Take My Breath Away

by Martin Edwards

  ‘Oh God,’ Chloe whispered.

  ‘He stole my self-respect. I should have fought harder, but I didn’t know how. I never got back to my old weight. I started to love being thin. It wasn’t a matter of seeking his approval any longer. Anorexia gave me a kind of power. If only because Grant didn’t want a dead girlfriend on his hands. I was addicted to thinness, the way he was hooked on nose candy. Let’s not talk about those days any more, okay? I want to forget what it was like. When – feeling hungry was an aphrodisiac.’

  ‘It turned you on,’ Chloe breathed.

  ‘Yes, it turned me on.’

  Roxanne closed her eyes. Time to change the subject. Now, before it’s too late.

  She felt a touch on her cheek. Rouged lips brushing against the softness of her skin.

  Afterwards, Roxanne couldn’t remember whose idea it had been to spend the night together. She had a hazy recollection that Chloe had suggested that she come home to Greenwich with her. She hoped it wasn’t simply because Chloe felt sorry for her. Or drunk; they had both been unsteady on their feet by the time they left the Yellow Jersey and it wasn’t just out of mutual affection that they had leaned on each other as they made their way to the station.

  Nothing much happened when they took off each other’s clothes and climbed into Chloe’s comfortable kingsize bed. It was as if they were in unspoken agreement that there was no need to go too fast too soon. For Roxanne, it was enough to be able to fall asleep with another warm body next to hers. Since Hilary there had been no one. At times she persuaded herself that she did not need anyone else, but in her heart she knew it wasn’t true.

  Chloe’s radio alarm was set for six. Twenty minutes later, she reappeared in the bedroom, bearing a breakfast tray, whilst Roxanne was still wiping the sleep from her eyes and trying to remember everything she had said the previous evening. She was never at her best on waking; it took her time to come round. Hilary had been a lark, rather than an owl. Judging by her bright smile, Chloe was equally incompatible.

  ‘A treat,’ Chloe said. ‘For a special occasion. It’s been a while since I last served anyone with breakfast in bed.’

  Roxanne made an effort and sat up. For some reason she felt self-conscious. Despite her confession and the kisses and cuddles they had shared in the small hours, she pulled up the duvet so that it covered her breasts. Chloe noticed, and coloured as she handed over the tray. She had on a towelling dressing gown; her own famously expensive boobs were no longer on display. Already she’d found time to make up and douse herself in that musky perfume.

  ‘There’s something I ought to say, Roxanne. Last night was my first time – you know, with another woman.’

  Roxanne felt a stab of guilt. ‘Look – I didn’t mean to…’

  ‘No, no,’ Chloe said quickly. ‘Don’t apologise, for Christ’s sake. No regrets, all right? It’s just that – it takes a bit of a mental leap, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t feel bad about – about you and me,’ Roxanne said on impulse. ‘It just happened.’

  ‘I don’t feel bad about it,’ Chloe murmured. ‘Just strange.’

  It was strange for Roxanne, too, waking up in an unfamiliar room. The furnishings were trim and Scandinavian, the aroma of essential oils hung in the air. Chat magazines were scattered around. Chloe wasn’t much of a reader; Hilary had been passionate about Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Woolf, but Chloe’s library comprised a single shelf of chick-lit. She had opened the curtains a little, allowing Roxanne to gaze out towards the sunlit river. The flat was on the tenth floor of a new block on the waterfront opposite Canary Wharf. To the east, over the roofs of factories and houses, she could glimpse the angled masts of the Dome.

  ‘I like this place,’ Roxanne said.

  ‘Me too. I was very lucky to get it.’

  ‘How did you…?’ Roxanne suddenly realised that her question might seem tactless. Creed paid its people well, but she wouldn’t expect a personal assistant to be able to afford such a swish apartment.

  ‘My last boyfriend had some pull with the landlords. He did a deal with them on my behalf.’

  ‘Same boyfriend who paid for your op?’

  ‘You know something?’ Chloe’s cheeks had turned pink. ‘I think deep down you’re just as inquisitive as me.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…’

  ‘Oh, forget it. I shouldn’t be so tetchy. Besides, you have much more reason to be angry with me.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  Chloe bit her lip. ‘I have a confession to make.’

