‘Two wrongs, don’t make a right…if people don’t pay for their misdemeanours, then it makes a mockery of everyone else,’ she said. I could hear the other phone ringing in the background; she was obviously at work.
By late afternoon Richard called back to say that Steve had got three and a half years, a Confiscation Order hanging over him for about half a million and journalists busy working on their copy for the evening papers. He said Maddy looked crushed. I sent Maddy a text telling her to call me when she was ready to talk. She sent one back:
My heart is breaking. I’ll call you when I can speak X.
I felt her pain.
Steve not being around felt strange, but time was travelling fast and July soon came round. Maddy was coping well on the surface. Financially, she was fine; she still had the income from the family business. It also helped that her dad moved in with her and Henry. But it was the loss of Steven that ate away at her, not that she would let us see this side – I just knew her well enough to know it. The weekly prison visits weren’t enough for her, even though he would only actually serve eighteen months of the three-year sentence.
I felt bad about leaving William with Maddy, just so Richard and I could have our weekend away. But she’d insisted on having William and our new hamsters stay with her, because she wanted everything to carry on as normal as possible for Henry.
Elyse was with mum and dad, and Richard’s brother was taking care of Blue.
We checked into The May Fair Hotel, conveniently close to the Nobu restaurant. Richard was impressed with my choice. The room was quite small, but furnishings were chic in shades of chocolate and muted fudge, with an Italian marble bathroom. We left the cases, not bothering to unpack anything other than the card I wanted but had sneakily hidden from Richard. We headed out onto the street.
‘So…where do you want to go first?’ Richard asked, as we both stood looking up and down Stratton Street. This was the first time I’d been in London since William’s 7th birthday.
‘I don’t mind. As long as I get to Oxford Street at some stage this afternoon…I’m easy,’ I said.
‘Why don’t we go there first? I don’t think it’s too far from here, then we could go to Covent Garden for something to eat later.’
‘Okay, great, I love Covent Garden.’ There was an outside chance my plan would work.
‘Why do you want to go to Oxford Street anyway?’
‘Buy a new bag with my birthday and Christmas money.’
‘Taxi or walk?’
‘Walk, although I don’t know how far I can go in these shoes,’ I said, looking down at my black wedges. The plan was that they and my fitted black pencil-dress would take me right through to the evening, without the need to return to the hotel until much later.
‘Would you mind if I shopped alone for a few hours?’ I asked, praying he wouldn’t say “no”. I thought about the card in my bag. If he didn’t want to be alone, then my plan was ruined.
‘No…why?’
‘I just want to – you put me off when you hover over me.’
‘Fine…actually,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘I need some new trainers, I’ll go and sort those and I can find a bar with Sky…I think there’s a rugby game on today.’
We made our way to Oxford Street and I found an iPhone store, and asked them why my new iPhone wasn’t ringing out loud. A teenage sales assistant flipped down a button with an amused grin.
‘And you call me a techno retard?’ Richard said, before asking where I wanted to meet up.
‘Dunno…how about in that coffee shop, we nearly stopped in?’
‘I’ll see you there in two hours…and be careful.’
‘Okay,’ I said and watched him wander off up Oxford Street.
I looked at my watch. I needed to find my way to Oxford Circus Tube Station, but I had no idea which way I should be heading.
The first road sign I passed said Davies Street, the second, Duke Street.
I checked them against the map.
I was going the wrong way!!
I eventually found the Tube station and made my way through the barrier with my day pass. Once on the other side I pulled out the address and directions that I’d scribbled down a couple of days earlier. I needed to take the Victoria Line from Oxford Circus as far as Victoria, then take the District Line as far as Earls Court, then change lines again, getting off at Fulham Broadway, all of which was supposed to take me around thirty-six minutes.
This was the most crazy, deceitful thing I’d ever done.
At last I ended my journey and fought my way off the train.
Fulham Broadway Tube looked surprisingly new; like a shopping centre, and Chelsea FC seemed to be mentioned all over the place.
Suddenly I felt guilty that I was now within walking distance of Stamford Bridge, the home of William’s favourite football club, and I’d left him behind, while I went on a selfish mission.
Once on the main street I looked at my notes again – I needed to get on to Harwood Road, the recording studios were supposed to be just off there.
Then I found it!
There was a small gold plate on the stone next to the glass doors. My heart was thumping. Once again it hit me that this was a bad idea, a really bad idea. In the days leading up to this moment I’d fantasised about raw, in-the-moment sex with a man I was desperate to touch for real. Stood in the reality of the moment, that fantasy was far from my mind. I should have walked away at that point, but instead I walked tentatively towards the reception desk.
The place was quite bare. The only hint that it was a recording studio were the framed discs mounted on deep purple walls.
‘Excuse me, I understand that The RocX are recording here at 4.30 today,’ I tried not to sound nervous, but I could have ended up looking like an idiot if the arrangements had been changed since it had appeared on his Facebook page. It had appeared in a conversation with some kid who wanted to book guitar lessons with him.
