by Ruth Ware
Archer, who was maybe forty but looked older with his perma-tanned weathered face, was shifting from foot to foot, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his tie and dinner jacket. I couldn’t quite imagine what he was doing here—his normal beat was eating witchetty grubs up the Amazon, but maybe he was having a bit of time off.
I couldn’t see the girl from the next-door cabin anywhere.
“Boo!” said a voice from behind me.
I whipped round.
Ben Howard. What the hell was he doing here? He was grinning at me through a thick hipster beard that was new since I’d last seen him.
“Ben,” I said thinly, trying to suppress my shock. “How are you? Have you met Cole Lederer? Ben and I used to be at Velocity together. Now he writes for the . . . what is it at the moment? Indie? Times?”
“Me and Cole know each other,” Ben said easily. “We covered that Greenpeace thing together. How’s it going, man?”
“All right,” Cole said. They did that sort of manly half-hug thing, where you’re too metrosexual for a handshake and not hip enough for a fist bump.
“Lookin’ good, Blacklock,” Ben said, turning to me and giving me the once-over in a way that made me want to knee him in the balls, except that the sodding dress was too tight. “Although . . . have you, er, been cage fighting again?”
For a minute I couldn’t work out what he was on about. Then I realized: the bruise on my cheek. Obviously my expertise with the concealer wasn’t as good as I’d thought.
The flashing memory of the door slamming into my cheek and the man in my flat—about Ben’s height, with the same liquid dark eyes—was so vivid that my heart had begun thumping and my chest felt tight, and for a long moment I couldn’t find the words to reply. I just stared at him, not trying to keep the ice out of my expression.
“Sorry, sorry.” He held up a hand. “My own beeswax, I know. Christ, this collar’s tight.” He yanked at his bow tie. “How did you land this gig, then? Going up in the world?”
“Rowan’s ill,” I said shortly.
“Cole!” A voice broke into the awkward pause and we all turned to look. It was Tina, sashaying smoothly across the pristine white-oak floor, her silver dress rustling like snakeskin. She gave Lederer a lingering kiss on both cheeks, ignoring me and Ben. “Sweetie, it’s been far too long.” Her voice was throaty with emotion. “And when are you going to do that shoot you promised for the Vernean?”
“Hi, Tina,” Cole said, with just a touch of weariness in his tone.
“Let me introduce you to Richard and Lars,” she purred, and, slipping her arm through his, she bore him off to the knot of men I’d noticed at the beginning. He allowed himself to be carried away, with just a little rueful smile over his shoulder as he went. Ben watched him go and then turned back to me, cocking an eyebrow with such perfect comic timing that I let out a snort.
“I think we know who the belle of the ball is, right?” he said dryly, and I had to nod. “So how are you, anyway?” he continued. “Still with the Yank?”
What could I say? I don’t know? There’s a strong possibility I might have screwed things up enough to have lost him?
“Still very much unavailable,” I said at last, sourly.
“Shame. But you know, what happens in the fjords stays in the fjords. . . .”
“Oh, piss off, Howard,” I snapped. He put up his hands.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Yes, I can, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Instead, I grabbed another glass from a passing waitress and looked round for something to change the subject.
“Who are the others, then?” I asked. “I’ve got you, me, Cole, Tina, and Archer ticked off. Oh, and Alexander Belhomme. What about that crowd over there?” I nodded at the little group Tina was chatting to. There were three men and two women, one of them about my age but about fifty thousand pounds better dressed, and the other . . . well, the other was sort of a surprise.
“That’s Lord Bullmer and his cronies. You know, he’s the owner of the boat and the . . . I guess you’d call it the company figurehead?”
I stared at the little knot in the corner, trying to make out Lord Bullmer from the snap on Wikipedia. At first I couldn’t work out which one he was, and then one of the men gave a full-throated laugh, throwing back his head, and I knew at once it was him. He was tall, wirily slim, and dressed in a suit so well cut that I was certain it must be tailored. He was fiercely tanned, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors, his bright blue eyes narrowed into slits as he laughed, and there was a streak of premature gray at each temple, but it was the grayness that comes sometimes with extremely black hair, not old age.
“He’s so young,” I said wonderingly. “Seems kind of weird for someone our age to be a peer, don’t you think?”
“He’s Viscount Something as well, I think. The money’s mainly down to his wife, of course. She’s the Lyngstad heiress, her family owned that huge car manufacturer. You know the ones I mean?”
I nodded. My business knowledge might be shaky, and the family might be famously private, but even I’d heard of the Lyngstad Foundation. Every time I saw footage of an international disaster zone, their logo was on the trucks and aid parcels. I had a sudden memory of a shot I’d seen all over the papers last year—it might even have been one of Cole’s—of a Syrian mother standing in front of a Lyngstad-branded truck with a baby in her arms, holding the child up towards the driver like a talisman to make the vehicle stop.
“And is that her?” I nodded at the willowy white-blonde with her back to me, who was laughing at something one of the other men had said. She was dressed in a devastatingly simple gown of rose-colored wild silk that made me feel like I’d cobbled mine together from my childhood dressing-up box. Ben shook his head.
