‘Anyway, not long after we got to the club, Patty and I ended up having sex in the toilets – no doubt you read about that, too. It tells you everything you need to know about that night, doesn’t it, that so much of it took place in toilets? I can’t remember how it happened, whose idea it was, but it happened and we came back out and I went off to the bar. It took a while, there was a queue, and then I bumped into this guy who was on a team we’d done some business with a few months beforehand. By the time I got back with the drinks, Nick and Patty had disappeared and no one else could look me in the eye.’ He ran his fingers backwards over his head and clenched them in his hair. ‘God, I wish I still smoked.’
‘We’ve got some – Tom left them.’
‘No, I think I might actually throw up. Talking about it like this . . .’ He shook his head. ‘The thing is, Hannah, the whole thing, Patty’s death – it was my fault.’
‘What?’ She heard outrage in her voice. ‘No. No, Mark. He did it. He was the one who . . .’
‘I let him. I’m the responsible one, remember? I’d known him my whole life. It wasn’t just that look that should have alerted me; it had been building for a long time. It’s always like that with Nick: you get a period of relative calm – relative,’ Mark put his hands up, qualifying, ‘and then he either gets bored or something in him comes to a head and then it’s . . . a crisis. In the weeks before it happened, there had been plenty of signs, if only I’d bothered to pay attention. He’d been turning up later and later to work, hungover as a dog; he’d missed a key meeting with his biggest client; and then there was the evening he hit on another client’s wife at a restaurant, groped her in the corridor – you know about that?’
She nodded.
‘And it wasn’t just work. He was taking stupid personal risks, too. He’d bought this huge bike, a Yamaha, and one night we’d all been out and he phoned me the next morning from Scotland – he’d got home at two in the morning and decided it would be fun to go to Edinburgh. He’d been smashed off his face but somehow he’d managed to get there alive – bloody miracle. Anyway, I should have known – no, I did know – that he was heading for some kind of . . . event.’
‘There’s still no way it’s your fault.’
‘But I think it is. There was this one moment that night. I stood there in the club after they’d gone and I thought about that look – I’m going to fuck you up – and I thought about how gullible Patty was, how keen she was to prove to him that she was fun, up for anything, and I just decided stuff them, stuff them both, they were on their own. I knew she was wrecked, I’d been with her all night – I should have rung her and made sure she was all right. Actually, I should have gone after them, but I was so angry, so furious, that I didn’t. I left her to Nick’s tender mercies. And look how tender they were.’
He hung his head, hiding his face. Silence rushed in around them, the deadening silence that Hannah had only ever felt in the house before when she was alone. She looked at his rounded shoulders, the curve of his back, and the word defeated came into her mind.
‘You know,’ he said, puncturing the silence, ‘I wanted something bad to happen to Nick. I wanted him punished for all the crap I had to put up with: his shitty, cruel behaviour; his manipulation of our mother; the fact that she spoiled him, not me; because he got all the attention and the toys and the money and the cars. I wanted him to suffer for the fact that our parents seemed to think I was born to be his caretaker. I had to dance on the fucking moon if I wanted to drag their eyes away from him even for a minute. So I wanted Nick to be taught a lesson in a way he wouldn’t forget.’
‘Ten years in prison,’ she said quietly.
‘I got what I wanted, didn’t I? But look at the price, Hannah. Look at the damage. Patty died – she died that night. Twenty-five, and they dug a hole in the ground and buried her. If I hadn’t let anger and my stupid, stupid bloody pride stop me going after them, she’d still be alive.’
When Hannah came back, he hadn’t moved. She must have been gone for seven or eight minutes, she thought, sitting on the closed lid of the downstairs loo while she tried to think, listening to the blood pounding in her ears, but Mark was exactly where she’d left him, hunched over the table, face buried in his hands. She was almost back to her position by the counter before he raised his head to look at her. On his face there was no expectation or request for forgiveness, just uncertainty, the frank acknowledgement that he had no idea how things would play out between them. It startled her that Mark could look so tentative and she felt a rush of tenderness towards him that she quickly fought down. He must have seen it because he reached for her hand. ‘Han . . .’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’ She moved back behind the counter, putting it between them. ‘What I want to know now,’ she said, ‘is where my savings fit into this.’
He closed his eyes and his shoulders seemed to drop another inch. Proud, confident Mark withering in front of her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. If I—’
‘Don’t,’ she said again, putting her hand up. Until she had answers, an explanation that made total sense, she wanted nothing but the facts. ‘Just tell me why.’
‘I owe Nick money.’
‘What?’ Her eyes widened. ‘You owe him money?’
‘A lot of money.’
That chill on the back of her neck again, as if someone had opened a window and let in the November wind. ‘How much?’
‘I—’
‘Mark – how much?’ Her voice rose and they both heard the alarm in it. ‘How much?’
He looked down at his hands. ‘Just under two million. One point eight.’
The floor seemed to tilt and she gripped the edge of the counter as if to stop herself falling, sliding off the comfortless slate tiles and into the vacuum suddenly yawning at her feet. ‘How,’ she said, ‘is that possible?’
‘He owns part of DataPro.’
