“Shall I call for backup?” she asked.
“I’m on it,” said Daniel. “Explain later,” he added as he grabbed his car keys and jacket, leaving Barbara staring after him, astonished.
He thanked fate he had managed to park his car reasonably close. In seconds he was on the road, heading for the bridge, his phone on the seat next to him. It was just gone two in the morning. The streets were empty, the street lamps were off. His phone beeped the arrival of a text. There was a law against using a cell phone on the move, but then racing at twice the speed limit was frowned upon too. There was a time and a place for disregarding the law—and this was it. He flipped open his phone case and glanced at the screen.
It was from Kate. He opened it, alternating his gaze from the screen to the road. In snatches, he read: Daniel . . . Thank you for trying to help me. I am so grateful to you for being a good friend but I’ve decided I need to go now. Goodbye, and take care of yourself.
Shit. He groaned, pressing his foot down on the accelerator a little further.
At the approach, he debated driving right onto the bridge and decided against. Better to cover the last stretch on foot. He screeched to a halt, leaving the car at an angle just at the toll booth, and jumped out. It was blocking the road, but that was just tough. He grabbed his phone, opening Kate’s text and stabbing the return call button. Where the hell was she? He peered onto the bridge, the spitefully cold wind cutting through his thin shirt like a knife. He cursed the lights on the bridge. They dazzled rather than illuminated. He couldn’t see.
Daniel groaned again in despair. He was too late. Then he saw something. First, he thought it was a bird wing, a flash of white, whipping briefly across the corner of his eye, and then he looked more closely. It was her. It must be. A tiny figure, right in the center of the bridge, at the lowest point of the elegant inverted curve of its supporting cables.
“Kate,” he called, and then regretted it. He should approach her quietly. Not startle her. She was still on the pavement, pressed against the antisuicide barrier, the top of which curved inward to prevent all but the most agile and determined jumpers.
He jogged toward her. She showed no sign of having seen him, resting motionless against the metal grille, just staring into the water far below.
“Kate,” he called again, more gently, when he was just a few yards away.
She turned, her face a pale blank, and then—when she saw him—a sad smile spread slowly across her face. She was astonishingly relaxed, seemingly impervious to the cold now, he noticed. He was reminded of the paradoxical effects of hypothermia, how the shivering stopped and casualties thought they were warm, stripping off their clothes and lying down to sleep.
“Daniel!” she said, with incongruous delight, as if she had unexpectedly bumped into him in the street on a sunny day. “How did you know I was here?”
He put his head on one side, his arms slightly raised with hands turned out, and walked slowly toward her.
“It was you on the phone, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“What are the chances, eh?”
“Kind of like fate intervened, don’t you think?”
“I’m glad I have a chance to say goodbye to you properly.”
“Don’t go.”
“It’s the best thing.”
“It can’t be. What about Jack?”
“Well, I’m taking him with me, obviously . . .”
“That’s not right, and you know it,” he said, puzzled but relieved. Jack evidently wasn’t there, which meant that at least she didn’t plan on doing anything irreversible in the next couple of seconds.
“Er, excuse me, you have to let me decide what’s right for my child. He needs a fresh start. A new school where they don’t mind him being not like the other kids . . .” she explained. As she did so, watching Daniel’s face change, the realization dawned.
“What?” she exclaimed. “You didn’t seriously think . . .” she waved a hand at the seething waters hundreds of yards below them.
Daniel nodded apologetically. “You have to see how it looked,” he said in his defense. “And you sent me a text.”
“Yes, sorry, I just thought well, if we’re going, we’re going . . . it was a cop-out not to say it face-to-face.”
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“You don’t.”
“It’s been lovely,” said Kate, despairingly, “but there’s just too much difficult stuff here, the school, the job. It’s all a mess . . .”
“But there’s us,” said Daniel tentatively, closing the gap between them hesitantly, gauging her reaction with every step, as if she were a horse that might bolt.
