‘You know, I think all of this has actually done you good,’ he said one evening, as he sat at the 1960s purple vinyl-covered dining table eating Vietnamese food with Marnie and me. ‘It’s given you the chance to really concentrate on your design work. And with the added business at Kowalski’s, I reckon the future couldn’t be brighter for us.’
He was right. I looked at my team and felt an overwhelming sense of hope rushing through me. This issue was my brother’s problem, not mine. I had done nothing wrong and my customers had proved that they believed in Kowalski’s and me. In an odd way, it felt good to know that, even in adversity, my business could flourish.
After a while, the media’s attention switched to Washington, where some senators were beginning to voice suspicions over the Darneks’ credibility. Dismissed as publicity-seekers by the more respected correspondents, nevertheless the press junket indulged them, lapping up every new revelation as it broke. With enough juicy gossip now emerging from Washington to satisfy their bloodlust, the press corps quickly abandoned their camp in my street, which meant I could finally return home and, more importantly to Kowalski’s—and some semblance of normality returned to my life. Mum called frequently, upset that even her beloved BBC had ‘stooped to the level of lesser broadcasters’ to cover the unfolding saga. I heard nothing from James, but this was maybe just as well, given the fact that he was supposed to be in splendid isolation, courtesy of the British Consulate-General. Ed and I discussed the whole sorry affair at length, yet even this faded with the passing days, as really there were no resolutions to the whirligig of unanswerable questions.
Celia continued to apologise, fussing over me like a neurotic nanny, despite my assurances that I didn’t blame her for James’s predicament. She sent fruit baskets, arranged for grocery deliveries and phoned at least five times a day, checking to make sure I was still coping and not dangling from the nearest high rafter. She really needn’t have worried: I wasn’t scared or suicidal; I was just incredibly angry at my brother’s complete lack of thought for anyone other than himself. It was his utter selfishness that had got him into this situation—and countless other lamentable scrapes beforehand—and now he was expecting the whole world to stop and bail him out.
In the event, his help was to come from a most unexpected source.
The media attention had switched to possible legal consequences of the scandal and had started to speculate that James might be subpoenaed to appear before the Grand Jury. For a time, this reignited the attraction for the press, with several journalists from not-so-quality publications sneaking into Kowalski’s posing as customers but seeking dirt on the situation. Ed suggested I take a few days off until the next wave of interest washed the hacks in another direction.
I was holed up in my apartment with the phone unplugged, when the door intercom buzzed smartly.
‘Hello?’
A familiar voice came from the tinny speaker. ‘Rosie, it’s me. I have bagels. Can I come up?’
I smiled and pressed the button. ‘If you have bagels you are more than welcome.’
Celia appeared at my front door, breathless and carrying several Zabar’s bags. ‘The traffic is so bad you wouldn’t believe,’ she gasped, bustling into my kitchen and wrestling the packed bags onto the work surface. ‘I had to walk, for heaven’s sake!’ It sounded like the worst possible hardship in the world, but as far as Celia was concerned, it was.
I giggled as I watched her fling open the fridge and produce item after item from the bags. It reminded me of Mary Poppins and her carpet bag: I half-expected to see a birdcage and a standard lamp emerging from the carriers. ‘Did you buy the entire store?’
‘Stop mocking me, Rosie Duncan,’ Celia retorted, grabbing a plate and emptying bagels onto it from a crumpled M&H Bakers paper bag. ‘I just brought you some essentials, that’s all.’
‘Celia, your idea of “essentials” is most people’s idea of a banquet.’
‘Well, you deserve a banquet, sweetie. So get the coffee on because…’ she paused for dramatic effect, ‘…we are celebrating!’
‘Celebrating what?’
Celia’s eyes sparkled as she passed me on her way into the living room, plate of bagels held aloft. ‘So bring the coffee through and I’ll tell you already.’
She took a deep breath and placed the bagels on the coffee table. ‘OK. I had a breakthrough.’
‘With what?’
‘With your brother.’
‘Sorry?’
