by Zoe Sharp
‘How’s Ella?’ I asked, getting to my feet.
Simone hovered in the doorway, looking tired and strained. ‘OK, I guess,’ she said. She paused, more of a hesitation. ‘She wants to see you.’
‘Ella?’ I said, surprised.
Simone nodded and stepped back into the hallway, taking it for granted that I’d follow.
I dumped the wrapped-up package of glass onto the kitchen worktop and went after her, aware of a prickle of nerves. I had almost no experience with children of Ella’s age. I had no real experience with children of any age, for that matter. She’d been through traumas over the past two days that no four-year-old should have to endure and I had no idea how to counsel or comfort her, if that was what was required. Hell, I couldn’t even do that for myself.
I opened my mouth to ask Simone why Ella was demanding an audience, but she was already halfway up the stairs and I had to hurry to catch up. By the time I reached the landing she was waiting for me by one of the bedroom doorways, beckoning me on.
My immediate impression of Ella’s bedroom was that it was overwhelmingly pink. Pink carpet, pink curtains, pink quilt cover with pink unicorns on it. Even as a small child I remember disliking the colour and my mother would have died rather than decorate so heavy-handedly. She wouldn’t even buy anything other than plain-coloured lavatory paper.
Ella was sitting up in bed with the covers banked protectively round her. She was cuddling the battered Eeyore tightly against her chest and absently chewing on one of his ears. From the state of the animal, I gathered this was something of a regular habit. Those violet eyes regarded me, wide and unwavering.
Simone went over to her and perched on the edge of the single bed. Ella tugged on her mother’s sleeve until their heads were together, then whispered something into Simone’s ear, hiding her lips behind her cupped hand. And all the time, her eyes never left me.
I tried to keep my expression bland, but I never did like being talked about behind my back. Even by a four-year-old.
Now Simone was looking at me, too, her cheeks flared pink to match the bedroom décor.
‘Um, she wants to know what happened to your neck,’ Simone said.
‘My neck?’ I repeated, dumbly. Automatically, my hand went up to my shirt collar, checking it was in place. It was. For a moment I couldn’t work out when Ella might have caught a glimpse of my scar, but then I realised she must have done so when her mother was wrestling her away from me in the hallway.
Simone’s gaze met mine and I saw shock in her eyes. I think for the first time it really came home to her what it meant to be a bodyguard. And what it might mean to need one.
The scar was a thin line that ran round the base of my throat from my voicebox to just below my right ear, crossed by fading stitch lines like something from a horror flick. Too uneven to be surgical, too precise to be accidental, it looked what it was. An attempt to murder me that had very nearly succeeded.
Simone nodded, just a single jerk of her head, still looking embarrassed. ‘And she wants to know if it hurts,’ she said, speaking like her lips were numb.
I shook my head. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It happened a long time ago.’ Not quite two years, but to Ella that would be half a lifetime.
Ella whispered again. Simone’s discomfort deepened. Ella tugged more insistently. She was hiding her face behind her hair now, peeping out at me from underneath it.
‘She wants to know if she can kiss it better,’ Simone said, flushing. There was a pleading message in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell if she was desperate for me to refuse or comply.
Ella snuck another coy glance through her lashes and suddenly I found myself saying, ‘Of course she can,’ in a disconnected voice I didn’t entirely recognise.
The right choice, obviously. Simone’s answering look was one of relief. She half picked Ella up so she could lean up towards me across her mother’s lap.
I found my feet moving me forwards. I bent and dragged the collar down and felt the lightest touch of Ella’s lips on the side of my neck before I stepped back quickly, yanking my shirt into place.
‘There,’ Ella said with satisfaction, pulling back, smiling. ‘All better now?’
I dredged a smile from somewhere even though my mouth tasted of ashes. ‘Yes, Ella,’ I said, my voice hollow. ‘All better now.’