‘I have a card for one of the singers and wondered if it is possible for someone to pass it on,’ I said, now feeling like some sort of weird, obsessed groupie.
‘Yes…I can pass it on for you,’ then she smiled sweetly.
She had a hint of an Eastern European accent and was very attractive. She made me feel a mess after being on the scruffy Tube. I could feel my heart pounding through my dress.
What if he turned up early?
I gripped the envelope and remembered I still needed to write his name on the front – I’d deliberately left it blank, in case Richard found it.
‘Do you have a pen I could borrow please?’
The receptionist handed me a plastic biro. I wrote:
Anthony Hope,
The RocX
I asked the girl to make sure that Anthony got it. She gave it an inquisitive glance before placing it on her desk. As I was still stood facing her I heard the double-doors behind me swing forcefully open. I froze for a second not daring to turn around in case it was him.
‘Hi there,’ the receptionist said to the approaching figure, before turning to me. ‘Are you okay? You look like you have seen ghost.’
‘I’m fine,’ I stammered ‘I should go.’
As I pulled at the main door I picked up that the stranger behind me was called Peter. The receptionist asked if he was doing a coffee run.
Outside the building I leaned against the wall for a few seconds. My knees were trembling. What on earth had possessed me to do such a stupid thing? I had to get out of the area.
I found my way back to the Tube and thought about my card. I pictured Anthony staring at his name and flipping the creamy envelope over to open it up, pulling out the simple card.
I hobbled to Selfridges, to get myself a new bag and made it back to the tiny coffee shop just within my deadline. Richard was already there sipping a can of Coke.
‘How was the game?’ I asked while actually thinking about my own game.
‘Didn’t kick off till five – so I
had a few drinks and went for a wander round…did you get what you wanted?’
‘Yes, do you like it?’ I said, proudly showing off my new bag.
‘Very nice. How much was it?’
‘It’s Christian Dior, so it did go slightly over my budget. I put the extra on my credit card,’ I said, swiftly followed by my defence. ‘But being black, I’ll get loads of use out of it…and it is beautiful…feel the quality of the leather…it’s so soft,’ I was stroking it by now.
‘Credit card?’
‘Lets have a look at your trainers then…’
‘I’ve got them on. Well what do you think?’
They were clumpy and awful.
‘Erm, well. Are they comfy?’
‘You don’t like them – do you?’
‘As long as they’re comfy, they’re fine. I can’t walk to Covent Garden, because my feet are killing me,’ I said, rubbing my feet.
‘You shouldn’t wear ridiculous shoes for walking. We’ll get a taxi.’
We found a French restaurant and opted for one of the outside tables, so we could feel the benefit of the sun. I remembered reading something about Nell Gwyn spending much of her life in Covent Garden. I thought about Anthony somewhere in the city.
Richard told me how pensive I looked as he topped up my glass of wine.
‘Why don’t you just give him the paper with the name of the hotel written on it? Clearly he doesn’t understand you,’ said Richard. ‘You can’t say Champs-Elysees properly.’
‘Oh fuck off…’ and I handed the taxi driver the printout for the hotel.
The taxi driver, dropped us off on the corner of a busy road, pointing us in the direction of a side street. We spent ten minutes walking up and down the narrow street, being thankful for the shade cast by the tall buildings. We eventually found a tiny entrance, having missed the hotel sign above it probably four times.
The foyer was no bigger than the front room of a terraced house. There was a reception desk, small bold striped sofa, and a PC for guests.
Perhaps I should have skimped on the London hotel, and upgraded the Parisian hotel?
We made our way upstairs in a cranky lift and then walked into a beautiful, recently decorated room in white and pale creams. It had that perfect mix of contemporary with chintz.
The sumptuous pile of scatter cushions were now all over the floor. Richard leaned over to me.
‘You really seemed to enjoy that.’
‘I don’t ever not enjoy it…’ Richard had always been a considerate lover, in fact the most considerate lover I’d ever had.
‘No, I mean, really enjoy it…a break from the kids must be doing you good.’
‘Yeah…but my phone still isn’t working,’ I said dismissively.
‘Why are you changing the subject? Can’t you leave your phone alone for a bit? Why is it so important?’
‘It’s not. It’s just bugging me,’ and I picked the phone back up for another go.
‘I can’t check that William and Elyse are okay,’ I said, while still messing with the settings.
‘There is a perfectly good phone right there, next to you, and mine’s in the safe.’
I looked at the phone on the bedside table, next to the crystal based lampshade. ‘That’s not the point…I want my phone, and that phone doesn’t have Internet.’
‘It’s all about bloody Facebook again – can’t you leave it alone for one weekend?’
I reluctantly abandoned my phone to the hotel safe, but flatly refused to stuff my new bag in there as well. We took a gentle stroll round the city. Richard, like me, preferred to see cities on foot.
We stopped off at chic cafes whenever we felt like it and I dragged Richard to Avenue Montaigne and Avenue George V; taking in the elegant buildings housing Chanel, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Hermes and Jean-Paul Gaultier.
Richard took me up the steps of the Sacre Coeur and back down to the Red Light District, and we finished the day in a candle lit restaurant – in many ways the day was like old times.