She reached forward and clasped my hand. ‘Sweetie, I heard those rumours way back before Christmas and I didn’t tell you. I thought it was the usual Washington baloney we hear all the time and I didn’t want to worry you. Besides, as you well know, James and I haven’t been the best of buddies, so I didn’t think you’d believe me anyhow. But I’ve just felt so awful about this whole mess and I wanted to help.’
‘You have been helping, hon. I mean, all the shopping and the phone calls, not to mention busting me out of your apartment in a Hollywood-style a fortnight ago. That was impressive. You’ve been really kind.’
‘But it’s not enough, Rosie. At least, it wasn’t enough for me. I couldn’t bear for you to have to endure the worst that my profession can do to people. It’s a side of journalism that I don’t much care for—the way that we hunt people down just to get an exclusive. We forget the person behind the story and all we can think of is getting our hands on the scoop before anyone else.’
‘I don’t really understand where this is all leading, Celia.’
She squeezed my hand again. ‘James is off the hook.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘What? How?’
‘I had a breakthrough yesterday—I would have told you straight away but I had to make sure the right people heard it first. I got the call an hour ago and I headed straight to Kowalski’s, but Ed told me you were here. So I picked up some groceries on the way and here I am!’
My heart was thumping fast. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’d like to claim it was my brilliant journalistic instinct, but in truth it was just the most glorious coincidence,’ Celia rushed on, on the edge of tears as she spoke. ‘After all, so much of journalism is down to chance and being in the right place at the right time. But whatever—the thing is that I’ve been interviewing our Arts Editor’s daughter for a piece I’m planning on New York kids moving to other cities to pursue careers. Sandi is an intern on Capitol Hill in Washington and she hopes to make it to presidential staff one day. I’ve been emailing her for a couple of weeks, finding out about her current responsibilities, aspirations for the future and so on. She’s worked in several offices but most recently was assigned to one Senator John Darnek.’
‘Oh my life…’
‘Yes, I know! Two days ago, she called me. She was inconsolable and said she needed my advice. It turns out that a few days ago Senator Darnek’s secretary was taken ill, so Sandi was drafted in to cover. Elizabeth Darnek called to speak to her husband and, by all accounts, was incredibly rude to the poor girl. So Sandi panicked and accidentally hit the memo function on the intercom when she was transferring the call. Turns out she inadvertently recorded a crucial conversation between the Darneks.’
‘Why crucial?’
‘Elizabeth Darnek talked about James—about how she had ensnared him—and it was clear from the conversation that John Darnek was well aware of the situation. Even more than that, they talked at some length about their intention to use the affair to bribe both James and his company, insisting significant funds were surrendered in return for the Darneks’ silence. Well, Sandi was terrified when she realised her error, but she didn’t know what to do.’
My head was abuzz with the news. ‘How does this help James, though?’
Celia smiled. ‘I’m getting to that. You see, it’s fortuitous that Sandi chose to call me: I mean, I’ve known her since she was a little girl, but there are countless others she could’ve chosen. It just so happens that I know Thom Michaels, H
ead of Internal Comms at the Senate Office. I knew that the recorded memo would still be on the secretary’s phone—the code to access the memo messages is only held by Darnek’s secretary and one other person…’
A light was dawning in my mind. ‘Thom Michaels?’
‘Exactly! So, I called him.’
‘But couldn’t you have got in trouble for having that information?’
Celia threw her head back and laughed. ‘Probably, had it been anyone else. But Thom and I…well, we go way back. And I happened to know that there is no love lost between Thom Michaels and John Darnek. He was most interested to hear of the—um—intercom malfunction, shall we say?’
‘So what’s happened since?’
‘Thom called me this morning to say that he’d handed it to the Senior Prosecutor, who’s very kindly made the contents of the call public. Very public.’
Celia wasn’t kidding. Within hours of her visit, the story was everywhere, the news channels dominated by increasingly lurid details of previously hidden misdemeanours by the Senator and his wife. Such was the backlash against them that James’s involvement paled into relative obscurity, as the full force of the media spotlight fell squarely on the Darneks.
