‘Glad to hear you’re okay,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’
Her spirits lifted.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t called back after our last conversation.
I just haven’t had a chance, you know? The time difference and all.’
She nodded at the other end of the phone, bracing herself for what he might say.
‘Thanks for saying what you did. It’s about time we talked.’
Suddenly, she didn’t want to know what he had to say. Any sentence that began with ‘thanks’ carried an air of polite professionalism about it, like a rejection letter following a job application. Thanks for your interest in the position, but we won’t be needing you at this time. Or the answer to your party invitation. Thanks, but I am unable to make it. Any sentence that began with ‘thanks’ in response to a question or proposal inevitably led to ‘but’.
‘Look, let’s not talk about that now. I’ve actually got bigger problems I need your help with,’ she said.
There was a creaking noise from his end, as though he’d just stretched out against a wooden chair. ‘Are you sure? I wasn’t avoiding you. I really do want to talk.’
‘No, I don’t have time. Please, can you help me? It’s about business.’
‘Sure.’ His voice became firmer as he settled into safer territory. Business was his thing. Business was something they talked about often. Business was business.
‘Just promise me one thing,’ she said, gathering her courage.
‘Anything,’ he said, and the enthusiasm in his voice made her ache to see his smile.
‘Just forget it’s me talking. Pretend this is a case study or something. Something you need to look at objectively. Hard facts. Solutions. Okay?’
‘Done.’
Leila took a long, steadying breath, reminding herself that now was not the time to be precious about her feelings.
Lucas cleared his throat, prompting her to begin.
She told him her story carefully, honestly, and with supreme control of her emotions, something that an hour earlier she wouldn’t have imagined she’d be capable of. Perhaps it was the way
Lucas allowed her to talk, not interrupting, murmuring at the right moments and encouraging her to go on when she began to waver. She pushed aside the fear that her story would ruin his impression of her and make him think long and hard about what sort of person she was. Then again, it probably didn’t matter anyway.
Finally, she reached the end.
‘What should I do?’ she said, her voice small.
She could hear him tapping a pen on a table top, something he did when thinking, and she realised he must have been taking notes as she’d spoken. She felt warm gratitude for his commitment to her. He wouldn’t blow her off. He might lose respect for her, but he wouldn’t abandon her. She squeezed back tears.
‘Alright,’ he said after a contemplative pause. ‘If I had to summarise your situation, I’d say you had three main issues.’
‘Go on.’
‘First is this Quentin guy,’ he said, his voice grating over his name. Leila felt herself flush and put a cool hand to her neck to ease the heat. ‘Email me everything you know about the guy, his name, if he mentioned where he was from in the US, the name of the company he works for, anything at all. I’m going to see what I can find out at this end.’
‘Okay,’ Leila said, buoyed by the opportunity for direct action and the slim hope that someone else could help her out of the mess. She reached for her laptop while Lucas kept talking.
‘Second, you’ve been fired. I’m sorry to say there’s not a lot you can do about that right now. The best way to fix that situation is for us to track down Quentin and solve the problem for Kate.’
Leila’s heart quickened at the way he’d said us.
‘She might not forgive you or give you your job back, but she might at least let go of her anger. And it will make you feel better and you won’t have this guilt hanging over you for the rest of your life, or a—’ he paused ‘—tainted record, so to speak.’
He was right. Something like this could follow her for the rest of her professional career, like a prison record.
‘And third, you’re stuck inside a house in the middle of riots with a crowd of people who are all barely keeping their issues with each other under control and you have to share a room with Kate, who pretty much hates you right now, and you can’t leave the house because of the mass of looters and crims outside your door.’
‘Pretty much.’ She was impressed with Lucas’s ability to see not only the business problems but the personal ones and take them seriously. No wonder he was so highly paid. He could get to the crux of a situation on all levels.
‘I wish I could come and get you,’ he said.
Leila let the sentence float in the air. If only he would repeat it just so she could hear that concern in his voice again. But he moved on quickly.
‘Tell Kate you’ve got some people working on the problem and you hope to have some answers by the end of the day.’
