‘A while. Possibly permanently.’
‘Permanently? You’re leaving New York? Leaving the hotel division?’
‘I can work from Europe for now. It’s not a problem.’
‘But I thought you loved it in New York. You have that lovely house.’ He had just bought a beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, with views right over Manhattan, and no one would have enjoyed New York’s party scene and pretty girls more than Adam.
‘I do, but Dad says I’m going to have to step up to the plate.’
‘CEO?’ she said with surprise.
‘A comedown from president, I know.’ Another smile. ‘But there’s been a Denver at the head of the company since it was founded eighty years ago, and Dad wants it to stay that way,’ he continued with none of his usual verve and swagger.
‘Do you want it?’
‘I could never replace Julian.’
‘I didn’t mean that . . . I just always got the impression you never wanted the job.’
‘I don’t. Not really. Besides, Elizabeth is gunning for that gig, is probably lobbying the executive committee as we speak, none of whom are going to take me particularly seriously even if my father has a majority voting share in the business and suddenly goes mad and wants to give me the job. But, you know, maybe I need a project. I don’t mean the CEO’s job, but something big to get my teeth into. Something to help me forget.’
For a moment Diana forgot about her own grief and thought about Adam and Elizabeth; siblings were often overlooked in favour of partners and parents in the condolences pecking order.
‘What are you in town for?’ he asked more cheerfully, clearly wanting to change the subject.
‘I went to see Greg Willets with Rachel.’
‘How is he?’
‘He sent me a lovely note.’
‘I bet you’ve had a lot of those.’
‘But seeing him today made me feel a bit sad.’
‘Why?’ asked Adam, looking puzzled.
Diana knew it was the chance to articulate the feelings she had had at lunchtime with someone she trusted.
‘I worry that I’m not going to have an excuse to see people like Greg for very much longer, and I hate that, because I know that the second I stop seeing Julian’s friends, his colleagues, stop talking about him, is the second he really dies.’
‘Then keep seeing them, keep talking about him,’ replied Adam fiercely. ‘No one wants him to fade away. We won’t let him.’
‘It’s going to be hard keeping plugged in when I’m at Somerfold.’
‘Then you should come to London more often. Move back here. You’ve got the house in Notting Hill.’
‘I’m not moving back to that place.’
Adam nodded, comprehending her feelings for the spot where Julian had ended his life.
‘You know the company has a couple of apartments. For executives. I could set you up there with one phone call. I’m in one, in fact. They are quite nice. Just off the King’s Road. Hey, we’d be neighbours.’
‘But it wouldn’t be my home,’ said Diana, though she had to admit to herself that it sounded quite a nice idea. ‘Home is the best place for me right now.’
They both decided they needed a drink, and went into the café. The place was full of pretty, arty-looking girls, who gave Adam discreet second glances as he stood in the queue buying their two cups of coffee. Diana doubted they recognised him from the society pages, but there was something about him that made you want to look twice. He was certainly not as good-looking as Rachel’s diving colleague in Thailand, or as poised and elegant as Julian. Perhaps it was the way he filled out a suit, the glint in his eyes that promised fun, his easy, flirtatious charm as he talked to the waitress. He caught her looking at him and she glanced away.
The café was busy and it was a warm evening, which made sitting outside even more tempting. The gardens looked quite lovely. The summer sky was beginning to darken, casting long shadows around the courtyard, but light spilled out of the museum’s long windows, turning the central reflecting pool a thousand shades of bronze and gold.
Many of the tables around the perimeter were occupied. Adam found a single iron chair and took it to the edge of the water, beckoning Diana to sit on it, and then crouched down on the step by her feet.
‘Good cake,’ he said, tearing into a slice of banana loaf. ‘Want some?’
She shook her head and sipped her coffee.
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ pressed Adam, forcing her to take some. ‘Cake is one of life’s great pleasures.’
As the sleeve of his jacket brushed against her bare leg, she shivered. She closed her eyes and thought of Julian. The morning after his death, she had found an old, unwashed T-shirt of his, one that had been recently worn and had not yet been through the laundry, and she had slept with it until it no longer smelt of him, but of her own perfume, soap and sweat. It was one of a few things she had done to try and feel connected with him – looking at old photographs, listening to his favourite CDs – but right now, through physical contact with his brother, she felt closer to her husband than she had been since his death.
She opened her eyes and returned to the present. For a moment they were both quiet, as if they had run out of conversation.
‘Julian taught me how to swim,’ said Adam finally. ‘How to sail, how to tie a slip knot. Did you know I tie really good knots?’
‘He taught me a lot too. Too many things to even mention,’ she said, feeling her eyes well with tears. She touched Adam’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for being so good to me at the funeral.’
He nodded, as if the memory of that day was just too painful.
‘When’s the memorial service?’
