by Karen Swan
He stopped eating and looked up at her from under his thick brows. ‘Right now, I just want a holiday house in Greece. Can we talk about that?’
She felt a rush of intense dislike at his curtness – did he need to be so rude? But she forced a smile anyway. She was doing this for Poppy. For some reason Poppy had felt she needed him, so Chloe would do this for her; she would do anything for her, if she would just promise to be okay. ‘The house. Okay,’ she sighed. ‘You said somewhere private, thirty acres—’
‘Four bedrooms in the main house, minimum. Plus I’ll need outbuildings on the land, although it’s not crucial that that’s in place yet.’
‘Okay,’ she said, eating as daintily as she could, trying not to splash salsa on her shirt and having to suppress her moans of satisfaction; this food was incredible. Could she get some sort of deal set up here for the members? she wondered. Or would these indie types run a mile from the idea of becoming ‘corporatized’, bought somehow? ‘Do you want landscaped gardens? Olive groves?’
‘Don’t care at this point. That can be decided later.’
‘And are you after any particular style of building? Manor house? Contemporary build? Farmhouse?’
‘So long as it’s secure and private, I don’t care. I’ll judge when I see it. It’s about the location and privacy, first and foremost.’
‘And what’s your budget?’
‘There isn’t one.’
Her hands stalled mid-air. ‘No upper limit at all?’
He shook his head but didn’t look back at her. ‘Nope.’
She allowed herself another bite of her lunch. ‘. . . And you said anywhere in Greece?’
‘One of the islands.’
‘You don’t want to narrow it down a bit more than that?’ She couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from her voice. ‘One particular sea perhaps – Aegean? Ionian?’
He didn’t rush to answer, seemingly savouring this last bite of lunch. But having finished eating, he pushed the plate away, pressing the napkin to his mouth momentarily. He looked back at her with a smile. ‘Tell you what, Chloe – why don’t you surprise me?’
Chapter Six
‘. . . honestly, Chlo, I could have died, everyone was staring!’ Kate’s big green eyes widened even further, the red wine glass in her hand sloshing around alarmingly as she shifted position. In the background, her husband Marcus was on his hands and knees constructing an intricately designed wooden train track on the floor, even though it was almost midnight over there, with tunnels, suspension bridges, junction boxes and multiplex engine sheds adding to the mathematical complexity of getting all the negative and positive ends to match up. Kate must have had to pick her way over it like a cartoon burglar just to get to the sofa.
‘Well, that’ll teach you for trying to show off. Just because you did Grade Five tap, it doesn’t mean you know your Savasana from your Malasana.’
‘My what?’ Kate spluttered.
‘Precisely. Arse from elbow is my point. You’re in the wrong class, Sis. You’re going to end up getting injured. I don’t get what the big deal is. Just move down to the Beginner class.’
Kate’s eyes widened. ‘But you see – there it is: move down. Implied failure. Before I’ve even begun!’
Chloe tutted. Only Kate could turn a resolve to shift the baby weight into a crusade to be the best in the class, and now it wouldn’t be enough to get into these poses, she’d have to do them deeper, hold them longer than anyone else. ‘Must you turn everything into a competition?’ Chloe chuckled, herself sitting cross-legged on her bed, cheeks still flushed from her boxing class as she ate her well-deserved burger.
It was still light although the steamy heat of the day had gone and the traffic was thinning outside on Perry Street. A couple of pigeons were roosting, cooing loudly, on the black fire escape that criss-crossed the building, passing directly outside her vast, arched bedroom window. The window had been the reason she had rented the apartment; though the entire flat was barely bigger than her sitting room in London, that architectural feature and the wonderfully distressed brickwork had captivated her immediately. No matter that there was no view, that being only on the fourth floor meant she looked onto walls; she had a window and a fire escape and if it was good enough for Holly Golightly, it was certainly good enough for her.