“Us? I don’t think so,” said Kate, taking a step back. “Listen, I appreciate there was nothing agreed between us, but if you think there’s an ‘us’ and you’re off kissing girls with pink hair . . .”
“What?” Now it was Daniel’s turn to be astonished.
“It’s totally fine,” Kate said. “No reason why not. She looks really nice. Obviously I can’t tell. I like the hair, it’s cool. Plus she’s tall, which is obviously a draw . . .”
Daniel was perplexed. “Hang on,” he said, feeling a growing sense of unreality. It was bad enough he was on a bridge in the freezing cold in the middle of the night, trying to save someone’s life—not just “someone” actually—Kate’s life, or at least he thought he was, and now, suddenly they were talking about someone’s hair.
“Whose hair? Who’s tall?”
“That girl with pink hair who you were kissing. You were in each other’s arms. At Christmas Steps.”
“Grace,” he said, realizing. “You saw that.”
“It’s not a problem . . .”
“It is a problem. Huge. And we weren’t kissing. She was crying because of Noel and I was hugging her . . . She’s gay, by the way. She’s got a girlfriend.”
“Oh.” Kate’s world shifted a little. A bubble of happiness formed somewhere deep in her chest. She gazed at him, perplexed.
“And I wondered where you’d got to,” he went on. “I had some important things to tell you. I have important things to tell you. Things that might make a difference to—well—you leaving everything.”
“Listen, you actually make a fair point with the dying thing,” Kate explained. “I’m worth a darned sight more dead than alive,” she said, remembering the death-benefit clause in the contract. It was more than enough to cover the nursing home fee, plus Jack would automatically get a place in Greystone Manor as a “looked after” child. But of course she would never leave him. The though he might lose her after having to cope with losing his father made Kate cry tears she wouldn’t allow herself to cry for her own grief.
She wiped her nose and eyes unselfconsciously, drying her hand on her jeans. “Look,” she said, pushing her hair back where it was being whipped across her face by the cruel wind. “I’ve got a lot of complicated stuff that I have to solve. And I have to do it for myself. No one else is going to sweep in and rescue us. Not even you. You might think I’m running away, and I am, but I’m running to build a better life for Jack.”
“Don’t go,” he said, more softly, catching her hands in his own, warming them.“You have a wonderful life here, you and Jack. There’s nothing we can’t fix. Let’s give ourselves a chance to be happy together.” He reached out, hyper-alert for her reaction, and gently rested his hand on her arm.
She stiffened. “I love the thought,” she said, sadly. “But there’s just too much. I have to be strong. Doing this solves problems. It’s the only way . . .”
“I have so much to tell you. What do you need?”
“Money for Maureen’s nursing home.”
“Done.”
“A career.”
“Done.”
“A school for Jack.”
“Okay, erm, done. Somehow.”
Kate paused. She looked at Daniel, gazed at a point in the distance and then back at his dear
, kind face, that she had known for such a short time and yet felt she had known forever.
“You?” she smiled a cautious, sweet smile.
“Done.”
Kate shivered. It was a shudder that ran through her body so violently it made her sway. It was like watching the life course through a newly delivered foal as it staggered to its feet.
He let go of her hands and embraced her, pressing his body against her. He brought around the jacket he still held in his hand, covering her back with it, hooking it onto her shoulders and holding it there as he rocked her gently in his arms. Slowly he felt her relax against him.
“Let’s go home,” he said in her ear. “It’s bloody cold here and I reckon you need one of my green slime matcha tea specials inside you.”
“Is everything really going to be okay?” she said, pushing herself away just a little so she could look up into his face. Her face was as open and innocent as a baby’s.
He smiled down at her. “Yes,” he said. “It really is. Trust me.”
He had whacked up the heater to full blast as soon as they got into his car. By the time they got back to the houseboat, Kate was so profoundly lulled by the heat and the release of tension, she was nearly asleep.
