by Karen Swan
Alex was surprised, but pleased. She hadn’t expected quite such an honest response quite so soon. She wrote the word ‘anger’ down on a sheet of paper in her lap.
‘Okay, so the problem is the anger. And what is the goal you think we should work towards? If you and I were to achieve anything together, what would it be?’
‘Well, I guess, in the words of every great beauty queen, that would have to be peace,’ he said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
She scribbled it down. ‘Okay. So do you mean a peaceable working relationship? Peace of mind?’
‘Both.’
‘So anger is the problem; peace is the goal,’ she murmured, looking at his profile as he stared resolutely out of the high-up canteen windows, as though he was wired to electrodes and being sporadically shocked. ‘Do you have any resources that can help you achieve this goal? A support system. It doesn’t just have to be a skill or an attitude—’
‘I run.’
‘Yes, you mentioned that earlier. But what about a person, someone you could consider an ally, someone you could confide in and trust? Is there anyone like that for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Rona.’
It was her turn to be quiet now. ‘The dog?’
He shrugged. ‘She listens.’
Does she talk too? Alex wanted to ask. Instead she blinked, hiding her true feelings. ‘She’s the one you confide in?’
He nodded and that’s when she saw it, the laughter in his eyes again, mocking this, mocking her. She felt her anger spike.
‘What about Skye?’
He frowned, looking baffled by the suggestion. ‘No.’
‘Why not? It’s clear you’re still close.’
‘We’re not close.’
‘How can you say that? She sat with you in the ambulance. She didn’t leave your bedside for two days and nights.’
‘I never asked her to be there.’
‘She obviously still cares deeply for you.’
He snorted with contempt. ‘No. She doesn’t.’
She stared at him, trying to get at least one handhold on this man, but it was like rubbing at granite with sandpaper. ‘You expect me to believe that nothing remains between you when she does all that for you? You share a dog together; you were going to spend your lives together.’
‘Yes. And then we didn’t.’
No, Alex mused. You jilted her; abandoned her the night before when her dress was already hanging at the end of the bed and her nails had been done, the flowers were cut and the guests all arrived. ‘Why not?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ he said bluntly.
She tried a different tack. There had to be another way in. ‘Fine. Let’s talk about trust, then. Who would you trust with your life?’
‘Rona.’
She’d never slapped a client before, nor had she ever been more tempted. She forced a smile. ‘What I mean is, if your life was hanging in the balance, who would you place your trust in to save you?’
‘Rona.’
‘Lochlan, you cannot keep mentioning the dog! It has to be a person. Give me a name.’
He shrugged.
‘You’re honestly trying to tell me there’s not a single person in this world that you trust?’
He looked at her with hard eyes. ‘Trust is overrated.’
‘No,’ she disagreed. ‘Trust underpins everything.’
‘I’ve got my dog. Deal with it.’
Alex inhaled irritably. ‘Fine! So for ally we’ll put Rona,’ she said through gritted teeth, scribbling the dog’s name on another piece of paper.
She got up and placed a sheet of paper on each of four chairs just as her phone, which had been by her feet, buzzed with a new text.
Lochlan automatically glanced down. His expression changed as he saw the name on it and picked it up. ‘Oh look, how sweet,’ he sneered. ‘My cousin can’t stop thinking about you. How’s tomorrow for dinner?’
‘Give me that,’ Alex said, snatching it from his hands. ‘It’s private.’
‘I thought you said it wasn’t a date.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Then why are you blushing?’ he asked as she pocketed the phone without reading the message. ‘Isn’t it incredibly unethical for you to date a client?’
‘He’s not a client,’ she said. Before realizing the pertinent point. ‘And it wasn’t a date.’
‘So you’re not seeing him again?’
‘That is none of your business.’
‘I don’t see why not. You seem to think you can ask whatever you like about the state of affairs between me and my ex-fiancée but whenever the questions turn to you . . .’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
‘Because we’re not here to discuss my life or my job. And because in my professional opinion, I think you’re a wreck. Your private relationships are in disarray – with your family, your ex-fiancée – and it is affecting your ability to do your job.’
