The Tea Chest
Page 25
Margaret’s hands flew to her face. ‘Poor Mr Rathdowney. I was there just last week to get a toffee. He’s near retirement age now. Been there for decades. This is the last thing he needs.’
On the other side of the road, Bartlett’s Chocolate and Coffee looked intact, save for a wonky metal shop sign by the front door.
As they passed Roulette, Manu dashed out to greet them and flung his arms around Kate. ‘Our shop’s okay,’ he said, rocking her from side to side. ‘Everything. We were so lucky.’
Randolph was there too, eyes shining.
‘That’s wonderful,’ Kate said. ‘Did you stay through the whole thing?’
Manu released her and stepped away, looking sheepish. ‘Ah, not exactly,’ he said, tugging at his bow tie.
Randolph elbowed him playfully. ‘He bolted at the first sound of biceps bulging through a khaki shirt.’
‘I didn’t bolt,’ Manu protested.
Kate nodded but she couldn’t really concentrate. She spun around to see her own shop.
Manu and Randolph fell silent.
‘Sorry, princess,’ Manu said.
Elizabeth, Victoria, Margaret and Angus all stood staring at The Tea Chest.
The huge front window was shattered. The window boxes containing her precious gerberas had been smashed and dying flowers were scattered on the ground. Pain stabbed her chest as she picked up a limp stem. It was a horrible symbol of the failure of the entire enterprise.
‘Kate,’ Elizabeth said, clasping a hand around her arm. ‘Your flowers.’
Margaret clucked in sympathy.
‘We’ll leave you to it,’ Randolph said gently. ‘But please let us know if there’s anything we can do.’
Kate nodded silently.
Aside from the window and the flower boxes, there was a streak of random green spray paint in an arc across the solid wooden door, like a scar across its red face.
‘Not too bad then,’ said Angus. ‘We’ll get it cleaned up in no time.’ He gave Kate a determined smile, for which she was grateful.
‘Thanks.’
‘Such senseless rubbish,’ Margaret scolded. ‘Wicked, wicked people. No right . . .’
Kate tuned Margaret’s voice out while she fished in her bag for the store keys.
‘Oh,’ Victoria said suddenly, grabbing her other arm. ‘Look.’
She turned to see. Across the road, Heavensfield House stood dishevelled and forlorn. The whole window frontage was shattered and glass had sprayed across the footpath. Through the broken windows, she could see tables and chairs overturned, and plates and glassware in tatters, cake trodden into the ground with the ugly prints of boots. Towards the rear of the shop stood the small figure of Lady Heavensfield as she talked with a police officer, her hand at her throat as she gestured around the room.
‘Come on,’ Kate said. ‘This can wait. We need to help her.’
She led the way, sidestepping an abandoned bicycle, and entered Lady Heavensfield’s store. She halted just inside the doorway, not wishing to intrude. The policeman cleared his throat, handed over his card and put his notebook in his pocket.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said, and tipped his hat first to her and then to the group in the doorway as he left.
‘Lady Heavensfield, I’m so sorry,’ Kate said across the space between them.
Lady Heavensfield raised her chin. ‘Mindless peasant thuggery,’ she said. ‘No place for it in a civilised country such as this.’
‘No,’ Kate agreed.
‘I was just saying the same thing,’ Margaret said, adding some well-practised tsk-tsking.
There was a moment’s silence as the crowd took in the surrounds.
‘We’d like to help,’ Kate said.
Lady Heavensfield shifted on the spot and put her hands on her hips. ‘What about your own shop?’
Kate shrugged. ‘It can wait. It’s just cosmetic.’
‘Well, I have staff members coming later but if you can spare the time . . .’
‘Tell us what we can do.’
Three hours later, the team had swept, hoovered, mopped, dumped rubbish, rearranged furniture, cleaned benches and table tops, made a list of broken pieces and those to be replaced by the insurer, contacted a glass contractor to fix the store windows in both their premises, and organised a locksmith to replace the broken locks on the door.