She felt him open the passenger door and allowed him to help her to her feet. She shivered again in response to the biting wind but soon, barely registering the walk to the boat, she found herself in the tiny cabin. He ushered her straight into the bedroom at the prow of the boat and—without words—got her to get under the duvet, fully dressed.
When he came back with two mugs of strong tea, she was asleep, curled up on her side with tremors of cold still sporadically coursing through her. He put the mugs on the bedside table and climbed in next to her, spooning into her back and taking her still freezing hands in his own.
“Tea or coffee?” he asked, as she clambered out of the little bedroom the next morning, rubbing her eyes with her fists like a child.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly eleven.”
“What day is it?”
“The first day of the rest of your life,” he said grinning, handing her a plate with a doorstep bacon and egg sandwich on it. “Tomato sauce?”
“Go on then,” she said, holding out her hand for the squeezy bottle. “I’ve still got problems.”
“Haven’t we all? The good news is, you’ve got me on the case now.”
“We didn’t?” she gestured to the little bedroom. The previous night felt so muddled in her mind she wasn’t sure.
“Of course we bloody didn’t. What kind of a man do you think I am?”
“A good one,” she said, sliding onto the bench, and sinking her teeth into the sandwich. “I’m glad I’m not dead.”
“So am I.”
“I can’t believe you thought I would.”
“It’s the company I keep. Where is Jack, by the way?”
“Having a whale of a time with Krishna,” she said, her face clouding over again, and her body drooping under the weight of remembering a sadness that still threatened to overwhelm her.
“Tell me,” he said.
And she did.
“Okay, well, I admit that’s quite a lot . . .” conceded Daniel. “Let’s start with the stuff I was trying to tell you about when you were avoiding me because you decided I was snogging a lesbian. For a start, and I grant you this is quite a small point, my friend’s fiancée, Cara, is having the girls around this lunchtime for a pre-Christmas drink, and she’s expecting you to turn up with all that jewelry you made for the school-gate nightmare mum’s party. Give ’em a glass or two of Prosecco and they’ll bite your hands off for whatever you’ve got, I reckon.”
“Hopefully they don’t have to be drunk to like my jewelry,” protested Kate, but she was smiling. “And it’s great, but you’re right: that is the least of my problems.”
“Okay, try this. When we go to your flat to collect the jewelry, you need to pick up your employment contract, because it just so happens Cara is a shit-hot employment lawyer who hangs, draws, and quarters sex-pest managers for kicks. In fact,” he said, looking at his watch, “we should get cracking. One thing at a time, that’s what I tell the people on the hotline. Just deal with one thing at a time.”
After Cara had introduced Kate to her half dozen half-cut mates, who fell upon Kate’s jewelry with cries of delight, she took her into the kitchen and grilled her on the lead-up to her extraordinary meeting the day before with Malcolm, Bruce Holden-Legal, and Sarah.
“And then they said what? . . . And then what happened?” she prompted. “You’re joking!” she exclaimed at one point and then, when Kate more or less got to the end, she reached for the bottle and topped up Kate’s glass.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she said heavily, as she slowly shook her head.
“Is it bad?”
“Oh yes, very bad.”
“Okay,” Kate said, shrugging, “I just thought maybe . . .” she trailed off, smiling in defeat.
“No, no,” said Cara, realizing she had been misunderstood. “I mean this is very, very bad for Portman Brothers. The terms and conditions changes, the bullying, the refusal to accept reasonable request, the flipping SEXUAL ASSAULT,” she shouted, making Kate jump.
“He didn’t actually—you know . . .” said Kate, in his halfhearted defense.
“It was assault,” Cara insisted, “and failure to take disciplinary action against this bloke . . .” She let the consequences linger unspoken. “We’re talking five-figure-payouts bad; six-figure, even. We’re talking sackings, fines, reputational damage. We’re talking—”
“Six-figure payouts? What? To me?”