‘Six weeks’ time. Elizabeth is after St Paul’s.’
‘Cathedral?’
‘Where else?’
‘Julian would have hated that.’
‘Clinton will be invited. And the Beckhams.’
‘But he’d have liked that,’ she smiled. Her husband had been a huge football fan, and considered Clinton a great political hero, despite his indiscretions.
‘How’s Rachel?’
‘You know she’s back in London . . .’
‘Good news travels fast.’
‘I need to know why he died.’
‘I know. She’s good,’ he said quietly. ‘Besides, if the last two weeks have taught us one thing, it’s that life’s too short to bear grudges.’
She was grateful for his words. Everyone else had made her feel as if she was wrong or weak or plain idiotic for welcoming her sister back into her life.
‘I’m sorry for calling you this morning.’
‘Sorry? What on earth for?’
‘When I said I had to see you. It was a bit dramatic. Sorry if I worried you; it’s just that I went to see a therapist this morning and she said I should be around people that make me smile.’
‘Is that an insult or a compliment?’ he asked, looking up at her.
‘Oh, it’s a compliment.’
He hesitated. ‘I’m glad you rang. Just being here with you makes me think that Julian is going to come walking through that door any minute.’
‘It’s a good feeling, isn’t it, for the few seconds before you realise he’s not.’
He slapped his palms against his thighs and stood up.
‘Apparently it’s my mission to cheer you up, so why don’t we do something about it? Maybe we should go clubbing.’ He said it as if the idea had just presented itself.
Diana laughed. ‘I haven’t been clubbing since the nineties.’
‘So what? Do you want to?’
‘My therapist said I should do fun stuff, but I’m not sure that clubbing is entirely appropriate. Or what the doctor ordered.�
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‘Did she have any suggestions, because I’m all out of ideas about how to feel better.’
‘She said we should go fly a kite.’
‘That might cause terrible problems on the Cromwell Road,’ he laughed.
She watched him glance at his watch.
‘Do you have to be somewhere? It’s the fourth time you’ve looked at your watch in the last ten minutes. Hot date?’
‘No.’
‘Adam.’
‘There’s nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
He looked at her with the realisation that he’d been caught out.
‘All right, there’s a meeting at the Mandarin Oriental . . .’
She looked at her own watch. They hadn’t even been here an hour.
‘Then what are you doing here still? Go,’ she said, waving her hand frantically.
‘My assistant can handle it.’
‘What’s the meeting?’ she pressed.
‘Qatari investors. I might be buying some hotels off them.’
‘You can’t blow them off.’
‘I can,’ he replied unconvincingly.
‘I should be going home anyway.’
‘You sure you don’t want to go clubbing?’ His face was as soft and apologetic as a naughty puppy’s.
‘No.’
‘Dinner?’
‘No.’
It was so tempting to say yes. She didn’t fancy clubbing or dinner, but right now all she wanted to do was sit by this pool and watch the ripples and feel the warmth of someone besides her who knew exactly what she was going through, and who cared enough to drop whatever he was doing to come and see her.
‘In which case, do you mind?’ he said, already straightening his tie and smoothing out the creases in his trousers.
‘It’s been good to see you, Adam.’
He kissed her cheek and she noticed how good he smelt.
‘We’ll do it again, all right?’
‘I’d like that very much indeed.’
16
Rachel sat on the train and smiled to herself. A twenty-something couple sitting opposite her started kissing, then pulled apart and giggled, their eyes locked, oblivious to the people around them: happy and in love. She caught the expression of a City gent standing peering down at them: the curl of the lip and the roll of the eye. A few years ago, Rachel knew she would have thought the same, but things had changed since then. A lot of things. She closed her eyes and thought about that night in Thailand, her lips on Liam’s, the smell of him, his hot breath on her skin.
Yeah, a lot of things have changed, she thought, opening her eyes. And not all for the better.
She was glad the day was almost over. Meetings with both her mother and Greg Willets had left her feeling raw. She wanted to see a friendly face. Not that she was guaranteed that at the other end of her journey. Rachel hadn’t seen Ross McKiney in three years, and they hadn’t parted in the best circumstances; she wasn’t at all sure what sort of reception she would get.
She got off at Clapton station, squinting in the early evening sun. Across the road was a fried chicken outlet, a minimart and a booth proclaiming ‘We unlock all phones’. This was not the fashionable part of the East End, made hip by art and music or gentrified by the presence of the Olympic Park, and given that it would be getting dark soon, it was a little scary.
Come on, Rach, she scolded herself, stealing a look at her A to Z. She’d walked around the back streets of Bangkok; this was Beverly Hills by comparison. Following her map, she came to an estate, a mixture of sixties terraces and tower blocks that made her quicken her pace, and within a few minutes she was outside an end-of-row house with a wonky gate and a rusty motorbike in the tiny front yard.