  Roxanne felt a chill and pulled the duvet tighter around her. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been checking up on you. I found out Roxanne Wake isn’t your real name.’

  Jesus. Roxanne caught sight of her face in the mirror on a chest of drawers. Her features had frozen in disbelief.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I should never have done it, but I couldn’t resist. I was just – fascinated by you. You seemed so cool and remote and beautiful – and unhappy. I wanted to find out more about you. So I accessed the recruitment file on his computer. It’s supposed to be confidential, even from me, but Ben is careless about his passwords.’ Chloe talking fast, barely pausing for breath as the words tumbled out of her. ‘I guessed Ben had taken a fancy to you, but that didn’t explain why you weren’t more forthcoming. So I rang up the Hengist Street centre and spun them a line. It turned out they knew nothing about your past. You said you’d worked in a welfare rights bureau in Manchester, but no one seemed to have heard of you. You’ll never believe this, but I was so obsessed, I checked with Public Records. The date of birth you gave – there’s no record of a Roxanne Wake being born on that day.’

  ‘No,’ Roxanne said faintly. She couldn’t move. It was as if Chloe had given her a paralysing injection. ‘No, there wouldn’t be.’

  ‘You must have been so terrified of him,’ Chloe said. She put an arm around Roxanne’s shoulder. ‘I know what it’s like, to be with a man who possesses you. At first it’s exciting, later it’s creepy. But with me it never got so bad that I not only ran away but had to change my name.’

  Roxanne dared not speak. Chloe pulled away and looked her in the eye.

  ‘Don’t worry. Of course I won’t give you away to that vicious bastard. My lips are sealed, cross my heart and hope to die. But you must tell me one thing. Who are you?’

  Now for it. ‘My real name is Cassandra,’ Roxanne muttered. ‘Cassandra Lee.’

  Chloe considered, no flicker of recognition on her face. The name must mean nothing to her. ‘I prefer Roxanne,’ she said and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  Roxanne felt the tension ebbing out of her. Chloe wasn’t angry or scornful. She had worked out her own happy ending.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I suppose you think I’m bitter?’ Alice Wythenshawe’s weathered cheeks flushed. ‘Of course I’m fucking bitter! What do you think I am, some kind of martyr? A heroine?’

  She wheeled her chair a little distance away from Nic and stared out across the small back garden. It had been adapted for her, with no lawn but waist-high troughs of begonias, geraniums and busy lizzies bordering the paths. She moved in the direction of a pergola covered in wisteria and climbing roses. After a few moments he followed, inhaling the perfume of the flowers as he joined her. Alice picked a pair of secateurs from the top of an upturned pot. She started cutting furiously at deadheads, as if inflicting punishment, dropping the old leaves into an aluminium bucket already half-filled with buttercups and dandelions.

  Under the pergola was a small wooden bench. He sat down, so that they were on the same level, and said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  She coughed. ‘Oh, take no notice of me. I fly off the handle sometimes. Always did, but now people are more tolerant. Good excuse, isn’t it, having your spine shattered? Don’t tell me I ought to count my blessings. I already know that. There’s a chap I see down at the Centre, he’s tetraplegic. Needs a tran
smitter just to breathe, has to drink through a straw, but he never utters a cross word. A fucking saint. He makes me feel guilty for not being the life and soul of the party.’

  Grey streaked her hair. She didn’t bother with dye or with make-up to cover the lines around the mouth and eyes. The sun had burned her freckled cheeks deep brown. She smelled of compost and her hands were grubby from weeding the densely planted troughs. Nic detected no trace of self-pity in the large dark eyes. She might have passed for fifty, but he knew she was a dozen years younger. He couldn’t imagine that she’d ever been a beauty; her mouth was too wide, her chin too sharp for that. Yet even in her wheelchair, breathing noisily as she reached out to prune the roses, she struck him as strong and full of energy.

  He nodded towards her bungalow, a neat stone building with a ramp leading from the back door. ‘You bought this house for your sister and yourself with the compensation money?’