I waited by the doorway while Simone settled Ella down and switched on the portable TV on the shelf at the foot of her bed, tuning it to the cartoons. On the screen a pair of pink hippos in what appeared to be ballet dancing outfits were hitting each other over the head with frying pans, each blow accompanied by the sound effect of a hammer hitting a cast-iron rivet.
I wondered at the wisdom of letting Ella watch something like that, all things considered. I had visions of wild and uncontrollable nightmares. But, after her eyes had blankly followed the action for a few moments, she began to giggle. Good job I’m not a parent.
Simone ushered me out of the room and pulled the door almost closed behind her.
‘Don’t shut it, Mummy,’ Ella called.
‘Don’t worry, sweetie. I won’t.’
I led the way back downstairs. Simone followed me into the kitchen and I offered to make coffee just so I had something to do with my hands. I noted the way Simone’s shoulders came down a fraction, seemingly thankful for the distraction.
‘Actually, I’d rather have tea,’ she said with a hesitant smile. ‘My English half coming out, I guess.’
I filled the kettle from the kitchen tap and plugged it in, half-waiting for Simone to start asking questions about the scar. When I glanced at her she seemed to be waiting for me to offer an explanation without prompting. No way.
‘I’ve spoken to Sean,’ I said instead. ‘He’s arranging flights to Boston for you as soon as possible.’
‘Oh. Great.’ She looked so relieved I shied away from telling her that there was a possibility I might not be going with them. ‘Thank you for doing that before – for Ella, I mean.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ I lied, then switched to the truth. ‘She’s a nice kid.’
Simone smiled. ‘She is,’ she agreed softly. Her eyes slid to the blind that still covered the kitchen window and her next words seemed almost to be to herself. ‘I’d do anything to protect her.’
I said nothing. The kettle clicked off and I poured the boiling water onto teabags and mashed them with a spoon. I was more of a coffee drinker myself but Simone only had cheap instant, so tea seemed the lesser evil.
‘Do you think it’s wrong to take a child away from its father?’ she asked abruptly, as I was opening the fridge door.
I paused, milk bottle in hand. ‘That depends on why you’re taking them away,’ I said. I shut the door and poured milk into the tea until it seemed about the right colour, then put one cup on the worktop in front of her. She hardly seemed to notice it.
‘I don’t really remember my father,’ she said abruptly. ‘He left when I was about the same age as Ella is now. My mother went back to her maiden name – Kerse. God, I’ve always hated that name.’ She glanced at me and managed a tired smile. ‘The other kids at school always used to call me Curse. Can you imagine?’
‘Children can be very cruel,’ I said.
She nodded, distracted. ‘Mom would never talk about him. I suppose, the less she’d say, the more I wanted to know – just awkward, I guess.’
‘I think that’s a natural reaction.’
‘Not knowing why their marriage broke up – that’s the worst thing. Wondering if, somehow, I might have been to blame, you know? When Matt and I went over to Chicago just before my mom died, I hoped she’d tell me then, but she never did. She must have had her reasons, but she took them with her.’
‘And you’re hoping – if you do find your father – that he might be able to give you his side of it?’
She nodded again, then gave a nervous laugh. ‘Maybe Matt’s right, and I should leave things as they are, but I’ve reached a stage i
n my life where I can’t move forwards without knowing who and what he is. And if he’s a monster, well—’ She shrugged, with more bravado than nonchalance. ‘I’ll just have to deal with that one when I get to it. At least I’ll have you to protect me, won’t I?’
She lifted her cup, drank absently, oblivous to the way my face must have frozen. ‘It’s made me decide that I won’t ever try and keep Ella away from Matt,’ she went on. ‘Not unless he does something really awful. If I thought for a moment he’d ever try to hurt her—’
My mobile started shrilling at that moment. I put my drink down and flipped the phone open. I hardly needed to glance at the display to know who was on the other end of the line.
‘Hi, Sean.’
‘Madeleine’s got seats reserved for Simone and Ella on tomorrow’s Virgin Atlantic flight to Boston out of Heathrow,’ he said without preamble. ‘Whose name do you want me to give her for the third ticket?’