Kate had even been over to The Tea Chest and picked some of the living white daisies to help brighten Lady Heavensfield’s shop. She’d also made a pot of warming chai, picked fresh rose petals and added them, along with a drop of rose oil for a deeper aroma and healing balm to soothe and lift their spirits.
Lady Heavensfield, in turn, loudly declared that it was an abomination to ruin fine English tea with ‘oriental spice’ and ‘garden pickings’, but she went on to drink two cups anyway, with several cubes of brown sugar thrown in for good measure.
They consumed toasted marshmallows, the smell of the roasted coconut far more pleasant than that of the lingering smoke outside, then followed them up with macarons. They washed the dishes before Kate collected her flock to go.
‘Let us know if there’s anything else we can do,’ she said brightly. ‘You know where we are.’
Lady Heavensfield looked over Kate’s shoulder to The Tea Chest and nodded gently, as though finally resigned to the permanence of the shop, right when Kate had lost it all.
‘Thank you,’ Lady Heavensfield said, with gratitude that seemed as though it might just be authentic. ‘I am most appreciative of your efforts.’
Back in The Tea Chest, the group decided on how best to approach the spray paint and the window boxes.
‘I can fix the boxes, no trouble,’ Angus said.
‘Really?’ Margaret looked surprised and impressed by her man’s secret talent.
Angus seemed to grow under her eager gaze. ‘I did an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker when I was young.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Margaret said.
‘I’ve many talents you haven’t seen yet,’ he said with a wink.
‘Oh my.’ Margaret blushed.
‘Stop it,’ Victoria groaned.
‘What?’ Margaret protested. ‘It’s okay for the young to have a love life but not the old, is that right?’
‘Not if you’re our mother,’ Victoria said.
Elizabeth wrinkled up her nose as an unwanted image clearly passed through her mind. Then she shook herself. ‘Speaking of which, I haven’t been able to get hold of Haruka. I need to talk to him.’
‘Who’s Haruka?’ Margaret said, stumbling over his name.
‘He’s my friend,’ Elizabeth said. She exchanged a look with Kate.
‘What sort of name is Haruka? Is he foreign?’ Margaret said.
‘No, Mum. He’s English,’ she said, omitting the part about his Japanese father.
Margaret scratched at her arm as if thinking about something. She frowned. ‘Haruka. Haruka. That name sounds familiar.’ She turned to Angus as if he might know the answer.
‘Don’t look at me,’ he shrugged.
‘He was the chap that sat next to Elizabeth on the plane,’ Victoria explained. ‘I told you about him when I brought Elizabeth home.’
‘That’s right.’ Her eyes shot open. ‘Now I remember. He phoned yesterday.’
‘What?’ Elizabeth gasped.
‘When you were at the hospital. He called the home phone because he couldn’t get through to you on your mobile. You’d left it at home, of course, when you rushed out in the ambulance. He’d seen you on telly.’
Elizabeth slapped her forehead. ‘I was supposed to meet him yesterday. I completely forgot in all the drama. What else did he say?’ Her voice was rising. ‘What did you say?’
‘I told him you were with your husband and I didn’t know when you’d be back,’ Margaret said innocently.
Victoria groaned.
‘And what did he say?’ Elizabeth said carefully.
‘I asked him if he want
ed to leave a message but he said no. He said he understood and hung up. He was rather evasive.’
Elizabeth turned to Kate. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m sorry, I’ve got to run.’
‘Of course.’
Elizabeth turned to leave.
‘Wait,’ Victoria shouted at Elizabeth’s retreating back. ‘I’m coming with you.’ And with that, the sisters were gone.
The phone number of the pizza shop where Leila had first met Quentin rang out. Leila hung up. Presumably they were shut due to the riots. But even if they were open, there was no guarantee they’d know where Quentin was.
She turned her attention to Facebook instead. Leila had often searched for a name—perhaps someone she’d just met or a new work colleague or a potential new date. All of a sudden, that cute guy in logistics was a guy with a family (possibly even kids), friends (possibly even a girlfriend), a dog, and favourite movies, music and hobbies.