James returned to London, where he was quietly ‘released’ from his contract with FRS—together with a sizeable sum to help ease the transition. Proving my theory that he has more lives than a very lucky cat, James quickly found a new line of business—providing media advice to high-profile people, of all things—and, predictably, regained his prosperity soon after.
I told James that it was Celia who had been responsible for saving his sorry hide. He couldn’t believe it, especially given their track record of mutual dislike, but nevertheless he was a changed man by the experience. Celia received a typically ostentatious and ridiculously expensive bouquet of flowers (not from my store, of course—I have a suspicion that a certain Mr Devereau’s establishment may have had the dubious honour of my brother’s patronage), but I had the distinct feeling that this uneasy truce wouldn’t last long between them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
As February ended, preparations for the Lithgow wedding began in earnest. It was agreed that the whole team would work to complete the larger items for delivery the day before the wedding, with Ed and I booking rooms in a nearby hotel so we could complete the bridal bouquets, buttonholes and last few small arrangements overnight, to ensure their freshness on the day.
A week before the event, Ed and I travelled up to The Hamptons to visit David’s parents’ home—the venue for his forthcoming wedding. I wasn’t relishing the prospect of seeing George and Phoebe again, so I was more than a little relieved when I discovered that only David and his fiancée, Rachel, would be available to meet us. Despite my history with David, I have to say that I was intrigued to meet the woman who’d tempted him to contemplate marriage again.
Rachel Moray was nothing like I’d expected. Far from the small, compliant beauty I had pictured her as, happy to follow David’s every whim with wide-eyed admiration, she was a shade under six feet tall, of athletic build and strong character. I instantly liked her, unlike Ed, who had decided to pity her from the very beginning and was unwilling to be parted from his preconceptions so readily. As we left the car and crunched our way across thickly spread, pale yellow gravel to the front door, Rachel appeared from the garden, ruddy-cheeked and breathless, a large bunch of basil in her hand.
‘Hello, you must be Rosie. David’s told me so much about you—your amazing floristry and what a good friend you were to him back in London. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.’
‘This is Ed Steinmann, my co-designer,’ I smiled as Ed reluctantly shook her hand and mumbled something cordially unintelligible.
‘Great, well, David’s waiting in the orangery, so if you’d like to follow me?’
As we stepped through the doorway into an elaborate marble atrium, Ed pulled my sleeve and whispered, ‘Bet he hasn’t told her everything about you.’
‘Shh! She’ll hear you. Just behave, Steinmann.’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ Ed saluted me with mock respect. ‘Just don’t expect me to like the guy, OK?’
We hurried to catch up with Rachel, who was striding effortlessly ahead at a surprising pace. After passing through several equally lavish sitting rooms, we walked into the orangery—a two-storey-high, glass-domed Victorian conservatory looking out onto perfectly clipped lawns that were sweepingly impressive, even in the drab March light. David was seated at a cast-iron table, plans and papers spread out before him and a vivid memory of him sitting at his desk in London flashed into my mind. It never failed to amaze me how someone so disciplined and driven in his work could have such a messy desk. At first, it had bugged me intensely, until I realised that what I saw as disorder was actually a complex planning system known only to him. Feeling a shiver travel down my spine, I shook the image from my mind.
‘Rosie—hi! Welcome to the latest Lithgow family acquisition. Nice, huh?’ he grinned, standing as we approached. ‘And you must be the famous Ed. I gather you and Rosie are great buddies.’
‘The best,’ replied Ed, a little too defensively, as he shook David’s hand. ‘Someone has to look after her, you know.’
David’s smile tightened. ‘I’m sure Rosie can look after herself.’
‘OK,’ I blurted quickly, ‘we don’t have much time, so I need to hurry this along, if I may.’
‘Certainly,’ smiled Rachel, giving David’s arm a playful cuff as we sat down. ‘Honestly, Rosie, the way he’s so relaxed about our wedding, you’d think he wasn’t planning to attend!’