I remembered the look of stark terror on Ella’s face in the kitchen and then the delicate touch of her lips on the side of my throat.
I glanced across the room to where Simone stood now, wrapped in turmoil and memories, clutching her cup with both hands like it was some kind of lifeline.
What were my own fears compared to theirs?
‘Mine,’ I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘The private investigator’s dead,’ Sean said.
Whatever else he added to that was drowned out by the PA system above me, announcing a final boarding call for all passengers for some charter flight to Malaga.
With scant regard for the possibility of brain tumours, I jammed my mobile phone hard up against the side of my head and stuck my finger into the other ear. It was only partially successful at damping down the outside noise.
‘What?’
‘The private investigator Simone hired to trace her father – guy called O’Halloran,’ Sean explained, raising his voice beyond the tolerances of the phone’s tinny speaker, which buzzed painfully in my ear. ‘He died in a car accident last week.’
‘When you say “accident”, I assume that’s what it was?’
‘As far as we know, yes,’ Sean said. ‘I’ve spoken to his partner. They’re arranging for someone to collect the guy’s files and brief you. They’ll meet you when you land.’
‘Great,’ I muttered, unable to shake the uneasy feeling this latest news provoked.
It was just after nine the following morning and Simone, Ella, and I were waiting at Heathrow for our flight to Boston. Madeleine was nothing if not efficient.
We’d spent the previous night in one of the big hotels near the airport, having braved the press pack to escape from the house around lunchtime. The hotel was part of a major chain that was used to celebrity guests and took a very dim view of letting journalists and photographers harass them unduly. The hotel also employed a number of rather large door staff who wouldn’t have looked out of place outside a town centre nightclub and who had a definite no-nonsense reputation.
I’d made a point of going and chatting to them briefly once I had Simone and Ella safely tucked away in their room. I was polite and respectful and gave them as much information as I could about the situation.
In return for this professional courtesy, they’d promised to be extra vigilant, and proved it by firmly repelling the first paparazzi incursion shortly afterwards. The reporters had made a few more experimental forays, then retreated to lurk sulkily in the car park. I was pleased to note the rain had hardened into sleet as the light began to fade.
Madeleine, meanwhile, had been doing some furious coordination behind the scenes, setting up all our travel arrangements.
She had automatically assumed that Simone could afford – and would want – the best of everything. She’d reserved us seats in Virgin Upper Class for the transatlantic and rooms in the best hotel, overlooking Boston Harbor, for the open-ended duration of our stay. Simone had flipped when she’d seen the cost.
Privately, I thought she was making a fuss about nothing, but I recognised it would be all too easy to develop a money-doesn’t-matter attitude that lasted right until it was all frittered away. Eventually, Madeleine had talked her into sticking with the plans on the grounds that there wasn’t time to change them. Madeleine had also sneakily sent her an email link to the hotel she’d selected. One look at the sumptuous rooms and the in-house health spa had Simone’s objections crumbling.
‘One more thing,’ Sean said now. ‘You might be interested to hear that I went and paid a visit to Matt yesterday afternoon.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to pre-empt any problems. There was a chance he could have kicked up a fuss about Simone taking his daughter out of the country without his agreement, and the law would have been on his side,’ Sean said, his voice grim.
‘Hell,’ I said. ‘I never even considered that.’
‘Mm, well, the guy’s seriously paranoid about Simone getting in contact with her father, let me put it that way.’
‘So, is he going to make trouble?’
‘No, he saw sense eventually,’ Sean said, his tone dry. I had a pretty good idea of the form Sean’s persuasion would have taken. I could almost feel sorry for Matt. Then I remembered Simone’s anger, and Ella’s fright, and my sympathy faded somewhat. ‘He’s denying he had anything to do with the press invasion, by the way,’ Sean went on, ‘and I think I might even believe him.’
My eyebrows went up. ‘Really?’