‘That is a crock of shit.’
‘It’s not and I’m going to show you. Come and stand over here,’ she said forcefully, getting up and standing by the chair in the centre of the space.
He glared at her for a moment, both of them barely keeping a lid on their true emotions; but he did as he was told, for once, his expression betraying his evident scepticism.
She took a deep breath, grateful that she’d meditated before breakfast this morning; it always helped her dissipate her own high feelings. ‘We’re going to create a living map – a physical symbol of you and the system you’re currently locked within, so that you can actually see the dynamics at play. Now sit down here. This chair represents you. Okay?’ she said, showing the sheet of paper on the seat with his name on it.
‘If you say so.’
‘Now I want you to tell me where, in relation to your chair, you’d like me to put the problem, which we identified just now as anger.’ She stood behind the chair upon which she’d put the piece of paper with ‘Anger’ written on it.
‘Right here,’ he shrugged.
‘Where? To the left? Right? In front of you? Tell me exactly.’
He got up and, taking the chair from her in silence, stacked it on top of the chair upon which he’d been sitting. ‘There.’
Alex was quiet for a moment; actually a little stunned. ‘. . . Okay. Good. Now where should I put the goal we’re working towards, which we just identified as peace? Where do you see it as being in relation to where you are now?’
He jerked his chin forward.
‘Over there?’ she asked, taking the chair and walking it several spaces ahead of him. ‘Here?’
‘Further.’
She took another three steps. ‘Here?’
‘Further.’
‘Tell me when.’ She lifted the chair again and walked away, getting closer and closer to the stacked chairs by the walls, getting nearer to the double swing doors.
‘There.’
Alex put down the chair and looked back at him. She was almost out of the room; he was almost out of sight.
‘And finally, your ally, Rona,’ she sighed, walking back and lifting the last remaining chair.
‘Here,’ he said, pointing to the space in front of his feet.
Alex positioned the chair and looked back at the arrangement they had made. ‘Okay, so we’ve got you here, with the anger, or the problem, literally stacked upon you; you’ve got your ally at your feet and the goal . . . well, almost outside.’
She blinked, staring at the arrangement. She’d never seen anything close to this before. It was as bleak a picture as The Scream, the prospect of resolution quite literally a distant hope.
‘How do you feel, seeing the dynamics mapped out like this?’
He looked around at it, getting up and walking round the space slowly, his eyes tracking between the different chairs and the claustrophobic proximity of some, the distance of the others. She could see he
was absorbing what it said – his shoulders slumped, head low, feet shuffling on the floor. He looked back at her. ‘I feel vindicated.’
‘Vindicated?’
‘Yes. I told you it’s hopeless,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Maybe you’ll listen now.’
‘Lochlan, there’s always a way—’
‘No, there isn’t; not always. Give up, Alex, go home. This isn’t your problem. You can’t do anything here.’
‘I am the best in the business, Lochlan!’ she said fiercely. ‘I am the only person who can help you.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t believe that. How is your success even quantified?’
Alex knew she could prove it – her work with the president of a giant telecoms group in the States had reset his patterns of thinking so that within a year he had led the company from a profit warning to an IPO; she had helped the chairman of a German bank rebuild after an insider-trading ring had brought the company to near-collapse. But this wasn’t about her work. It was about her. He didn’t rate her because he didn’t trust her – not that he trusted anyone, but in her case, it was also because he didn’t respect her.
And could she blame him? From the moment she had arrived here she had, for reasons both within and without her control, lost her dignity and, by extension, her authority. And for a man like him – isolated, angry, untrusting – that made her inconsequential. Attempts at empathy – smiling, mirroring, doing favours such as making coffee – made no impact. Callum had been right; she wouldn’t get through to him by talking. That was like trying to crack a frozen pond by blowing bubbles and for as long as he didn’t want to do this, she could force no change.
She put her hands on her hips and walked over to him, pinning him with her eyes. ‘What’s it going to take, Lochlan, to make you believe in me?’