You could get more information about someone in a few minutes of Facebook sleuthing through photos and status updates than you could in hours of conversation.
Leila wished now, as she clicked and scrolled and googled yet again, that she’d done more sleuthing on Quentin long ago. It just hadn’t seemed necessary. Now, she’d spent hours trying to hunt him down in all the usual places—Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, blogs, websites and through Google and Bing searches. But there was nothing interesting other than a news article about Quentin Tarantino letting rip about his iced water, which was apparently not iced enough.
She drained her third instant coffee for the morning. Each one had tasted worse than the last. The white mug clinked against other empties as she slid it along the desk. She should get out of her pyjamas. Have a shower. Get dressed as though she still had a job to do. Eat something besides Coco Pops. Be sociable with Bill, who looked like he could use some cheering up after spending time with Margaret and Angus.
In short, be the person she used to think she was. The person who was efficient and reliable and capable. Not the one who made monumentally bad choices, made decisions without consulting the people who mattered most, and let her personal feelings affect her judgement—and all because she was desperate to prove to her mother, to Kate, to Lucas and to herself that she could and would succeed on her own terms, with or without the man she loved, with or without job security.
But she’d blown it—with everyone.
She remained seated in the shadowy room on the western side of the house, the laptop glowing uselessly. Her emotions rolled slowly between depression and anxiety. Visions of her failed future played out in her mind like movies: of having to take temporary admin work here and there, just like her mother predicted; of waiting tables in cafés because no one would ever trust her with an important job; of having to buy her clothes from Target rather than boutiques in the Valley; and of eating tinned spaghetti on toast for dinner.
Alone.
She jumped. Her phone was ringing. Lucas’s name was on the screen.
‘Hello?’
‘I’ve got news,’ he said, and she could hear a note of excitement in his tone, mixed with trepidation. ‘Quentin’s not his real name.’
She dropped her head into her hand. She’d considered that possibility briefly, but she hadn’t seriously allowed herself to believe it could be true.
‘Go on,’ she managed.
‘It’s Daniel Jackson.’
‘Daniel Jackson? Dan Jack? Like the reverse of Jack Daniel’s whiskey? What sort of stupid name is that?’ She coughed out mirthless laughter.
‘He’s an actor,’ Lucas continued.
That was a slap in the face.
‘Rubbish.’
‘Well, he’s a wannabe actor. He’s with Tower and Hart Agency in Los Angeles.’
Leila’s brain clunked and groaned its way through the information. ‘How do you know this?’ she said, more as a way of giving herself time to process the information than actually caring how he knew.
‘Remember Oscar Martin who was over here last year?’
Leila searched her memory.
‘Up on the top floor,’ Lucas prompted. ‘On the three-month exchange?’
‘Oh yeah, the American.’
‘Well, we kept in touch. He emailed me recently and was saying how the company had sent him on an acting course as professional development.’
‘Are you serious? What a complete rort.’
‘Well, you could look at it that way,’ he said. ‘But he’s in business development. His whole job is to pitch to prospective clients and build relationships, so it could be seen as legitimate skill-building.’
‘Keep going.’
‘So I sent him an email saying I was trying to track down a guy called Quentin Ripp, not because I thought he was an actor at that stage, but just because he was American, and Quentin was American, or so we think, and, you know, if I was going to play the Six Degrees of Separation game, then I figured I should start with someone in the same country. Right?’
‘I guess so.’
‘So, Oscar’s sitting in a restaurant with a mate when the email pops up on his phone. His mate happens to be a PI.’
‘Of course he is,’ she said. ‘Only in America.’
