by Harper Fox
Stupid bloody question. The week that had gone by since my goulash lunch with Sil had taught me that. I’d seen him since, just a glimpse across the road near Ettrick Tower where Jamie took his boyfriends. I’d felt like a stalker, hanging around to make sure he got in and out all right. I’d been pretty subtle, though: I was certain I hadn’t been spotted. I’d love to, I’d tell him, if ever he asked me again. I’d love to go out with you, Sil.
The café was just down the road. Pleasant Gardens, this street was absurdly, enchantingly named, as if some long-ago civic planner had been hopelessly optimistic or on drugs. It was living up to its title today, the May breeze making the oak leaves dance, the junk shops and bakeries open-doored to the sun, their owners taking a break on the steps or gathering to chat with passers-by. No doubt if I got closer I’d hear them exchanging anxious thoughts about the future. All my bright ideas about urban renewal and sustainable energy schemes were too little too late now. Still, Silver had listened to me as if they’d mattered.
Fuck, I missed him! I stopped on the pavement, pretending to read a community-protest flyer tied to a lamppost. A clean pain it might be, but it still knocked the breath from my lungs. I smiled and said hi to the guy who owned the herb shop, to the handful of passing mums, kids and pensioners I was beginning to know by sight from my daily visits here. Then, running out of excuses, I turned and looked at the house across the road.
This one had a wilderness garden that ran from the shabby front door all the way to the wrought-iron railings by the kerb. The once-lovely stained-glass bay window was cracked across some panes, others boarded up. Just another three-storey terrace in a long row, but there was a magic about it. For sale, too, the owner taking a jump before the compulsory-purchase order pushed. I took out my phone. It looked nicer still through the camera lens, as places can do when we’ve started to assign to them our own crazy visions and dreams. The shutter clicked. Not letting myself think, I attached the picture to a text. Added a note: this one would do, addressed it to Silver and hit send.
Before I had time for regrets—to start wondering what the bloody hell Silver would make of that, or of me—a high-pitched wail cut the air behind me. The cries of babies anywhere still had the power to stop me in my tracks, looking for trouble and the means to stop it, but this one...
Good grief, it was mini-Mel. Barely visible in the gorgeous trappings of an elaborate pram, but definitely the same puce little face I’d first seen emerging in the lift in Knightsbridge. Melchior and Sabrina were oblivious to me, locked in debate outside the window of a shop called, unforgivably, Vintage Vorever. “For heaven’s sake,” Sabrina declared, turning to the bedizened scrap in the pram. “You’ve woken him, Melchior.”
“I’ve woken him? Wasn’t it your shriek of incomprehensible delight over this revolting green-enamelled bloody meat-grinder?”
“I’ve told you. My mother had one like that. I’m nesting.”
“Can’t you find one that might match the rest of your nest? I’ve seen that shade of green in Crispin’s nappies, I swear. And didn’t you already order a blender from Harrods?”
“A blender, Mel. This is a grinder.”
“How many times have I told you, Sabrina? If you don’t want me to call you Sabby-pants the way your sister does, don’t call me...”
This was getting out of hand. I abandoned my safe station by the lamppost. “Hi, Sabrina. Hi, Melchior. Aren’t you two both vegetarians?”
“Of course we are,” Melchior snapped. “She’s gone nuts for vintage kitchenware, though, and... Oh. George.”
Sabrina whipped round. “George!” she shrieked, making the baby yowl in sympathy. She pushed the pram aside and shot over to me. “George! My knight in shining afterbirth. Oh, my God. I tell Melchior every day what a hero you were. So calm and stern! Get those knickers off right now, young lady.”
She burst into giggles. I could see that the story might have palled on Melchior, but she was irrepressible, fragrant and blazingly beautiful, turning heads all the way up and down the street. I stood as still as I could under the shower of kisses. “Pretty sure I never said exactly that, Sabrina.”