‘You can’t. You don’t have what it takes.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re too young, for one thing.’
‘The average age of my clients is fifty-eight and none of them have had a problem with it.’
‘No? Well, perhaps they like that you make coffee and “chat”, or that you play with chairs and make shapes in a room. But I don’t see anything in you that makes me think you understand what is required to be in the game at my level.’
‘And what is, exactly?’
‘Drive. Fire. Cut-throat ambition. The killer instinct.’
Alex felt herself steam at his withering assessment, as though she spent her days arranging flowers and learning dance routines. He thought she was a flake, just some hippy-dippy counsellor preaching love and kindness in the workplace. Every instinct in her wanted to tell him what was really going on here; he had no idea who he was dealing with or what he was up against; when it came to the wolf in sheep’s clothing, she was the archetype. But the retort stuck in her throat. It had to.
‘Sorry, Hyde,’ he said with a decisive look. ‘You’ve given it your best shot but this isn’t going to work. I can deal with Sholto on my own. Just get the ferry and go home.’
He walked out without so much as a handshake, the door swinging shut behind him, and she kicked out at the closest chair, sending it clattering across the floor. He made her want to scream.
She walked around the room in tight circles, squeezing and releasing her hands, forcing herself to breathe deeply. Yes, she would dearly love to get the hell out of here too and return to the plush silence of her Mayfair flat. She would love never to see that man again or have to make him coffee, she would love not to have to force a smile on her face when she felt contempt in her heart. But for all the reasons there were to go, there was a far more compelling one to stay.
She watched from the window as he walked towards the burned-out maltings and began talking with the last remaining fire officers still conducting their investigations. Yellow tape cordoned off the area, flickering gently in the onshore breeze as she saw him gesticulate with his arms – his movements large and dominant, always so sure of himself.
But he had underestimated her at his peril. She had tried doing this the nice way, but if it was killer instinct he wanted, it was killer instinct he was going to get.
‘Miss Hyde’s office?’ Louise asked, suppressing in her voice her annoyance that the caller had rung just as she was leaving the office. ‘Oh hi, Alex.’
It was dark outside and raining, the long beams of headlights moving up the walls and past the windows. She walked back to the desk and perched on the corner, her coat still on. She’d been hoping to get to the 6.30 p.m. Barrecore class.
‘No, no, it’s fine, I was just finishing up some notes . . . Yes, it’s all been great here, no problems. Carlos just left and Jeanette went early to get to the carol concert at St Martin-in-the-Fields. How are things with you? Any progress with Mr Charisma?’
She tilted her head to the side as she jingled the office keys lightly in her cupped hand. ‘He did what . . . ? His dog?’ She tutted. ‘Christ, he is such a moron,’ she sighed. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how you put up with it. What are you going to do?’
She rolled her eyes and shrugged off her coat, balancing the phone between her chin and shoulder as she booted the computer back up again. ‘Yes, of course I can . . . No, it’s no problem. I was still working on some stuff.’
She noticed that the orchid needed watering as she threw her coat over the back of the chair and began typing. ‘So you want me to go over there now . . . ? Yes, I pass by yours on my way to the station anyway.’
She cleared her throat as she listened to the list of orders. ‘So can this go by bike? It’d be quicker . . . Okay, I’ll book a car . . . Yes, they can collect in an hour so it should be with you before breakfast . . . Uh-huh, if you could text me the address.’
She stopped nodding, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. And her voice, when she spoke, had risen an octave. ‘Sorry – did you say you want your gun?’
Chapter Seventeen
The blades had only just begun to slice the air when she crouched low and ran across the field. Sholto’s arrival the day before had meant much of the snow cover had been blown away, leaving a radius of exposed yellowy grass like a sort of crop circle.
She grabbed the handle and opened the door with force.
‘Holy mother of God!’ Lochlan shouted, slapping a hand across his chest. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack!’ He frowned. ‘You can’t just run up to a fucking helicopter when the blades are going! What if I had begun to move?’
‘Relax. It’s hardly my first time in one of these things. I know when to step back.’