The plantation ceiling fan whirred in the middle of the room, flickering the flame of her favourite scented candle on the wooden mantelpiece. On the opposite wall, only seven feet away, almost so close she could turn it off with her foot, the TV was on, on mute.
‘Thanks for the support,’ Kate groaned. ‘You don’t understand what it’s like having a tummy like Jabba the Hutt. Just wait till you have a baby, then we’ll see who’s competitive at yoga.’
‘Okay. Sure.’ Chloe licked some ketchup that was dribbling down her finger. She heard Kate sigh loudly at her refusal to enage.
‘What have you just been up to anyway? You’re looking very sporty.’ Kate took another sip of her wine, sleepiness beginning to impinge upon her features. Orlando still awoke early and she was already going to have less than six hours’ sleep tonight, but these catch-up sessions were important to them both and Chloe’s job – with the amount of after-hours socializing it entailed – meant that grabbing a mutually convenient time, what with the five-hour time-lag to factor in too, was no mean feat.
‘My boxing class.’
‘You’re still doing that? I thought you’d moved on to barrecore.’
‘No. Too much plinky-plonky piano music for my taste. Not to mention I’ve got the flexibility of a brick. Boxing seems to suit me.’
Kate arched an eyebrow. ‘Because you still need to hit the bejesus out of something? I thought you said you were getting past the anger now.’
‘I am. I have. I just still like punching stuff.’ She gave a careless shrug but didn’t meet Kate’s eyes. ‘Go figure.’
‘Hmm,’ Kate said suspiciously, looking for signs of the cracks that had propelled her across the ocean that now separated them. A small silence bloomed but Chloe refused to be drawn. Plenty of people liked boxing. It was a brilliant stress reliever and gave great definition in the arms. It didn’t have to signify anything more than that. Kate, reading the cues, changed the subject. ‘. . . So, has there been any more news on Poppy?’
Chloe flinched at the question. She flinched every time she thought about it. ‘The operation was a success – they think – but they’re still keeping her in the induced coma for another few days to allow the swelling to go down. Until she wakes up, we won’t know if it worked or not.’ She remembered how Jack’s mouth had barely moved as he’d relayed the update to the team that afternoon – the no-news coming off as bad news. Everyone felt uptight and upset, the continuing uncertainty of the situation keeping them off-balance; Xan had looked like he was going to cry, the girls on the membership desk had collapsed into another morbid huddle on the sofas.
But Kate wasn’t one to flinch or look away. She liked facts. Certainties. ‘What are the possible outcomes?’
Chloe held up a weak hand and began counting off her fingers. ‘Full recovery. Speech problems. Motor problems. Or . . . or she doesn’t wake up. That’s pretty much the range.’
Perhaps it was the bald way in which she had expressed it, but Kate looked visibly startled by her words. ‘Oh, Chlo,’ she whispered, sympathy shining from her eyes.
It was almost more than Chloe could bear. She always knew the world was okay if her big sister said it was. So to see sadness, loss of hope, despair . . . ‘Oh, she’ll go for the first one, don’t you worry,’ Chloe said defiantly. ‘There’s no way Poppy will miss the company’s summer party next month. She’s been looking forward to it all year.’
‘Yes, of course she will.’ Kate squinted, seeing the tension in Chloe’s face. ‘Have you been able to see her yet?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘No. It’s still family only. Even Jack can’t get in. I’ve sent flowers, of course, but I thi
nk they’ll be dead before she sees them.’ She bit her lip hard as she stared at a sliver of onion, pale and translucent, on her plate. ‘Not that that matters a damn.’
‘No, of course not,’ Kate agreed, matching her stoic tone, as though sensing that Chloe needed that strength from her. ‘Well at least you’re doing all you can on a practical level. That’s all you can do right now. How’s it been with her clients?’