“Well, you saved the day. You saved Crispin. Come and meet him, I was going to say, but of course you two already know each other.” She darted back to the pram and began to unpackage the mewling scrap from inside. She glanced up at me, the breeze catching her fine hair, and I fucking hated Melchior for changing the game so late in both our lives, but I could see his point. She was scatty and noisy but entirely loveable. Her smile increased, as if she’d read my thoughts. “Thank you for signing off on the divorce papers, George. I know it must have been hard for you, but Mel and I are just so bloody happy.”
Noisy, scatty and tactless. I didn’t care, but Melchior blenched. “Sabrina, for God’s sake.”
“What? Oh, is that one of the things we don’t talk about in the street? The list is endless, George, as you probably know. Money, sex, nappies... Poor Mel thought he was getting some kind of debutante, but I was an office girl in Wapping until the scout picked me up. I swear, it’s like My Fair Lady in our house sometimes.” She extricated Crispin, who blew a bubble at her. “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? Here. Take him.”
“Sabrina, no.” Melchior stepped between us. His embarrassment had given way to a deeper emotion. “George doesn’t like to... That is, he lost his own...”
Hot surprise washed over me. Melchior, so remote, so wrapped up in his music... He knew about my son, but hadn’t breathed a word in twenty years, any more than I had. Stupid of me to think that meant he didn’t care. “It’s okay, Melchior,” I managed, voice reduced to a scrape. “Give him here. Let’s see you, you chunk.”
Beaming, Sabrina placed him in my arms. He barely weighed more than a rabbit, but he had that heaviness of recent arrival on Earth, a kind of gravitational force. My boy Daniel would’ve been a young man by now. Suddenly, without meaning to, I wished and willed all the chances and strength of that lost life into this one. The effort ripped something out of me: tears spilled down my face. “Crispin, eh?” I said shakily, stroking the creased little brow with one fingertip. “That would get him bullied to death, anywhere other than Knightsbridge. But he’ll fit right in with all the other little Quentins and Tarquins at nursery there.”
“George,” Sabrina said uncertainly. “Why are you crying? What did you lose? You didn’t lose your...”
She was too new a mum to bear such a story. “It’s all right,” I said, handing the baby back to her. Planted a kiss on her peach of a cheek: “It really is all right. He’s a gorgeous lad. Will you bring him round to see me sometimes?”
“Oh... All the time. We’ll never be away. He already loves hearing about how he was born. Mel wants us to say he arrived at the Kensington Wing, but you can’t keep a lid on a story like that, can you?”
“It is too good to waste.” I walked up to Melchior, who swallowed hard. “Melchior, congratulations. I really mean it. I’m sorry I dragged my feet over the divorce. It was just...”
“Oh, God. Don’t apologise to me. I never meant to hurt you. I never...”
He gave up on whatever he’d been trying to say. He closed his eyes and grabbed me, and the movement and the moment were so familiar that I grabbed him in return. He hadn’t changed his shampoo or cologne. He buried his face against my neck, and I held him, rocking, feeling for the last time his small elegant frame, the way his bones fitted against mine.
Sabrina gave a shivery sigh. “Oh George. You’re so lovely. I’m sure you’ll meet someone soon.”
I let Melchior go. Some temporary madness laid hold of me. Perhaps it was the summer air, or just the need to take the trace of pity out of Sabrina’s eyes. My heart was beating too fast, love and hope and loss sloshing around inside me like paper boats on the Serpentine. “I think I already have. He’s called Silver.”
“Silver? Oh, that’s dashing. What does he do, with a name like that? Sail the seven s
eas of the stock exchange?”
No point in concealment, was there? I’d blabbed about his existence, so in for a penny... Besides, I was proud of him, from the top of his beautiful skull to the toes that had pressed mine beneath the hotel table during our game of chess. “Silver’s an escort. A sex-worker.”
I needn’t have worried about startling the concert pianist with my risqué new connections. Melchior was entirely caught up on something else, eyes wide and fixed on mine. “You met someone?”
Sabrina rounded on him. “Melchior! It’s been more than a year. Why on earth shouldn’t he?” She returned her attention to me, and her famous wicked smile blossomed out, the one that sold dreams and promises from here to Sydney Harbour. “A sex-worker?” she echoed. “George Fenchurch. You minx.”