‘What . . . what the hell are you doing?’ he demanded as she stepped up and in, depositing her small overnight bag at her feet. She waved blithely to Mr Peggie as he drove off again, only the top half of the grey Landy visible over the stone wall. It had been a tight turnaround getting back here in time for this.
‘I’m coming with you, of course. Torquil told me you were using this for the weekend. I had assumed we’d drive.’
‘I’m not going to London,’ he scoffed.
‘Well, of course not, I know that,’ she shrugged. And then when he continued to look at her with open-mouthed disbelief, ‘The MacNab, remember?’
‘What? You’re not coming!’
‘Of course I am, we had a deal. If you would cooperate, I would do the MacNab with you.’
‘But I haven’t cooperated!’
‘Yes, you have. I mean, I realize we haven’t covered as much as I’d hoped – not with the fire to contend with – but our session earlier was hugely . . .’ She took her time considering the correct word. ‘Illuminating. We’re getting somewhere, Lochlan, we really are.’
‘No, we’re not!’
She tipped her head to the side. ‘Don’t you think I should be the judge of that?’
‘No!’
‘I suppose you would say that,’ she said lightly, making no move to leave. She sighed, shrugging her shoulders excitedly. ‘Well, I am really lo
oking forward to this, although – I’ll be honest – I am a little nervous too. What’s the forecast like for the weekend, do you know?’
Lochlan stared at her in disbelief. ‘You can’t honestly think that I meant for you to come to this?’
She blinked. ‘Why not? You asked only last weekend.’ She smiled. ‘There were witnesses and everything.’
‘But with the fire . . . We haven’t discussed it since.’
‘I wasn’t aware we needed to.’
‘Fuck’s sake . . .’ he muttered, looking defeated. Worn down. It was clear if he wanted to get her out of here, he was going to have to climb down and physically wrench her out. (Not that she would put that past him.) He turned back to the controls with a furious expression, before whipping back to her in the next moment, looking delighted. ‘Wait! What are you going to wear? You can’t wear that,’ he said, indicating her skinny jeans and belted Burberry jacket, the leather tassels still swinging on her Penelope Chilvers Spanish riding boots.
‘Well, of course not,’ she chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, my kit is being couriered up; it should be with me before breakfast.’
‘But I do worry. I know all too well just how loosely acquainted you are with your own luggage and I’m telling you now – I’m not giving you anything of mine.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of even asking,’ she smiled. ‘If I have to shoot in my pyjamas, then so be it.’ She smiled but she fervently hoped that even joking about it wouldn’t provoke fate; she was on a sticky wicket with the travel gods at the moment.
He looked away with a tut and she felt herself relax a little that she appeared to have got away with her bluff. They lapsed into silence as he began concentrating more closely on the apparatus, the blades beginning to whir into invisibility. She buckled up and slipped on the headset that made it easier for them to talk in the air.
‘I didn’t know you could fly,’ she said, impressed.
‘You still don’t know that I can,’ he mumbled, his eyes dead ahead.
‘Touché,’ Alex smiled. She figured she could hate him and still laugh at his jokes.
They rose into the air, the nose of the chopper pointing slightly down, Lochlan’s expression intent as they rose above the distillery – they swept above the smokeless kiln chimneys, the slate-topped buildings hemmed in by the stone walls becoming a random pattern beneath their feet, the grey sea nudging at the shore on the other side of the field. She saw the swell and curve of the island, saw how the land rose and fell beneath the different treeless terrains of heather moors and barley fields and peat bogs, the coastline a corrugation of merciless sharp rock and gold-fringed sweeping bays. She saw Port Ellen and the road that led up the island, past the guest house (Mr Peggie was parking the Landy in the yard, she saw), to Bowmore and Loch Indaal. They moved out onto open water, over the neighbouring isle of Jura, the ferocious tides of the Sound visible even at height. She lifted her eyes to the horizon. Beyond this narrow slip of sea lay Scotland, the Highlands like stern sentries guarding her shores, white-capped and ancient mountains furred with dense fir forests at their feet.