by T. M. Logan
But not now, not in this moment. This hug was real. The real Lucy.
We sat like that for a minute, me stroking her hair and shushing her, my heart brimming. Her hot tears on my shoulder.
I mentally berated myself for being so caught up in my own self-pity, in the revelations about my marriage, that I’d not picked up Lucy’s signals sooner. I thought she would say more, tell me what was bothering her, but she simply hugged me in silence.
So quietly it was almost a whisper, she said, “It’s just Alex, that’s all.”
Alex?
There was a girl in her friend group called Alex who had been inseparable best friends with Lucy: sharing anything and everything with her—and then ignored her completely for a week straight. Had they fallen out again? She’d not mentioned it to me, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
“What about Alex? Has she been leaving you out of things again?”
“No,” she said, resting her cheek on my shoulder. “Not that.”
“Just rise above it, sweetheart. Don’t get drawn in.”
“Hmm…”
Before I could ask her anything else, she lay back down, switching her phone off and pushing it under the pillow.
“Night, Mum.”
I kissed her on the forehead and crept out of her bedroom. She would tell me when she was ready; forcing the issue would make her clam up even more. I knew enough to know that. Downstairs, the huge open living room was eerily quiet apart from the ever-present hum of the air conditioning, the full moon casting long shadows across the tiled floor. The room had an ethereal glow in the moonlight, the grand piano lit across its dark surface. I fetched myself a glass of water from the kitchen and was about to go back up when I stopped. There was another sound: the crickets in the garden. Someone had left the sliding glass doors to the balcony slightly open.
I stepped outside, drawn by the smells of olive trees, pine, and rich red earth cooling in the darkness. The chirping of crickets was a continuous soft background tone beneath everything else, the sky ink black, a perfect blanket of stars stretching from one horizon to the other. More stars than I could ever remember seeing at home.
My eye was drawn down again, and from deep within the shadows I saw a tiny flicker of movement. An orange glow.
I wasn’t alone on the balcony.
11
I flinched as something flew out of the darkness, fluttering close to my head.
“The bats are out in force tonight,” a deep voice said.
I turned toward it, the orange glow of a cigarette end like a firefly in the dark.
“They come out for the insects,” the voice continued.
“Russ?” I said, gathering the dressing gown more tightly around my body.
“Evening.” His voice was low and slow. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
“I needed some water.” As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out Rowan’s husband slumped in one of the big wicker chairs at the edge of the balcony, long legs splayed out in front of him, a bottle on the small table next to him, a brandy glass next to it with an inch of amber liquid in it.
“Fancy a drink?”
“I’m OK with water, thanks.”
He held up the bottle. “This will help you sleep. Twenty-year-old cognac, the finest sedative money can buy.”
“Really, I’m fine.”
“Works every time, guaranteed.” He sloshed more brandy into his own glass.
Another bat flittered overhead, a tiny black shape against the dark sky. Arms crossed over my chest, I looked behind me at the villa. All the windows were dark; everyone else was asleep. It was just the two of us still awake. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a chat one-to-one with Russ, a conversation that hadn’t been an awkward few minutes at a barbecue or New Year’s Eve party. In fact, I’d seen Odette’s live-in nanny, Inés, far more often than I’d seen him at the family home.
I wanted to get away, go back to bed, but part of me was also intrigued.
“Have you been out here long?” I asked.
He plucked a new cigarette out of the packet and lit it straight off the old one before flicking the butt away with a practiced snap of thumb and forefinger. The glowing orange butt spun in a high arc, end over end, and there was a hiss from the darkness below as it hit the swimming pool.
“Not long enough for my darling wife.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. A row, I guessed, although I’d not heard anything.
“Can’t believe how warm it still is,” I said. “Will you close the sliding door when you come in?” I turned to go and was almost at the door when he spoke again.
“You probably think,” he said abruptly, “that I was too harsh with Odette this evening, don’t you?”
I stopped, turning back to him. “I know how difficult it can be sometimes with small children.”
“The bloody nanny lets her get away with anything. No discipline. Nothing. And she’s so bloody stubborn, just like her mother. Always has to get what she wants, never does what she’s told.”
“It’s just a stage, all kids go through it.”
He grunted and took another swallow of brandy. “I bet you think I’m one of those blokes who can’t stand his wife to earn more than him.”
“No,” I said, not entirely truthfully.
“Not like you and your other half.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you’re like the perfect couple, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know about that.”
He pointed a long finger at me. “That’s what Rowan says to me. ‘Why can’t you be more like Sean?’ It’s her favorite line. And I say to her, ‘What, be more Irish?’” He gave a mirthless, gravelly laugh.
A chill ran through me. “Really?”
He poured another inch of brandy into his glass. “Oh yes, your husband is quite the role model, apparently.” He held the bottle out to me. “You sure you won’t change your mind about that drink?”
Cognac was the last thing on my mind, but I wanted to keep him talking.
Why can’t you be more like Sean?
“Go on then. A small one.”