“Yes, to you,” said Cara. “If I don’t justify my fee with a damages award exceeding fifty thousand pounds, then I’ll never offer a no-win, no-fee ball-breaking service ever again.”
Kate sighed, a deep sigh that left her slumped at the kitchen table, her hand curved around her wineglass, too weary to lift it to her lips. This drinking at lunchtime thing was interesting, she thought. Especially after minimal food and sleep. “I dunno,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right to be turning the whole revolting episode into an opportunity to make money.”
Now it was Cara’s turn to sigh. She got this a lot. Clients wanted her to somehow right wrongs, not to extract lucrative payouts, but—as she had to explain—there was a price to pay for every sin, and the common measure of the size of the wrong, when it came down to it, was money. Apologies were possible too, if that’s what the client really wanted, but words were cheap and Cara was hard-bitten nowadays. Words didn’t pay her salary.
“If you want to protect other women from this tosser you need to take action. This is the action they will pay attention to. The sad thing is, they essentially don’t care about bad behavior. What they care about is their bottom line. You hit that, you’ve got their attention. You get their attention, they will be keen to ensure they don’t get hit for it again and they’ll do a lot to make it all go away. This is your power, girl. This is how you do it.”
Kate looked at Cara and recoiled slightly at the blazing zeal in the other woman’s eyes. “I see your point,” she said reluctantly. “And if I’m using the money for good . . .”
“Exactly.”
“Are you offering to deal with it for me?”
“I certainly am,” she said, folding Kate’s employment contract and sticking it in her bag. “In fact, leave it totally to me.”
“No win, no fee?”
Cara nodded.
“You need to speak to Sarah in HR,” Kate told her. “I think she’ll be secretly pleased.”
“So that’s that,” said Daniel, briskly. “Another problem ticked off the list, and I do believe the immediate cash-flow issue has been considerably eased by those scary women in there.”
“Have they bought stuff ?”
“Have they bought stuff ?” Daniel pretended to think: “It would be fair to say they like your shit. There�
�s not a lot left, but there’s a pile of paper money on the table where it was . . . enough to buy Jack a decent Christmas tree and the rest.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” said Kate tearfully, and the tears were spurred by mixed emotions. Maureen’s nursing-home fees could be funded by any employment pay-out Cara might wangle—she was sure Carol would be prepared to wait for that. And the jewelry sales would help with Christmas. But there would still not be enough for the school fees she needed to help Jack.
“You had better go and meet your fans,” said Daniel, bowing and sweeping an arm in the direction of the living room. “Watch out for that Hayley, she’s bought a lot, and drunk a lot. She’s likely to be overemotional.”
Kate was shy. All these women telling her how much they liked her stuff were more than she could cope with. Cara was grinning too . . . “And they all love the wedding group idea,” she told Kate to her confusion.
“What’s the wedding group idea?”
Cara gave Daniel a questioning look and he shook his head. “I haven’t got to that bit yet,” he explained. “Give us a chance . . .”
Cara shook her head in frustration at him but turned to Kate. “There’s a cunning plan that Daniel will explain to you when he can be arsed; personally I can’t think what he’s been doing with his time. It’s just . . . have you ever thought about offering a jewelry design service for weddings?”
Kate did a little excited jump. “Absolutely!” she said. “I’ve always thought . . . I haven’t quite managed to get it going, but hang on”—she fumbled for her phone—“the thing is, you want to offer something really personal, don’t you? And also, something where the brides’ rings go with the grooms’, and you can do loads with all the different colors of gold and silver—look . . .”
Cara came around to stand next to her, peering at the little screen. “And these are just ones you’ve done on spec?” she said, looking on in wonder as Kate scrolled through the photos. “These are amazing, you are going to do soooo well with this, the Christmas Steps lot are going to love you.”
“And then—hang on, where are they? Oh yes here—there’s these pendants for the bridesmaids . . .”
“Bridesmaid presents!” exclaimed Cara, looking triumphantly at Paul. “Now there’s a thing.”
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