‘Hmm, yes, about that.’ Chloe groaned and settled the ketchup-smeared plate on her thighs, her shoulders slumping wearily. ‘Mixed bag. I had a nightmare with one of them on Monday.’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘I almost killed the woman’s dog and in so doing, made her scream when she’s not even allowed to whisper – she’s a famous opera singer, Rosaria Bertolotti?’ Chloe added, seeing Kate’s confused expression. ‘She never, ever speaks before noon.’
‘Oh, right.’ Kate pulled a ‘get her’ face. As a former counsellor for trauma victims, she didn’t have much sympathy with such things as strained vocal cords. ‘First world problems’ was her favourite phrase, uttered at least twice an hour.
‘And this was after she casually insisted I get her seated at a state dinner with the president of Brazil that night.’
‘Holy shit! And did you?’
‘Of course.’
‘But how?’
‘Tickets for a meet and greet with Selena Gomez at her concert in Rio next month for the daughter of the Communications and Engagement Manager.’
‘But that’s blackmail,’ Kate gasped, looking delighted.
‘No, it’s inducement. You can be sure the president would have thanked me for my efforts anyway; I didn’t know it at the time, but according to Xan, the president and Rosaria had been having a raging clandestine affair for years until she broke it off when she fell for some conductor. But he died of a heart attack a few months back and so now it’s . . . game on, again.’
‘Right,’ Kate breathed, looking both rapt and appalled at once. ‘Any other “inducement programmes” you’ve got going on?’
‘No. The rest have been well behaved so far; in fact, it’s been fairly quiet these past few days. Most of them aren’t in New York at the moment and I think they’re still getting used to the idea of me. It’s such a shock to them all. They rely on Poppy so much, not just practically but emotionally too; I don’t think they realized just how much until they heard what had happened. One of them actually started crying when I told him about the accident.’
‘Ah bless.’
‘Yes.’ Pelham had taken the news particularly badly, but then he had a stronger emotional link to Poppy, having known her since she was a child; he had rung off quickly, his voice suddenly hoarse, promising to call back with a date for tea at his townhouse in Greenwich when he was next in town. Proudlock, the film director, had been momentarily stunned but soon recovered himself and in the next breath had asked for both a suite at Hotel du Cap and a boat with a helipad to be moored at Cannes for two days during the film festival – oh, and for his dry-cleaning to be picked up. Greenleve hadn’t yet returned her call; he was holed up in a recording studio in Hawaii where he’d had all wifi and mobile connections cut with ‘the outside world’ – a deliberate ploy intended to concentrate the energies of his current hapless artist, who was in the throes of a very public and well-documented heroin addiction; according to his assistant, he wasn’t expected to surface for another four days or so. She was meeting Alexander Subocheva for the first time for drinks tomorrow – she had only got as far as speaking to his executive assistant up till now, having passed sufficient background tests to get past her assistant. As for Joe Lincoln, who was of course fully up to speed on the situation, he had zipped off to France for some meetings and she hadn’t heard from him since their lunch on Monday.
In fact, after her initial baptism of fire on Monday morning, the week had settled into its usual, familiar routine and she had been able to keep up to speed with most of her ongoing projects in her old sphere. So far, she was keeping all the balls up in the air and Jack – who had finally shaved, at least – was looking less stressed.
Chloe pulled her hair up into a ponytail, keeping her arms up there, elbows pointing out as she sank back into the pillow. ‘Have you spoken to Mum? How is she?’
‘Good. Busy with her herbaceous borders, of course. Everything’s going wild, she says.’
‘She says that every year.’
‘Exactly. And she’s worried about you, naturally. Thinks you’re too far away.’
‘New York is not far away. I may as well be in Cornwall as here; they’re both a day’s travelling from Alnwick anyway.’
‘Well, she frets about you working too hard, being lonely, lost in the city, pining for—’
‘So all the usual stuff then?’ Chloe said crisply.
‘Precisely. She’s coming down next week. We’ve got tickets for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.’
‘You should have asked me!’ Chloe pouted. ‘I could have got you in on the opening night.’
‘Me and Mum mingling with Tracey Emin? Can you really see it?’ Kate giggled, peering over the top of her now almost-empty wine glass.