  ‘The insurance coughed up in the end. We settled out of court, I took a lower payout to sort it quickly. They were going to say I was partly to blame, that I should never have let Bradley drive me, he was so obviously pissed. Funny old world, isn’t it? My life may have been wrecked, but I’m worth more than I’ve ever been.’ She put down the secateurs and bared her teeth in a fierce grin. ‘An upstairs flat wasn’t much use to me after I came out of hospital. It was time to come home. At least I survived. Which is more than you can say about poor Bradley.’

  ‘He was killed instantly, I suppose?’

  A casual question, but he held his breath for her reply. A giant who chopped himself in half?

  She swallowed hard. ‘He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, you know. Bloody fool. I ought to have said something, but I’d been drinking as well. But I’d put my belt on and that saved me. He went straight through the windscreen when we crashed. The impact – it ripped him apart. I mean, it literally tore him in two. The only good thing was, it was quick. Happened in an instant.’

  For a while neither of them spoke. Nic found he was clenching his fists. So it was true. Jazz had been talking about Bradley Hurst, linking his deaths with the others.

  ‘How could you bear it?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘Well, I’m not denying there have been days when I’ve thought he was the lucky one. I don’t like being a cripple, Mr Gabriel. Actually, I hate it. When I was active, I campaigned on behalf of disabled people, but I never dreamed I’d become one of them. Lucky we can’t see into the future, eh?’

  A bee hummed around them, moving from petal to petal. When it came too close, Nic brushed it away with his hand, but it kept coming back. He couldn’t help admiring its persistence. Alice Wythenshawe took no notice, as if she’d been stung once and had nothing more to fear.

  ‘Bradley worked for the union himself, didn’t he?’ Nic asked.

  Alice nodded. ‘He did things the hard way, left school at sixteen and went to work in a factory. Before long he became a shop steward. He was ambitious and he became hooked on the law. Beer and sandwiches weren’t enough for him. He always had a fancy for the high life. He liked to dress well, drive a big car. You can’t fill your wardrobe with Savile Row suits and keep a couple of Mercs in your garage without a bit of cash in the bank. Working for the union, he was never going to make a fortune. So he decided to catch up on the education he’d missed and won a scholarship to Ruskin. Once he had a degree, he moved into the legal profession and joined Creed.’

  ‘How did Bradley and Will Janus get on?’

  She grunted. ‘Will Janus was a winner – and winners can be forgiven anything, that’s what Bradley used to say. I thought Will was patronising, he was using Bradley simply to pretend the firm still had union roots, but Bradley didn’t mind. Will’s fan club, now, that was a different matter. Bradley couldn’t stick them. Fergus McHugh played tennis with Will and always let him win. As for young Joel Anthony, Bradley said if he stuck his head any further up Will’s arse, it would have come out the other side.’

  Nic smelled the roses, felt them brushing his hair. ‘Bradley was married, wasn’t he?’

  Alice examined her fingernails. The gardening had left them grubby. ‘Yes, he was married. She was a childhood sweetheart, the old familiar story, of course. Successful middle-aged man whose wife doesn’t understand him meets younger woman and fancies his chances. Mo had been a hairdresser. He got her pregnant when she was seventeen and they were married before the baby was born.

  She reached out to a climber which bore rich red roses and tore off a couple of leaves spattered with black spots. ‘You know, someone like Will would never see the disease, he’d rather preach about the beauty of the flower. It’s his gift, when you think about it. He’s a lucky man.’

  ‘And he likes his partners to be pure as the driven snow?’

  ‘Sure. He pays lip service to everyone being human, loves to come over as just a regular guy, but he simply isn’t. Committed to equal opportunities? Don’t make me laugh. He’ll never understand that tucking into chicken tikka marsala isn’t enough.’ Her voice was trembling with anger, her breathing was jerky. ‘The idea that Creed, the firm – the brand as that turd Fergus would put it – could be contaminated by scandal and sleaze, it would be anathema to him. Will is Mister Perfect. A tough act for the rest of us mortals to live up to.’

  ‘What if partners slept with clients?’

  ‘Perk of the job, Bradley used to say.’ She made a visible effort to calm herself, gave him the tightest of smiles. ‘Only joking.’