I drank my water down in a swift gulp and handed him the empty glass, accepting it back a moment later with a hefty measure of the amber liquid in the bottom. At least a triple, I guessed. I perched on the edge of the chair next to him and we stared out into the darkness, the distant hills bathed in silvery moonlight. Somewhere below us, down in the village, a dog barked once then fell silent.
I sipped the cognac, the fiery liquid burning as it went down. It reminded me of teenage parties, raiding my parents’ booze cabinet and grimacing through shots of dessert liqueur and Greek ouzo and long-forgotten cherry brandy.
“So,” I said, “what do you think she means when she says she wants you to be more like Sean?”
“God knows. Better with Odette. Better at home. Just … better.”
For one mad moment I thought about telling him what I knew. About the messages. To share this burden with someone, get another point of view. A neutral point of view. Russ was so drunk that he probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning, anyway, but I couldn’t take the risk. I had to keep this secret to myself, at least for now.
“Sean’s far from perfect,” I said. “I can tell you that for a fact.”
“Oh well, I’ve a feeling it might be too late anyway.”
“What makes you say that?”
He let his head roll back onto the headrest of the chair, blinking blearily up at the stars, his chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
When he spoke again, his voice was clearer, softer, stripped of all its hard edges. All the swagger, all his alpha-male toughness, had gone.
“I think Rowan is having an affair,” he said.
12
A wave of dizziness, as if I had stood up too fast.
“An affair?”
“Yup.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t do that, Russ.”<
br />
“Are you?”
Are you? Are you really sure?
“Yes.”
He pointed a finger at me, a lopsided grin on his face. “But you hesitated before you said yes. You hesitated.”
“I’m still half asleep.”
“You hesitated, Kate. Admit it.”
The urge to match his revelation with my own, to share what I knew about Sean’s betrayal, was so strong I could feel it tugging at me like a centrifugal force, pulling me away from my husband.
Tell him what you know about Sean.
Tell him what you’ve found.
Tell him.
I took a deep breath and plunged in with a question instead, before I could change my mind.
“Who is it?” I said quietly. “Who do you think she’s seeing?”
Please don’t say Sean, please don’t say Sean. Please, not him.
Russ shrugged.
“Reckon it’s someone she’s known for a while. Not someone new.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Gut feeling. You’re her friend, you’ve known her since you were both”—he waved his glass vaguely in front of him, more of the brandy spilling over the lip—“like eighteen, or whatever. Has she talked to you about it?”
“No.”
“Not even a hint?”
“Nothing.”
He snorted. “You wouldn’t even tell me if she had, though, would you?”
“She’s not said anything to me. She’d be more likely to confide in Jennifer, to be honest. They were always more of a pair when we were younger.”
I was torn between defending my friend and getting Russ to open up, tell me about his suspicions. Wanting to carry on in blissful ignorance versus wanting to know everything.
“Something’s going on,” he said. “I just know it.”
“Doesn’t sound like she’s doing a very good job of keeping it secret, if you suspect something is going on.”
“She thinks I haven’t twigged. You think I should ask her, point-blank?”
Confronted with what might give the answer to my question, I was suddenly cautious. If Russ blundered in now, accusing his wife of an affair, I’d lose my chance of finding out the truth for myself. She would be on her guard for the rest of the week.
“I think you should be … careful, Russ.”
He snorted and took another slug of brandy, some of it dribbling down his chin.
“Why should I be careful? She hasn’t been.”
“Because once you ask her, once it’s out there, it’ll always be between you. The genie can’t be put back in the bottle.”
And because you don’t know how much damage a single accusation can cause.
But I do. I know. So does Rowan.
I took another sip of my drink, wondering whether to tell him the truth. Whether he already knew the truth. An ugly, unpleasant truth that I had locked away years ago.
Did you ever wonder why Rowan was single when you met her, Russ? Why she’d split with her first husband? Why a perfectly good relationship ended in anger and tears and bitterness?
Because of an accusation.
Because of me.
Russ leaned back in his chair and exhaled heavily.
“I knew you’d say something like that.”
“Why?”
“Sensible Kate. Always got your scientific head on, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You’re probably right, all the same. I’m supposed to be playing the ‘good husband.’” He emphasized the last two words with air quotes. “Make sure there’s no impediment to her big deal going through.”
I frowned in the darkness, feeling as though I’d missed something.
“How would any of that affect her deal?”
He took a drag on his cigarette, the tip glowing cherry red in the darkness.
“How much has she told you about the potential buyers? Not the division she’ll be absorbed into, but the actual owners at the top of the tree?”
I searched my memory. Rowan had not said much to me at all about this deal, even though it was potentially huge for her career. Why was that? It felt like another example of how far apart we had drifted in recent years. She had talked in generalities about her clients, her business, rather than who she was getting into bed with as part of this deal.
I flinched inwardly. Getting into bed with seemed about right.
“They’re a US-based multinational, I think?”