“Well. I don’t know if I stand a chance with him, so don’t get too excited.” I grinned, letting go of Hampstead decorum. “But he is a hottie, yeah. Keep your fingers crossed for me.”
“I will!”
“And now I’ve got to go. Job interview, believe it or not.”
Melchior made a visible effort to collect himself and take an interest. “That’s good news. Civil Service again?”
I’d as soon have gone to the Oxfam shop, bought back my own old clothes and put them on. “Nothing so grand. Just some technical drawing at an architect’s in Chelsea. Andrew’s been looking after me, but he doesn’t really have enough work.”
“He will have soon, though, won’t he? I read in the Guardian that this whole place was getting ripped down. They said Fenchurch had the contract for the new build.”
“That’s right, but I don’t want...” I shut up. I don’t want to be involved would be a poor return to Drew for his kindness. I was only now beginning to appreciate all he’d done. Movement down the street caught my eye. “Wow,” I said, unable to help myself. “Speak of the devil. Melchior, you’d better look out.”
I’d never seen my brother move so fast. He was no more a fan of jogging and gyms than I was, but he was burning up Pleasant Gardens, straight down the middle of the mercifully no-traffic street. His tie had flown back over one shoulder. “George!” he yelled, as soon as he caught sight of me. “George, hang on! Got to talk to you!”
He seemed oblivious to anyone else, but Melchior, to my amused disgust, retreated behind Crispin’s pram. Sabrina gaped and gave him a shove. He emerged again, shamefaced. “What does he want, George?”
“Nothing to do with you, I don’t think.”
Drew almost overshot. I put out a hand to catch his arm. He came to a ragged stop, panting and pink in the face. “George! George, listen. Er, hi, Melchior. Sorry about last time, man—just lost my rag.”
“Do you have it now?” Melchior enquired cautiously.
“What? Oh, yeah, rag firmly in place. It’s all cool with me, if George is down with it.”
I gave his arm a little shake. “Drew, you’re talking like a teenager from the 1970s. What’s up?”
“I feel like a teenager. Listen. The DigiRev deal fell through.”
My stomach dropped. I’d helped Drew with a tax return during my make-work year, and I knew how close he’d been sailing to the wind. The loss of this might break him. “What? Fell through how?”
“London Central Council put a sudden block on it. Said the planning-permission office had failed in their assessment. It’s a conservation area now, they said—trees, lungs of London, cultural amenities, all the usual stuff they roll out when they want to stop the bulldozers.”
Maybe he felt like a teenager because he was about to be relieved of his livelihood and the cares of running a business. Helplessly I began mental calculations for splitting my new draughtsman’s salary—the one I hadn’t yet got—between him and his family. “That’s a disaster, isn’t it? Why are you so excited?”
He actually took me by the lapels. “The council. The council! They’ve offered Fenchurch Architects the whole contract for local renewal.”
“Renewal?”
“Yeah, dude!” He shook my shoulders, rattling laughter out of me: I hadn’t heard dude in a long time. “Fix the houses, boost local business, strategically pollard the trees—all the stuff you used to talk about before you realised we needed DigiRev and shut up. Everything.”
“We don’t have the resources for half that.”
“I know, right? I’ve got to hire a whole bunch of good people right away. I’m starting with you. There’s a guy from renewable energies in my office right now, asking for you by name. Do not go to Chelsea.”
“I... I won’t.” His words were sinking in. The oak leaves rustled overhead. Kids shot past us on bikes, yelling. “My God. Are you sure about this, Drew?”
“We just got an advance so big the juniors had to help carry all the zeroes through the door. It’s real. We’re on.”
His excitement, along with the presence of a Vogue supermodel in the little street, had started to attract attention. Tough when he had to be, Drew nevertheless loved to give people good news. He turned to the first of the curious faces. “Do you live here? Work here? What about you? Is that your shop? It’s all saved, folks. Oak Vale is saved.”
