marriage, and he felt sure that a grovelling apology and a promise to send his new wife to finishing school would be an acceptable compromise. But did he want a life at Ash Corp. working as his father’s lapdog? For all his bluster in front of his mother, right now, he had no other better alternatives.
‘Let’s not talk about this now,’ he said, avoiding Chrissy’s searching gaze and heading for the door. ‘You’re right, we’d better go or we’ll be forced to get on the bloody tube.’
Piers Jackson was an old friend from Danehurst now working at Saatchi’s and living in a huge loft apartment in Covent Garden. The loft was full and thumping with dance music by the time Miles and Chrissy arrived, the guest list a mix of young adland, the old boys’ public school network and a smattering of assorted interesting others, models, DJs, and West End hipsters.
‘Milo!’ cried Piers as he walked out on to the roof terrace. ‘And who is this lovely young thing?’ he added, drinking in Chrissy and her tiny red dress.
‘This, Piers, is my wife.’
Piers did a double-take, then roared with laughter. ‘Good God, Milo, you had me going there for a moment.’
Chrissy smiled sweetly and stepped forward, offering her hand. ‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ she said in her best plummy accent. ‘I’m Christine Ashford, delighted to meet you.’
Piers took her hand and, not taking his eyes from hers, kissed it. ‘Well I have to say, the pleasure’s all mine, Mrs Ashford,’ he said lasciviously. ‘Miles always did have cracking taste in women. Whatever happened to that Sasha you were shagging at school?’
Miles shrugged, trying not to catch Chrissy’s eye. ‘I hear she’s modelling.’
�
�Men only, I hope.’
‘So how’s the ad game?’ asked Miles quickly, trying to steer him well away from past conquests.
‘Fantastic, even if I do say so myself,’ said Piers. ‘Lot of bollocks, of course, but the money’s OK and it’s a laugh. Why don’t I have a word with the recruitment director at Saatchi? You’re exactly the sort of person we want,’ he said, pouring them both a glass of red wine. ‘Could probably get you in at the junior account level.’
His cheeks flaring, Miles shook his head. That shit. ‘What was it Raymond Chandler said?’ he asked as casually as he could. ‘I think it was: “Chess is as an elaborate waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.” I won’t waste my time with either pursuit, Piers.’
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