She knocked, and as the door creaked open, a ball of fluff slid out of the house, brushing past her leg. Ross McKiney stood in the door frame in jeans and an old jumper.
‘You have a cat.’ Rachel smiled at her old friend.
‘Things change. You know that, look at you. Hair, short?’
‘Men don’t usually notice that sort of thing.’
‘I’m just your typical metrosexual,’ he said as his face slowly creased into a smile. He reached out and pulled her into a hug. ‘Come on into the palace,’ he said, ruffling the top of her hair.
She followed him inside, blinking in the gloom.
‘You’ll have to excuse the mess, maid’s day off and all that.’
It was a small living room, dominated by an overlarge Dralon sofa. It had the air of having been recently – and hurriedly – tidied, but no amount of hoovering could disguise the peeling wallpaper and the faint smell of cat pee. Rachel felt awkward standing here in his private space. No, not just awkward, guilty. Over the last three years, she had barely spoken to Ross McKiney, despite the fact that they had once been such good friends. She had written to him several times in jail, and had begun emailing him when he was released. Both types of communication were rarely answered. For months there would be nothing, then long, unpunctuated, rambling replies talking about things and people she had never heard of. She looked at her old friend; his hairline had receded since they had last met, his mouth scored with heavy smoker’s lines. Six months in prison had aged him by ten years at least. She wondered how she might have looked now if she hadn’t had such a good lawyer.
‘Sit down,’ said Ross, and Rachel perched on the edge of an armchair. ‘Nice tan, by the way. What on earth possessed you to leave Paradise?’
Rachel laughed, and felt herself relax a little. She and Ross had been close once – as her favoured investigator and fix-it man, he had worked side by side with her on dozens of stories. He was ex-forces, off-the-book intelligence; he could extract computer files, obtain criminal records within the hour and had a hotline to the most ruthless paparazzi. He was like a cut-price James Bond, but you’d never know to look at him. Broad nose, broader Midlands accent and a bit flabby around the middle, he looked like someone’s dad at the school gates.
‘All will be revealed if you want to put the kettle on,’ she said, relaxing back in the chair. ‘Got any Kit Kats?’
As Ross disappeared into the kitchen, Rachel got out her notebook and pen. She would have been happy to spend time laughing and joking – you didn’t sit for hours in a car staking out some politician’s house, fuelled by Lucozade and packets of prawn cocktail crisps, without developing an honest and easy friendship – but she knew that Ross would want to get straight down to business. He had always been no-nonsense; that was why he had been good at his job. In fact, when Rachel had seen him that day in court, before he was sentenced for phone-hacking – her newspaper’s phone-hacking – he had just shrugged. ‘Well, at least I’ll be able to catch up on my knitting,’ he had said.
Ross was a pragmatist; he knew someone had to go to jail for the scandal, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard for him. Rachel had spent the last three years wishing she could have done something more to help him. Wishing he hadn’t been a scapegoat, not just for her, but for many others in the industry who hadn’t merely known what he did, but had condoned and encouraged it. He was simply a contractor, someone the newspapers paid to do the leg-work on stories: surveillance, covert photography and, yes, phone-tapping. He was there to incubate the investigations, flesh them out; without private investigators, many stories would just remain as rumours.
Ross came back into the room and handed her a steaming mug.
‘Listen,’ said Rachel, ‘I just wanted to say—’
‘I know, I know.’ He shrugged. ‘You feel guilty, it shouldn’t have been me, you wish it hadn’t turned out the way it did.’ He shook his head. ‘I know, but it’s all water under the bridge now, okay? I don’t blame you.’
‘I just wish that more of the bastards had suffered . . .’
‘But they didn’t, did they?’ said Ross. ‘And it wouldn’t have made me feel any better if you’d gone down too, hand on heart, Rach. So let’s move on, okay?’
He took a Kit Kat out of his pocket and threw it towards her.
‘Have your sugar fix, then you can start to tell me about Julian.’
‘How do you know this is about my brother-in-law?’ She hadn’t told him on the phone.
‘I do still read the papers, Rachel. Julian Denver commits suicide, two weeks later you appear on my doorstep; it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together.’
‘Diana asked me to find out what happened.’
‘He killed himself, didn’t he? Your sister doesn’t suspect foul play, does she?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘No, but she wants to know why. According to Diana, he was happy, looking forward to the future. Things happen for a reason, especially things as awful as suicide, and she’s angry and sad and bewildered that she doesn’t know what that reason was.’
‘And she doesn’t trust the inquest to find out.’
She nodded, knowing that an investigator as experienced as Ross would be able to fill in the gaps. They had both attended inquests in the name of work, and knew that open verdicts were quite regularly recorded in cases like this, which was often both heartbreaking and frustrating for the families concerned.
Ross looked thoughtful. ‘What do the police think?’
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