“No, she’s Chloe Jenssen. Ex-model and married to that chap with the blond hair, Lars Jenssen. He’s a big noise in finance, head of a Swedish investment group. I imagine Bullmer’s got him here as a potential investor. No, that’s Bullmer’s wife, next to him, in the headscarf.”
Oh . . . She was the surprise. In contrast to the other women in the group, the woman in the headscarf looked . . . well, she looked ill. She was wearing a kind of shapeless gray silk kimono wrap that matched her eyes, and looked halfway between an evening dress and a dressing gown, but even from here I could see she was wearing a silk scarf wound around her scalp, and her skin was waxily pale. Her gray pallor stood out in sharp contrast to the rest of the group, who looked almost obscenely healthy in contrast. I realized I was staring and dropped my eyes.
“She’s been ill,” Ben said unnecessarily. “Breast cancer. I think it was pretty serious.”
“How old is she?”
“Barely thirty, I think. Younger than him, anyway.”
As Ben drained his glass and turned to look for a waiter to fill up, I found my gaze drawn back. I would never in a million years have recognized her from the photograph I’d seen on Wikipedia. Perhaps it was the gray skin, or the loose-fitting silks, but she seemed years older, and with that glorious mane of golden hair gone, she looked like a completely different woman.
Why was she here and not at home lying on a sofa? But then again, why shouldn’t she be here? Maybe she didn’t have long to live. Maybe she was trying to make the most of her time. Or maybe—here was a thought—just maybe, she wished that the woman in the gray dress would stop staring at her with pitying eyes and leave her alone.
I looked away again and cast around for someone less vulnerable to speculate about. There was only one person left in the group unaccounted for, a tall older man with a neatly clipped graying beard and a gut that could only be the product of a lot of long lunches.
“Who’s the Donald Sutherland look-alike?” I said to Ben. He turned back round.
“Who? Oh, that’s Owen White. UK investor. Richard Branson type—just on a slightly smal
ler scale.”
“Jesus, Ben. How do you know all this? Have you got an encyclopedic knowledge of high society or something?”
“Er, no.” Ben looked at me, a touch of disbelief in his expression. “I rang up the press office for a list of guests and then googled them. It’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes stuff.”
Fuck. Fuck. Why hadn’t I done that? It was what any good reporter would have done—and I’d not even thought of it. But then, Ben probably hadn’t spent the last few days in a haze of sleep deprivation and PTSD.
“How about—”
But whatever Ben had been about to say, it was drowned out by the ting ting ting! of metal against champagne flute, and Lord Bullmer moved into the center of the room. Camilla Lidman put down the flute and teaspoon she was holding and made as if to step forward and introduce him, but he waved a hand and she melted into the background with a self-effacing smile.
The room fell into a respectful, faintly anticipatory silence, and Lord Bullmer began to speak.
“Thank you, everyone, for coming to join us here on the Aurora on this, its maiden voyage,” he began. His voice was warm, and had that curiously classless tone that people from public school seemed to strive for, and his blue eyes had a kind of magnetic quality that was hard to look away from. “My name is Richard Bullmer, and my wife, Anne, and I would like to welcome you aboard the Aurora. What we have sought to do with this ship is make it nothing less than a home away from home.”
“Home away from home?” Ben whispered. “Maybe his home has a sea-view balcony and a free minibar. Mine sure as hell doesn’t.”
“We do not believe that travel has to mean compromise,” Richard Bullmer continued. “On the Aurora, everything should be as you would wish, and if it’s not, my staff and I want to hear.” He paused and gave a little wink at Camilla, including her in the remark as an acknowledgment that she would likely be on the sharp end of any complaints.
“Those of you who know me will know of my passion for Scandinavia—for the warmth of its people”—he shot a quick smile at Lars and Anne—“for the excellence of its food”—he nodded at the tray of dill and prawn canapés traveling past—“and the spectacular glory of the region itself: from the rolling forests of Finland, to the scattered islands of the Swedish archipelago, to the majesty of the fjords in my wife’s native Norway. But I think that, for me, the defining quality of the Scandinavian landscape is—perhaps paradoxically—not the land at all, but the skies—wide, and almost preternaturally clear. And it is those skies that provide what for many is the crowning glory of the Scandinavian winter experience—the northern lights, the aurora borealis. With nature nothing is certain, but I very much hope to share the spectacular majesty of the northern lights with you on this trip. The aurora borealis is something that everyone should see before they die. And now, please raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, to the maiden voyage of the Aurora Borealis—and may the beauty of her namesake never fade.”
“To the Aurora Borealis,” we chorused obediently, and downed our glasses. I felt the alcohol trickle through me, taking the edge off everything, even my still-aching cheek.
“Come on, Blacklock,” Ben said, setting down his empty glass. “Let’s go do our bit and schmooze.”
I felt a twinge of reluctance to approach the group with him. The thought of being taken for a couple was awkward, given our past, but I wasn’t about to let Ben start making connections while I hung back. As we started across the room, I saw Anne Bullmer touch her husband’s arm and whisper something in his ear. He nodded, and she gathered up her wrap and the two of them began to make their way towards the doorway, Richard holding Anne’s arm solicitously. We passed in the center of the room, and she smiled, a sweet smile that illuminated her drawn, fine-boned face with a shadow of what must have been her former beauty, and I saw that she had no eyebrows at all. The lack of them, together with her jutting cheekbones, gave her face a curious, skull-like appearance.