“Correct. Garrison Incorporated is a family-based company, three generations and still going. They’ve run it since the 1950s, market cap somewhere north of eighteen billion dollars, headquartered in Oklahoma City for the last seventy years. And those three generations of Garrisons have something else in common.”
“What’s that?”
“God.”
I leaned forward a little, waiting for him to elaborate, but instead he drew heavily on his cigarette again and blew out two thick streams of smoke from his nostrils.
“God?” I repeated.
“The big man himself.” He flicked the ash from his cigarette and pointed with the glowing tip, to emphasize each word. “They’re superevangelical, fundamentalist Christians and they run their businesses accordingly. Massively conservative, Bible-thumping types who have certain expectations of their top people.”
“In terms of personal life?”
“In terms of everything. They’re doing the presignature due diligence checks now, and those bastards are thorough. They’re going through everything in forensic detail, not just the business and the company projections, but past history going back twenty years, potential staff issues, black sheep in the family, client connections, potential negative headlines, any skeletons in the closet. Needless to say, any hint of a potential new partner shagging around will send all the red flags up in Oklahoma City, that’s for sure.”
“Would they pull out?”
“If they find out she’s been playing away from home? Oh, they’ll cut their losses, no question. The slightest sniff of a scandal and it will be goodbye buyout, goodbye payoff. Goodbye eight million quid.”
I took another small sip of the brandy. “And Rowan knows this?”
He drained his own glass and reached for the bottle again “Yeah, but she thinks she’s smarter than them.”
“Then she’s taking an astronomical risk.”
“That’s my wife for you. Always gung ho, always the risk-taker.”
“If it’s true.”
He gave me an exasperated look, as if I’d not been paying attention. “Something’s going on. I’m bloody certain of it.”
TEN MONTHS EARLIER
“This is the year that school gets real.”
Her mum had been saying it all summer. She ignored it: hard work had never been a problem for her. Top 5 percent since primary school, ever the competitive one. Just like she ignored the seniors who said the GCSE exams didn’t really count for anything, that getting the top grades didn’t matter, were just a stepping-stone to A levels at 18. That might be true for most people, but not if you wanted to be a doctor. The medical schools did look at your GCSE grades—they looked at everything, to decide who got a place and who didn’t. To make sure you’d not just got lucky with your A levels after making a mess of your GCSEs.
And anyway, when her mum said the thing about school “getting real” in Year 11, what she actually meant was This is not the time to get distracted.
In her mum’s eyes, distracted equaled boys.
Boys will get you sidetracked.
Boys will get you focusing on the wrong things.
Boys don’t do as well as girls at school, and there are good reasons for that.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
She understands all this. She gets it. She knows she’ll have to work hard to get the grades, and she’s more than prepared to put the hours in.
But. But. There’s a new boy in her year.
And he’s not lik
e the rest.
He’s tall—at least six feet—that’s the first thing she noticed about him. Wide shoulders and a square jaw, proper stubble, not just silly peach fuzz like some of the other boys in her year. His sleeves are rolled up, forearms broad with muscle. And he has this way of standing, of looking around, as if he knows everyone is looking at him and he’s perfectly OK with that, he’s used to it. Chestnut-brown hair in this gorgeous fade cut, long at the front, and she loves the way he brushes it away from his eyes. Eyes a bright, shining blue, serious and funny and dangerous and deep.
They draw you in.
He doesn’t even know she exists, not yet. He’s not the sort of guy you can just go up to, start talking to, without having an intro, a link, a mutual acquaintance.
That’s where her friend Jake comes in.
Jake is going to introduce her—as soon as he stops making excuses, stops putting it off until the next day and the next.
She knows she can persuade him. It’s just a matter of time.
SUNDAY
13
The smell of fresh coffee woke me up. Sean put the cup down carefully on the bedside table beside me and I propped myself up on my elbows, mumbling a thank-you without meeting his eye. How much sleep had I managed? A few hours? I felt shattered, hollowed out with fatigue, and took the coffee with me as I shuffled into the en suite.
By the time I was dressed and had made my way downstairs, Rowan had fetched Izzy from the airport and they were chatting in the air-conditioned cool of the kitchen. We hugged our hellos and I asked about the journey from Bangkok.
“It’s so lovely to see you,” Izzy said. “To see everyone again.”
“You too,” I said, sipping a second coffee.
It was months since I’d last seen her, but she didn’t look any different. She never seemed to age. She was dressed in a simple short-sleeved blouse and loose-fitting three-quarters from Vietnam or somewhere similar, and looked thoroughly at home in the heat. Her black hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, a green crystal on leather twine around her neck, plus her usual collection of bracelets and bangles for positive energy. She was the only one of us without kids, and single, and it seemed to me that she looked ten years younger than us as a result—no wear and tear, no stretch marks, no wrinkles and lines from all the sleepless nights. She was the smallest of the four of us, an elfin five feet two, slight and petite, and somehow that made her look younger, too. Small, delicate features, catlike eyes behind red-framed glasses and a mouth that was almost always smiling.