‘He’s been borrowing a bed at his cousin’s place since he and Simone split, and the cousin turned up while I was there. I wouldn’t actually be surprised if he was the one, rather than Matt, who went to the papers.’
‘Based on…what, exactly?’
‘A feeling,’ he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. ‘That and the fact that his cousin is possessor of a lot of nervous twitches, a permanent sniff, and a glass-topped coffee table with an interesting set of scratches on it. I get the impression he’s the type who might well have been tempted by the offer of some easy cash to dish the dirt.’
‘He could just have a head cold and be particularly careless with his furniture,’ I pointed out.
‘True,’ Sean allowed. ‘Or he could have an expensive coke habit and need of some extra income. Either way, he’d just been out and spent a fortune on games and DVDs and – when I arrived with a rake of tabloids – I think even Matt figured it out. To be fair to Matt, he did seem to be pretty upset by what happened to Ella.’
‘He’s going to be even more upset when he gets the papers today, then,’ I said, thinking of the two photographers jammed up against the kitchen window. Madeleine was already taking the breach of privacy up with the Press Complaints Authority, even though I felt it was too late for an apology. ‘But he’s definitely agreed to let them go?’
‘Relax, Charlie. If it means they’re out of harm’s way for a while, yes,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t think we’ll have any trouble, providing it doesn’t take these private eyes months to find this guy.’
‘What happens if it does—?’ I began, just as the PA issued another raucous reminder to reduce the number of security alerts by not leaving baggage unattended.
‘Bloody hell, Charlie, where are you?’ Sean asked. ‘I thought you were all supposed to be tucked away in the VIP lounge?’
‘We are. At least, I’ve left the pair of them up there – security’s pretty tight, so I thought they’d be quite safe,’ I said hurriedly, in case he thought I was being unforgivably lax. ‘I’m just raiding the concourse shops to try and find enough puzzle books to keep Ella occupied across the Atlantic. She may be cute, but she’s also four years old and hyperactive – and it’s a seven-hour flight.’
‘Good luck,’ Sean said, amused. ‘You can always get the cabin crew to slip her a Mickey Finn.’
‘It might come to that.’
‘Look, something’s come up and I’m going to have to go. Call me if you have any problems, but we’re just going to hav
e to play things by ear on the time front,’ he said. His voice softened. ‘And you take care of yourself, Charlie, OK?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, with way too much confidence. ‘We’ll be fine.’
The flight itself was uneventful. One of the things that had most surprised me when I first started working for Sean’s agency was the way the rich travel. The kind of people who need to surround themselves with close protection personnel don’t go anywhere on the cheap. In the six months since I’d got stuck into the job I’d never flown anything less than Business Class when actually accompanying a client, and I’d gone twice by private jet.
Even Simone, after she’d boarded the plane and accepted a glass of champagne from the cabin crew who greeted her like an old friend, had seemed to forget her initial reservations. I’d glanced across from my seat in the centre of the aircraft and caught the little smile on her face, like it was suddenly dawning on her that from now on she could afford to always fly this way.
Despite my worries, Ella played with her food, watched some TV, crayoned in a couple of pages of one of the books I’d bought for her, then we folded her seat into a bed and she fell asleep like a seasoned traveller. She looked tiny, snuggled down amid the mussed-up blankets and pillows. The cabin crew stopped by regularly to cluck and coo over her.
Things didn’t go quite so smoothly once we’d landed, though. Nobody from the private investigation firm who’d been tracing Simone’s father met us at Boston’s Logan International, and I didn’t want to hang around long waiting for them.
Madeleine had arranged for a limo service to be available on our arrival. Once we’d cleared US Immigration and reclaimed our luggage, I called to make use of it. Whatever spiel Madeleine had given them, they answered their phone with excessive courtesy that only deepened when I identified myself. They were already aware of the arrival time of our flight and had the driver circling the airport waiting for us as we spoke, they said. They would call the man, who would be with us in minutes. Madeleine was very good at clearing a path, too.