She stared at him.
‘I know,’ he said, wildly. ‘Do you think I don’t know? I had no choice.’
‘What . . . Mark, it’s your company. Oh, my God.’ One point eight million. ‘How? How did it happen? How could you let it happen?’
‘I got into a mess.’
She felt her heart give a single heavy thump. ‘What kind of mess?’
‘In 2009, the financial crisis . . . I’d borrowed money from the bank to finance the US office but I’d over-extended, couldn’t make the repayments. We’d been doing business – quite good business – but no one was paying us. Accounts were chasing and chasing but months passed and no one paid – our cash flow was buggered. I missed some payments on the loan and the bank threatened to sue for the whole lot and I panicked. It would have hurt us so badly: I’d already had to let some programmers go, and without a full team we were struggling to get other projects finished on schedule, and—’
‘And Nick?’ She cut him off.
‘He loaned me the money. Quarter of a million. I’d already remortgaged the house, pumped all my own money in. I was—’
‘How did he have quarter of a million?’
‘It was his half of our parents’ estate. Mine was long gone, into the hungry maw. I went to see him in prison and I begged him, debased myself in front of him, basically, and he said he’d think about it. He kept me waiting for ten days – I nearly went off my nut. Then I got a call saying that he’d see me again – like he was the bloody Pope granting me an audience. I went up there and he said that he’d lend me the money for as long as he was in jail on condition I gave it back to him the day he got out.’
‘But if he only loaned you quarter of a million, how . . .?’
‘That was his other condition: he didn’t want interest. I offered him eight per cent but he wouldn’t take it. He wanted stock in the company or nothing. God, he loved it, Hannah, having me over a barrel – he loved the power, sitting there in his prison clothes in that stinking visiting room with all the other crims, the table covered with cigarette burns, wiel
ding power over me. DataPro was my thing, mine – I’d worked so hard and there was he, dictating terms, demanding stock in it.’
‘And there was really nowhere else you could go?’
‘No. No bank would lend me money at that point: everyone was running scared – you remember what it was like – and our cash flow was . . . I thought I wasn’t going to be able to pay the wages.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘I should have gone to a loan shark. Well, I suppose I did, in a way.’
‘I still don’t understand how you owe him so much.’
‘Because we’re doing well again. David’s investment made a massive difference. We’re debt-free, we’ve got business coming in and clients are paying. We had valuations done last week by two different auditors and they’ve both told us fifteen million. Twelve percent of fifteen mill . . . You’ve got to hand it to him, it was a great investment.’
‘But if you’re doing so well, why take my money?’
‘Because I can’t have Nick anywhere near the buy-out. I’ve got to get his name off the paperwork. The guy who owns Systema is a devout Christian, he makes huge donations to religious charities – if he hears what Nick did and finds out he’s a shareholder, he won’t touch us.’
‘So why not just pay Nick off now?’
‘We don’t have the money, not in cash or assets that we can liquidate easily. And even if we did, we couldn’t take out that kind of amount without raising eyebrows – Systema are going to be trawling the paperwork with a fine-toothed comb.’ Hannah watched anger flare on Mark’s face. ‘I’m not going to let Nick screw this up for me,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to allow it. Everything I’ve ever done or tried to do, he’s been there mocking or stealing my thunder, undermining me, fucking things up. But this is the end. I’ll sell DataPro, I’ll give him his money, then I never want to hear his name again.’
The silence poured in around them. Hannah looked over his head into the yard, where the wind was riffling the last brittle leaves of the creeper on the back wall, exposing their undersides and the bare brickwork underneath.
‘If he needs one point eight million,’ she said quietly, ‘what good’s my forty-seven thousand?’
Mark glanced at her then looked away. His face was full of shame. ‘I’ve got some money of my own,’ he said, ‘about seventy thousand, and I’ve borrowed some more against the house. I’m going to put it together and offer it to him if he’ll agree to redraw the paperwork before we have to open the books. An incentive. Otherwise, why would he do it? I wouldn’t – take my name off legal documents? No way.’
‘But if you explained to him about the deal, that you could pay him as soon as it all went through . . .’
‘Nick doesn’t care about the deal. I have to pay him one way or the other. He doesn’t give a toss about things working out for me – in fact, he’d be thrilled if he managed to derail it all. The only way I can do this is to make it advantageous to him to agree. If he does the paperwork now, I give him two hundred and fifty thousand, then afterwards I’ll give him two million, not one point eight.’
Two million. ‘And he’s said yes to this?’
‘Not yet.’
‘But you’ve told him?’
There was the sound of footsteps on the front path then the snap of the letterbox, a fall of letters on to the doormat. Mark waited until the footsteps had receded, as if he was afraid the postman would overhear. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You have to believe me. I can’t tell you how how shitty I feel. Because your account’s annual, I thought I could put the money back when we did the deal and you’d never even need to know. The idea of you checking your balance and seeing—’
‘Why didn’t you just ask me for it? I would have given it to you.’
He covered his face with his hands again and after a few seconds she realised he was crying. The hard knot of feeling inside her loosened and she left the counter and came to stand behind him. He sensed her there – she saw him stiffen, expecting what? – but she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.