‘Well, the PI friend says he can send out a blast on his phone to a social network he’s part of that he uses to help track down people, asking if anyone knows Quentin Ripp. He does that, then someone jumps online and says they did an acting course with a guy called Daniel Jackson who used to assume the name of Quentin Ripp in character sketches. The PI tells Oscar, and Oscar contacts his acting school and says he’s looking to track down an actor in LA and asks the school for agency contacts and then sends them to me. Then I sit on the phone and go through the list until I find one that represents Daniel Jackson. Presto.’
‘Okay, that’s pretty impressive. But how do we know it’s right? How do we know it’s the same guy?’
‘I told the agency I was casting for a tourism commercial in Australia, featuring American tourists, and asked her to send me head shots and specifically requested Daniel Jackson’s as I’d heard good things. I’ve just emailed you his photo to check.’
Leila stiffened. She reached for the mouse and navigated to her email. There it was—an email from Lucas with the paperclip attachment symbol. Her heart flip-flopped. She clicked it open and there he was: Quentin Ripp. Daniel Jackson.
She took in a sharp breath.
It was a black-and-white headshot and his face was tilted to the side, his eyes boring through the camera lens to meet hers.
‘Leila?’ Lucas prompted. ‘Is it him?’
She blinked a few times, staring at his face, outraged to find she still wanted to take it in her hands and kiss it.
‘Yes.’
He waited a moment, giving her a chance to get her thoughts together.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She nodded, still fixated on the photo in front of her.
‘But, Leila, there’s more.’
More? She couldn’t possibly take any more. What else could there be?
‘The agency told me that Daniel—Quentin—is currently on a job. A private job, which is due to end soon.’
Leila clicked the photo shut. ‘So?’
‘So it seems he’s not actually the brains behind this fraud at all. Leila, someone hired him to do this to you.’
24
The black cab hissed to a halt in the wet guttering. Elizabeth lurched from within, her plimsolls landing in the wet street, leaving Victoria behind to take care of the fare. It had started raining as soon as they’d left The Tea Chest, slowing down traffic as drivers adjusted to the conditions. Almost as suddenly as it had started, it had stopped again and now muddy rivulets ran across the bitumen, and the smell of fresh rain rose from the road. She pulled her coat tightly around her.
The cab door shut and Victoria arrived at her side.
‘Nice place,’ she said, nodding at the modern glass entryway to the block of flats.
‘Come on,’ Victoria said, taking her elbow and leading her forward. ‘Make love while the sun shines.’
At the intercom, Elizabeth hesitated again, her finger hovering over his number.
‘Well, go on,’ Victoria urged, sounding like an exasperated parent.
‘But what will I say?’
‘Um, der. Hi? It’s me? Can I come up?’ And with that, Victoria thrust her polished nail at number 24 and it lit up.
Silence was all that came from the intercom.
Elizabeth hopped from foot to foot. Behind them, residents swiped key tags and the glass doors clicked open and swooshed shut.
‘Let’s go,’ Victoria said at the next opportunity and pulled her through the doors behind a man in a business suit.
Elizabeth held her breath as they entered, half expecting someone to catch them out and ask them to leave. But no one did. They crossed the echoing black and white tiles to the elevator and pressed the call button.
‘I can’t believe how hard my heart is pounding,’ Elizabeth said. She might have been catastrophising, but she truly felt as though the world would end if she couldn’t find Haruka and clear up any misapprehension that she might have reunited with her husband. Any thoughts of John and what she’d said goodbye to back in that hospital room vanished. Haruka was all she wanted now.
Victoria gave her a sympathetic look and squeezed her hand just as the elevator binged and the smooth chrome doors slid soundlessly open. ‘Here we go,’ she said, leading the way.
On the tenth floor, they stepped into a warm, brightly lit hallway and Elizabeth hesitated, staring at all the closed doors. Waves of doubt unsteadied her. She placed a cool palm to her forehead.
‘What’s wrong now?’ Victoria said.
‘What am I doing? Maybe I got this all wrong. Haruka and I haven’t known each other for long. I could have misinterpreted everything. This is crazy. So what if he thinks badly of me? What does it matter?’
But even as she said it her heart ached. It mattered. It mattered a lot.