I kicked Ed sharply on his shin under the table before he had a chance to speak.
‘You didn’t have to kick me quite so hard,’ Ed moaned as we drove home, later that day.
‘Yes, I did. You were likely to say something that would have embarrassed everyone—not least Rachel.’
Ed turned to face me with a strange smile on his face. ‘I can’t believe you care what Rachel feels, given she’s “the competition” in all this.’
‘Competition? Don’t be so overdramatic. You are so way off the mark.’
‘I mean it, Rosie. The guy dumps you like a rock at the altar, screws your life up and disappears for six years. Then he suddenly shows up, throws all the past in your face again, asks you to work at his wedding, of all things, then introduces you to the woman he’s decided is worthy of his affections—where, presumably, you weren’t—and expects you to like her?’
‘Well, thank you for that glowing assessment of my situation,’ I shot back, thinly veiling the deep hurt his remark had caused. ‘The fact is, whatever David did in the past is exactly that: in the past. It’s not Rachel’s fault, so there’s no reason I should bear her any ill will whatsoever. I don’t want David: she’s welcome to him. It might just be that he’s met his match after all these years.’
‘Well, it sucks big style.’
‘Mate, I know you’re just trying to protect me and, believe me, it’s great to know you’re fighting my corner. But all I need to do is to get this wedding done and out of the way, so at least I can have some closure on this. OK?’
Reluctantly, Ed agreed. ‘Well, all right. But I have every right to hate it.’
‘You’re truly a man of conviction, Ed.’
‘That’s what Nate says.’
The mention of Nate’s name made my heart jump. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Uh, I wasn’t going to tell you…’
‘So tell me now.’
He sighed and looked out of the passenger window. ‘It’s nothing. We’ve just been meeting up, now and again. Turns out we have more in common than our taste in baseball teams.’
‘So how long has this been happening?’
‘Since just before the Grand Winter Ball. We caught a ball game, grabbed a pizza and ended up at Joe’s drinking bourbon till the early hours of the morning.’
‘But he’s hardly contacted me since…sinc
e the announcement of his wedding. Why would he see you and not me?’ I could feel tears welling up and I swallowed hard.
‘Hey, Rosie, give the guy a break. He was embarrassed before Mimi did the whole public reveal thing—he didn’t know what to say to you. Especially after the conversation you guys had that afternoon.’
I struggled to contain my composure at this bombshell. ‘He told you about that?’
‘Yeah, he did. Don’t be angry, Rosie. The guy needed someone to talk to about it all. He needed advice from a guy’s perspective. We all need it, sometimes—a guy who understands.’
‘And that was you?’
‘And that is me.’
I couldn’t hide the pain in my voice any longer. ‘Then why hasn’t he talked to me? And what right does he have telling you about our conversation? It was private, not something to broadcast to all and sundry.’
‘Well, thank you for the vote of confidence, Rosie.’
‘I didn’t mean—oh, Ed, I’m sorry. I just really need to talk to him about everything. I—miss him.’
Ed was silent for a long time, the only sound the hum of the car engine and the whoosh of passing cars on the freeway, as the lights of Manhattan loomed ahead. I tried to catch a glimpse of his face, but the driver in front was braking erratically, forcing me to keep my eyes ahead.
When he eventually spoke, his tone was low, empty even. ‘Then I’ll ask him to meet you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. You two obviously have stuff to discuss.’
Ed didn’t say another word as we drove through New York to his street, giving me only the briefest of smiles as he left the car and ran quickly up the steps to disappear into his building. I sat motionless in the car outside for some time, engine still running, my mind buzzing with activity yet frustratingly blank, before finally pulling away to head home.
Chapter Twenty-Four
For the rest of the week, Ed and I carried on our work as normal, but there was a definite change in the air. We laughed and joked as much as we ever had, but it was as though an invisible barrier now sat stubbornly between us. Marnie noticed it the day after our venue visit and, after two days, finally plucked up enough courage to ask me about it.
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