“You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” she said. Her voice was pure BBC English, no trace of accent that I could detect. “I’m very tired—I’m afraid I’m ducking out of dinner tonight. But I look forward to meeting you tomorrow.”
“Of course,” I said awkwardly, and then tried to smile. “I—I look forward to it, too.”
“I’m just going to see my wife to her cabin,” Richard Bullmer said. “I’ll be back before dinner is served.”
I looked at them as they walked slowly away and then said to Ben, “Her English is amazing. You’d never know she was Norwegian.”
“I don’t think she actually lived there much when she was younger. She spent most of her childhood at boarding schools in Switzerland, as far as I know. Right, cover me, Blacklock, I’m going in.”
He strode across the room, scooping up a handful of canapés as he went, and inserted himself into the little group with the practiced ease of a born journalist.
“Belhomme,” I heard him say, his tone full of a sort of Old Etonian faux bonhomie, which I knew to be completely out of keeping with his actual background, growing up on an Essex council estate. “Great to see you again. And you must be Lars Jenssen, sir, I read that profile of you in the FT. I very much admire your stance on the environment—mixing principles with business isn’t as easy as you make it look.”
Ugh, look at him, networking like a bastard. No wonder he was working at the Times doing proper investigative stuff, while I was stuck in Rowan’s shadow at Velocity. I should get over there. I should inveigle myself into conversation with them just as Ben had. This was my chance and I knew it. So why was I standing here, holding my glass with cold fingers, unable to make myself move?
The waitress came past with a bottle of champagne and, slightly against my better judgment, I let her fill up my glass. As she moved away, I took a reckless gulp.
“Penny?” said a low voice in my ear, and I whipped round to see Cole Lederer standing behind me.
“Sorry, Penny who?” I managed, though my palms were prickling with sweat. I had got to get over this.
He grinned, and I realized my mistake.
“Oh, of course, for my thoughts,” I said, cross with myself, and with him for being so coy.
“Sorry,” he said, still smiling. “Stupid cliché. I don’t know why I said it. You just looked particularly pensive standing there, biting your lip like that.”
I was biting my lip? Well, hell, why not trail the tips of my Mary Janes in the dirt as well and maybe flutter my eyelashes?
I tried to remember what I had been thinking about, other than Ben and my lack of networking skills. The only thing that came to mind was the bastard who broke into my flat, but I was damned if I’d bring that up here. I wanted Cole Lederer to respect me as a journalist, not feel sorry for me.
“Oh . . . uh . . . politics?” I brought out, at last. The champagne and the tiredness were starting to hit. My brain didn’t seem to be working properly, and my head was starting to ache. I realized that I was halfway to being drunk, and not the good kind of drunk, either.
Cole looked at me skeptically.
“Well, what were you thinking, then?” I said crossly. There’s a reason why we keep thoughts inside our heads for the most part—they’re not safe to be let out in public.
“Other than looking at your lips, you mean?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and tried to channel my inner Rowan, who would have flirted with him until she got his business card.
“If you must know,” Cole continued, propping himself against the wall as the ship heaved over a wave and the ice in the champagne buckets rattled, “I was thinking about my soon-to-be ex-wife.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I said. He was drunk, too, I saw, just hiding it well.
“She’s screwing my best man, from our wedding. I was thinking how much I’d like to return the favor.”
“Screw her bridesmaid?”
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“Or just . . . anyone, really.”
Huh. As propositions went, it was certainly direct. He grinned again, somehow managing to make the line sound fairly charming, like he was trying his luck, rather than acting like a sleazy pickup artist.
“Well, I think you shouldn’t have too much trouble,” I said lightly. “I’m pretty sure Tina would oblige.”
Cole gave a snort of laughter, and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt, thinking about how I would feel if Ben and Tina were over on the other side of the room making jokes about me throwing myself at Cole for the sake of my career. So Tina had turned on the charm. Big deal. It was hardly the crime of the century.
“Sorry,” I said, wishing I could take back the remark. “That was a pretty cheap dig.”
“But accurate,” Cole said dryly. “Tina would skin her own grandmother for the sake of a story. My only worry”—he took another slug of champagne and grinned—“would be coming out of the encounter alive.”
“Ladies and gentlemen . . .” A steward’s voice broke into our conversations. “If you would like to make your way through to the Jansson room, dinner will shortly be served.”
As we started to file through, I felt someone’s eyes on my back, and I turned to see who it was. The person standing behind me was Tina, and she was looking at me very speculatively indeed.
- CHAPTER 8 -
It took a surprisingly long time for the staff to usher us through into the miniature dining room next door. Somehow I’d been expecting something practical, like the ferries I had been on with rows of tables and a long lunch counter. Of course, the reality was quite different—a room about the size of a private dining room in a restaurant. We could have been in someone’s home, if I knew anyone whose home had raw-silk curtains and cut-glass goblets.