‘I would have had to tell you why I needed it,’ he said, still facing away. ‘The whole story – Patty, everything – and I couldn’t.’
Her fingers tightened their grip. ‘It’s okay,’ she said.
‘I’ve been such a dick, Han. Such a total dick. Now I just want things to be straight between us, out in the open – no more lies.’ He hesitated. ‘I wasn’t in New York this weekend.’
‘I know.’
He started to turn but the pressure of her fingers kept him facing away from her.
‘You weren’t at your usual hotel. I called to talk to you and they told me you weren’t there. Obviously something was going on. That’s why I assumed it was an affair.’
‘You really thought I would cheat on you?’
‘I didn’t want to believe it, part of me never did, but when you weren’t at the hotel and—’ She remembered her promise to Neesha and stopped herself.
Mark gave a strangled kind of laugh. ‘I was trying to track down this guy who I thought would lend me the money,’ he said. ‘We had a meeting set up for Friday at his place in the Berkshires but he cancelled and then he kept giving me the run-around. I spent most of the weekend waiting in a B&B with no bloody mobile reception. I was going to ask him for a loan, pay Nick off and be done with it.’
‘What guy?’ Hannah felt a new rush of alarm. Who could you go to for that sort of money?
‘It doesn’t matter – I didn’t even see him in the end. And now that you know, some of the pressure’s off. At least I don’t have to carry it around on my own any more, waiting for it all to blow up in my face.’ Tentatively, he leaned back and rested his head against her stomach. After a moment, she put her other hand on his shoulder. Bending, she touched her nose to his hair.
‘I’ve been to see Nick, too,’ he said. ‘More lies. I told you I was in Frankfurt but I drove up to Wakefield to talk to him.’
Suddenly Hannah felt laughter well up inside her. Wakefield – Nick was in Wakefield Prison. Yorkshire. She’d seen those service-station receipts from the M1 and imagined a boutique hotel, all log fires and antique roll-top baths, and really Mark had been visiting his brother in jail. It was hysterical, she thought, hysterical – the laughter exploded out of her, startlingly loud. Mark stood up and put his arms around her, holding her while she shook. When she stopped, as abruptly as she’d begun, Hannah looked up at him. His dark eyes were shining with tears. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he said, ‘that you thought I was having an affair – that because of him I nearly fucked this up, you and me . . .’
She stood on tiptoe and pressed her cheek flat against his, feeling the scratch of his overnight stubble, smelling the sage note in his cologne. She wasn’t sure who moved first but all of a sudden they were kissing, slowly to start with, then furiously. Mark’s mouth was hot and tasted of Armagnac. ‘I love you, Han,’ he said, breaking away just long enough. ‘I really love you.’
Chapter Seventeen
When Hannah woke up, Mark was lying turned away from her, the shape of his shoulder outlined by the bar of daylight coming through the gap in the curtains. His breathing was deep and regular, his shoulder gently rising and falling in rhythm with it. In the distance, a church bell struck one o’clock. Gingerly, she turned on to her back. She waited a moment, making sure she hadn’t disturbed him, then reached over the side of the bed and fished her T-shirt off the floor. She sat up, pulled it over her head then slid gently back down into the body-warmth.
It was ridiculous, she thought, to be uncomfortable about Mark seeing her naked. He’d seen her naked hundreds of times, and just now – an hour or so ago – they’d made love like wild things, self-consciousness cast aside along with the clothes strewn across the carpet. It had come from relief, that rush of desire, the pure relief of him telling the truth, confirming what she’d discovered, not trying to hide anything or obfuscate. And he’d volunteered what he’d said about the B&B in the Berkshires and visiting Nick in jai
l, she hadn’t had to ask. Now she admitted it to herself: she’d been frightened that, confronted, Mark would try and bend the story, play down or deny his part in it. But no, he’d been frank about everything: his obnoxious Chelsea-boy behaviour; the drugs; even what happened with Patty that night. He hadn’t tried to varnish over it at all.
And yet now the hit of relief had passed, she was uneasy again. He was telling the truth now but the fact remained that he’d lied to her: there was no getting round it. Yes, his reasons made sense and she couldn’t be sure that in his position, meeting someone she liked, being saddled with something so horrifying, she wouldn’t have done the same but he’d still lied and kept lying so that he wouldn’t have to tell her. Before all this she’d trusted him completely, as much as she trusted her parents or Tom, but it would take time to rebuild that trust again – months, years, who knew how long? And though she understood why he hadn’t told her, it still hurt. She felt as if she’d been found lacking, like she was the one who wasn’t trustworthy.
The central heating was off and the room had gone cold. She burrowed deeper into the bed, closed her eyes and let the deep exhaustion sweep over her. It would be all right, she told herself. It would take time, no question, but in the end things would be all right.
When she woke the second time, Mark was awake and watching her, his face twelve or fifteen inches away on a pillow that he’d pulled into a tight concertina between his shoulder and ear. Even in the strange half-light, she could see his anxiety.
She shifted position, breaking eye contact for a moment, and reached out to touch his shoulder. His skin was cold. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
Before We Met: A Novel Page 19