***
We met Jamie Price in the foyer. I’d almost got over my resentment of him for seeing, touching, being loved by Silver, which had made about as much sense as hating him because he and I both liked the same shop. It was just that, in the days after his appointment, he’d looked so damn pleased with himself, so sated and sleek. I remembered that feeling. He’d given his sod of a husband a punch on the snout and left, and that was a good thing. He’d been through more than most.
He didn’t look pleased now. He was white as a sheet, and my first thought was that I’d have to kill the bearer, if London Central had changed their minds and Andrew’s new deal was off. He’d had half the Vale gathered around him by the time we left. Sabrina had been signing autographs, Melchior guarding the pram with a style that suited him a lot better than his efforts to hide behind it. A party had been getting underway.
“No,” Jamie called, running to intercept us, taking an accurate read of Andrew’s face and mine. He stopped short in front of us, evading Drew’s friendly steadying hand. “It isn’t that. I did something stupid, George. I talked to Lenny about Silver. We had a huge fight, but I didn’t win it like I told you. I had to make a run for it and hide.”
Drew and I exchanged a glance. “All right,” he said. “Do you need us to call the police?”
“Maybe, but not for me. I left some of my clothes at the house—I left Silver’s card in my pocket. Lenny just called me. Oh, God, he’s gone off on one. If he finds Silver, he’ll kill him.”
Part Three
The Third Client—Leonard
Chapter Nine
What Silver wanted was a bunker, not a house. Not this house, anyway, with its thin walls, sheets of modern plate glass and surfaces swept bare. He wanted a burrow, a hole.
As usual, his imagination regaled him with all the millions of people across the globe who would kill to have a place like this. A clean water supply, a roof over their heads at all... First World problems, he reminded himself savagely, dumping his bag on the kitchen floor and reaching for the nearest glass. And keep it civil, Silver—don’t drink out of the bottle. Perform your role for the neighbours. He rattled ice into the glass, uncapped a single malt he’d bought with half a thought of trying it on George. He’d entertained all kinds of similar half-thoughts during the long, dull hours of his last assignment. Opening up his life and experiences and letting him in, seeing if he found anything in there he liked. But George, sensibly, had opted for the life he already had.
The silver-fox phone beeped inside its drawer. Silver took it out. A velvety punch of shock went through him, so pleasant in contrast with the frights of his last few days that he pulled a stool from under the table and sat down. He’d scarcely imagined that George would avail himself of the private number he’d scrawled for him on the hotel notepaper, let alone.
..
He tapped the photo of the terraced house so that it filled the whole screen, apart from one line for the accompanying text. This one would do. What the devil was that supposed to mean? For a moment, Silver allowed mad ideas to float into his head along with the smoky fumes from the scotch. Then the far more likely solution occurred: George, still preoccupied with plans for Oak Vale, had taken a picture of one of the more beautiful houses there for his brother or the council, and messaged it to Silver by mistake.
Still, it had been a good moment. Silver pressed his fingers to his lips and stared out of the kitchen window. Mrs Blake, on her third husband and assiduously shtupping the delivery guy as often as she could, glared balefully back at him from her own deluxe glazed box across the drive. A single guy who dressed well and kept irregular hours was an obvious threat in these parts. Silver flashed back to Oak Vale, with its rattle of vibrant, mixed-bag humanity. He almost texted back, that one would do indeed. But that would only perpetuate the error, and George would be upset.
His scotch glass was empty. When had that happened? Silver, who seldom drank enough to dull the edge of reflex, poured himself another. The truth was that George was better off in his own world. A place of relative safety, even if he’d lived through death and divorce there. The truth was that Silver had fucked up. His assignment—his mission, as his handlers in that otherworld still insisted on calling the jobs, as if they were back in the fifties and Ian Fleming writing their script—had turned to ash in his hands. No lives had been lost, but that was no credit to Silver: just timing and dumb luck. When had he lost his nose for rotten intel?
Christ almighty, the agency had texted too. Their message hid behind George’s like a snake behind a sunny garden wall. Sorry, Sil, we haven’t had time to vet this one so don’t take him if you don’t like the sound of the gig. Urgent, though, and says he’s a friend of Drew Fenchurch. We sure are getting a lot of business out of that firm.