  ‘Did anyone in the firm know about your relationship?’

  ‘Ben guessed eventually. Bradley was what Ben would have liked to be. Tall, broad-shouldered, full head of hair. It didn’t help when I sent him off with a flea in his ear.’

  ‘He tried it on with you?’

  ‘I wasn’t flattered. Imagine a garden gnome on heat, that was Ben. I suppose I wasn’t tactful. No wonder he held a grudge.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘There was a big equal pay claim. Millions of pounds were at stake if our members won. It would mean that all the pay rates of shop floor workers in one of the country’s biggest retailers would have to be uplifted. Needless to say, the employers hired the best City lawyers money could buy. It was a high profile case, name of Smethurst, you might remember it.’

  ‘I do,’ Nic said. ‘You won. Won well.’

  ‘We did.’ A faraway look came briefly into her eyes and he guessed she was transporting herself back in time to the final triumph of a career cut so short. ‘Yes, it was a marvellous result. But all the way through, Bradley felt people in his firm were sniping at him.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Silly things, mainly. Fergus was angry because Bradley wasn’t keeping him up to speed, so he couldn’t brief the press with a good news story. Ben was twitchy about the funding of the claims. I’d been instructed to drive a hard bargain. Paying by results. Ben’s attitude was: no win, no fee, no bloody profit. Bradley kept saying the case was a winner, but Ben favoured doing a deal. I tried to reason with him, but it didn’t do any good. All that happened was that he asked Bradley if there was anything going on between the two of us.’

  ‘How had he cottoned on?’

  ‘I suppose we weren’t as discreet as we thought. Bradley gave him a load of bullshit, that was his forte, but Ben wasn’t fooled. Things started to get tense. We were both under pressure. It was always important to win, but then Bradley found out that Ben was plotting against him.’

  Nic reached out absent-mindedly and tore one of the petals off a rose. ‘Tell me about it.’

  She glared at him. ‘This is off the record?’

  ‘I haven’t even taken out my notebook, have I? Like I said on the phone, I’m simply trying to get background for a book about the firm.’

  ‘Joel Anthony came to see Bradley one evening. He was working closely with Bradley on the case. I took a liking to him. Anyway, he told Bradley that he’d been wrestling with his conscience. Bradley’s first question
was to ask what a lawyer was doing with a conscience.’

  ‘So why was Joel’s conscience pricking?’

  ‘Ben had asked him to keep an eye on Bradley’s handling of the case and to report to him about it. Joel was Ben’s spy in the camp and it bothered him. He’d been put in a no-win situation. He was careful how much he said to Bradley, but the message wasn’t hard to make out. Ben expected the litigation would go pear-shaped and that would give him a chance to stick the knife into Bradley. If the union ditched the retainer with Creed, that might have been grounds to force him out of the partnership. Joel had been promoted after Matthew Creed’s death. Ben was grooming him, someone close to Will, but someone he thought he could control. A way of strengthening his own position within the firm.’

  ‘How did Bradley react?’

  ‘His instinct was to laugh it off, but I warned him to take care. I didn’t trust Ben. Thanks to Joel, we were on our guard, all the more determined to make sure the litigation was a success. And it worked out for the best.’ She coughed. ‘Or did it? I suppose that if Ben had got his way, Bradley would still be alive. He might have left Creed – Christ, he might even have left his wife. The two of us would still be together.’

  Nic put his hands behind his head, stretched out his legs and waited. The old advocate’s trick, after picking up clues that the witness wants to talk. Bury your urge to know; just relax. Don’t be too anxious: have the courage to sit back and let the truth come tumbling out, all in its own good time.

  She shifted round so that she was facing him, her eyes boring into his and yet not, he thought, seeing him. Her mind was back in London, and the past. ‘Mum never asked me about that night, you know. I’m sure she was trying to be kind, not wanting to upset me by bringing back the memories. That’s the problem, though, Mr Gabriel. Memories are all I’ve got.’

  ‘Smethurst,’ he said softly. ‘It’s in all the books on equal rights. The leading case on the interpretation of that particular sub-section of the Equal Pay Act.’