‘No,’ Chloe chuckled. ‘Perhaps not.’
A vehement curse from the back of the room made Kate turn around. Marcus was up on his knees, with his hands on his hips and a face like thunder. ‘This bloody thing. We’re short one tight turn again; more bloody long turns than you could shake a stick at, but no more tight turns. Honestly, it’s the same every sodding time! I’m fed up with it, Kate. What am I supposed to do? The damn thing won’t fit without it; do I redesign the entire bloody thing from scratch? I’m getting the early train tomorrow but I promised Orlando I’d get this done for when he came down in the morning. I mean really—’
Kate gave a weary sigh and turned back to the screen with a knowing look. ‘Someone’s about to blow a gasket. I have to go.’
‘Of course. Duty calls. Speak soon.’
‘Love you, babe.’ Kate blew a kiss at her.
‘Love you too.’
Chloe pressed disconnect and sank back against her pillow, her plate still balanced on her lap, the sudden quiet blooming like a bloodstain as Kate’s crazy, chaotic world was severed from her own and she was alone again. She imagined her mother back home in Northumberland, kneeling on her daisy-printed foam pad and furiously weeding the begonias, Radio 4 playing beside her, bedsheets flapping on the washing line, the Cheviot hills distant sentries on the horizon.
It felt a world away from here – even the wind there was different: cool and fresh and tinted with the scent of clover and moss, cows grazing in the neighbouring field, their slow footsteps heavy on the dewy grass; whilst here, Chloe awoke to horns and shouts and the rattle of shop shutters being pushed back each morning. It wasn’t worse, per se, just different – because she did love it here. The pulse of the city energized her; it had synched with her own, dragging her up to the light again precisely when she’d needed it most. She had just never imagined that her life would ever lie in this heaving mass of light and noise. She had always known she wouldn’t stay in Alnwick, of course – her ambition needed more, her curiosity demanded it – but six months ago, her future had still looked very different from this reality: different backdrop, different accents, different ending.
She reached for the remote, flicking the channels and trying to find something that wasn’t an advert, when the FaceTime tone rang again.
‘Kate?’ she asked, looking distractedly for the mute button.
‘Not quite,’ said a male voice.
She looked at the screen in surprise. Him. He was sitting in his study at home, a small narrow room with a vintage film poster of The Leopard on the wall behind him and a red Anglepoise lamp on the desk. The light cast an unflattering brightness on his face, highlighting the bags under his eyes and ageing him fifteen years.
‘Please!’ he said, seeing how she went to press disconnect, the s
et of her mouth betraying her determination not to even set eyes upon him. She didn’t want him to see anything about her; it was unavoidable at times, of course, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of catching her in her t-shirt, eating on the bed. Alone. ‘Please don’t hang up! I have to tell you something!’
She paused and she could see him immediately scanning the space behind her, taking in the pom-pom lights she had draped over the mirror, the exposed brickwork, the dustypink velvet scatter cushions that sufficed for a headboard.
His eyes came back to her and he had the grace at least to look abashed for snooping. ‘Any word on Poppy?’
‘How would I know? Jack’s more likely to confide in you than me,’ she said in a brisk tone.
There was a small silence. ‘Your hair looks great short, by the way. When did you cut it?’
She didn’t reply. Did he really need to ask? Cutting her flame-coloured mane – the thing he had loved most about her – into a sharp-pointed crop had been the first thing she’d done on arriving here.
‘I keep meaning to say how good it looks but it’s never . . . never quite the right time.’
She glowered at him. Funny, that.
His eyes skittered over her, drinking her in in a way that wasn’t possible anywhere else. ‘I guess I never imagined you . . . I always thought of you as long-haired—’
‘Yes, well, I fancied a change.’ Sarcasm hung from the words; they both knew it was the understatement of the year. Change of hair? Change of life, more like.
He nodded. ‘You look incredible.’