We eventually found our way back to the hotel, after far too many wrong turns, and my eyes instantly locked onto the PC on the back wall.
‘Would it really bother you, if I spent a few minutes on that computer?’
‘Okay – go on then…I’m going to get a brandy from that bar in there,’ he said, as he pointed towards the archway.
I sat down on an antique chair and noticed that Facebook was already in the search bar.
Once the homepage came up on the screen it was all in French, but the format was the same.
I typed in my email and password then waited.
It was even slower than at home, but eventually a red box popped up.
I couldn’t understand it, but I knew which box it was – it was the one where your password or email is incorrect. I tried reentering my email once more. Why the hell was it rejecting my email? Had someone hacked my account? If I wasn’t careful it would lock me out altogether.
I was going to have to wait until we got home to find out if Anthony had left a response to my card.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Maddy had said to pop round to hers so that we could have a proper “catch-up” on my Paris trip, but I stood waiting, like an idiot, at her electric gates.
She also wasn’t answering any of her phones.
In the end, I jumped over her wall, scraping my knees and walked through the open front door. As I did so, I bumped into her temporary new cleaner but she had no idea where she’d gone either, so I sat in the lounge and waited for her.
When Maddy finally came back, she apologised; she had had to nip in to work to drop off some papers.
As she plonked herself into Steve’s favourite chair, I noticed that her weight had dropped but, like me, she could ill afford to lose it.
I took another look at the ceramic dish on the coffee table; it was still full of cigarette stubs. Clearly the new cleaner hadn’t made her way into this room yet to remove the evidence. Now was not the time to lecture her, I thought, as she filled me in on Steve’s latest prison tales. The best news was that she’d discovered that you could buy a fast-track appeal, so she was going to try and get his sentence reduced. But he’d been moved to a Category D – Category A was the worst apparently.
‘So he could order a PlayStation, if he wants too, but they get confiscated if you behave badly. All the TVs in the cells are being upgraded for plasmas,’ she said then laughed. ‘Can you believe it?’
We both agreed that the system was wrong.
‘You need to take my mind off of all of this – can I see your new bag?’
She whipped it from my side.
‘I love the leather…so how was it? Did you have a great time? She asked, handing the bag back to me.
‘Yep,’ I said, as I pulled my thank you gift out of it; a pair of earrings which were very similar to a pair she had once told me she wanted.
‘I love them…they’re like the Tiff…’
‘Tiffany ones,’ I finished for her, ‘I know…sorry – I can’t afford the real thing.’
‘So how was it, then?’ she asked, while putting them into her ears.
‘I snuck a card into Anthony Hope at the recording studios,’ I said, before I could change my mind.
‘You did what?’
‘I wasn’t going to tell you…but what the hell,’ and I gave her a rundown of the event.
‘Jesus! What if he’d seen you? Shit! I would have died on the spot. Thank God I wasn’t there with you.’
I smiled. I had said as much as I really needed to say about the whole thing.
‘What did the card say?’
‘On the front was a bumble bee with the words “Bee Lucky” and then, on the inside, I wrote “Hello Jack” with a little heart above the words, and, underneath I wrote: “Just passing through the City”, and I’d drawn a tiny squiggle of a mouse.’
‘That’s all it said?’
She almost sounded disappointed.
&nb
sp; ‘Yep.’
‘Have you had any reaction to the card?’
‘Can’t tell…he posted a video clip of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, later the same day. Jackson equals Jack…So maybe? Also he could have viewed what I had done as being thrilling…? He also became a Fan of Deadmau5, which does look like dead mouse, and fits in with our game of cat and mouse.’
Maddy had one of those expressions that a teacher wears when listening to an unbelievable excuse from a kid.
‘Has he sent the email about that charity day through to your alias yet?’
‘To Nell Gwyn? No, he hasn’t.’
‘He surely can’t just ignore that. Will you go?’
‘Don’t know…but it’s over the summer holidays, so it’s a good few weeks away yet…but I really don’t know. I might – but what if the hot air balloon crashes?’
‘Yeah…that would be bloody typical of you, you selfish cow…you’d go and die, leaving me to explain it all. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask you, can William come on a prison visit sometime with Henry…say no, if you think it’s not a good idea.’
‘No. It’s fine. A least I don’t have to worry about him being sheltered in private education.’
I laughed and then picked up a call from Richard about having to do the school run later. I put the phone on the table.
‘Your phone’s working again then?’ she acknowledged.
Yes – I had to re-set it. Apparently when you go through the Eurotunnel you are supposed to keep it switched off, until you get to the other side. Did you also know that the keys on a French keyboard are all over the place? It took me a day to realise why I couldn’t get into my Facebook account over there.’
‘No I didn’t know that either. Anyway, how is Richard coping with all the financial shit?’
‘Not well.’
‘I reckon he will end up going bankrupt, but it’s the best thing he could do,’ she said.
I hoped she was wrong.
After Paris, nothing noteworthy happened for a few weeks – life ticked by.
Past Present Future Page 24