‘Seriously?’ She couldn’t see how that was possible but she was willing to jump at anything.
‘Then say you don’t want to make matters worse so you’ll be sleeping on the couch to give her some space. And as soon as the coast is clear, book yourself into a hotel and get out of the house. Then look at changing your flight home.’
Leila thought about that long flight home, like a morning walk of shame, but fifty times longer and more humiliating, coupled with the knowledge she’d ruined someone’s life and business.
‘But don’t make any changes to your flight until you hear from me, just in case you need to do some sleuthing in London.’
He said goodbye with energy and enthusiasm and she ended the call almost believing that everything would be okay.
TV news presenter: Now to more news on our city in crisis.
Rioting made the job of emergency services more difficult yesterday, when crowds of weapon-wielding rioters blocked the path of an ambulance taking a man who’d suffered a heart attack to hospital. The man’s wife, Elizabeth Clancy, said the experience was terrifying.
Mrs Clancy: They blocked the road and grabbed the van and rocked it from side to side and banged on the sides. I thought the windows would break and my husband was going to die.
Presenter: Police services later escorted the ambulance to Lambeth Hospital, where Mr Clancy was treated for a mild heart attack. Mr Clancy is visiting here from Australia and earlier in the day had his suitcase stolen by thugs.
Not a good day in London.
John opened his brown eyes and gazed at Elizabeth with a mixture of surprise and familiarity.
‘You’re still here,’ he said.
Elizabeth eased herself up in the chair, her body stiff from the sitting and the lack of sleep.
‘Tell me this, John Douglas Clancy. Why is it that every time I see you of late I end up on the bloody television news?’
He gave a small, sad smile. ‘Just lucky, I guess.’
She took a lungful of air and blew it out with controlled force. Above John’s bed, on the small television hanging from the ceiling, was the footage of her on the news again, her hair in messy wisps and shadows under her eyes, the twenty-four-hour coverage of the riots necessitating story repeats.
She grabbed the remote from the trolley and switched it off. ‘Just once I’d like to end up on the news for something happy, like winning the lottery, dressed in an evening gown with my hair done, not in a negligee or after a sleepless, stressful night in hospital.’
‘You look beautiful to me. Like an angel.’
She shook her head with impatience. ‘Your charm doesn’t work on me anymore.’
His face fell and he levered himself up in bed and adjusted the oxygen tube under his nose.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
‘Actually, I think you need to talk,’ she corrected. ‘Explain yourself. You show up here unannounced, have a heart attack on my bedroom floor, f
orce me to head out into riots, with my unconscious philandering husband in an ambulance, then fill in forms in a hospital as your next of kin. Do you know how awkward that was? I had to check the box that said spouse, wondering what that word meant anymore, and wondering if I would have to make some horrendous legal decision about your life and your future should you not wake up. And then, if you actually died, I would have to go and find her and tell her and your children.’
The monitor beside the bed was making bleeping sounds, presumably signalling an increase in John’s heart rate.
‘Explain yourself,’ she said again. ‘What are you doing here? What do you want from me?’
To his credit, John’s eyes darkened with pain, and she was fairly sure it wasn’t from his heart—at least, not his physical one. He rubbed at his face with the palm of his hand, searching for words.
‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately.
She scoffed.
‘I did love you,’ he said next and, despite herself, she felt her heart pull on the word did.
‘I never meant to fall in love with Eiko.’
Elizabeth stilled. There it was. Her name. Eiko. She was no longer some mythical monstrous other. She was real. She had a name.
Infuriatingly, her eyes filled with tears as she felt a profound sense of loss; random, unwanted sympathy for her husband as he lay in bed in a white gown attached to tubes; and sweeping finality.
It was over.
John hung his head. ‘I was a coward, Liz. I should have told you. I should have ended things with you years ago.’
Just as quickly as the tears had arrived she was overcome with sudden rage.
End it with her? How about ending it with Eiko? How about never starting it with her in the first place? She ground her teeth and narrowed her eyes.
John’s eyebrow flickered as he registered her dangerous look. He spoke quickly. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you want to hear. I’m not lying. I did truly love you.’
‘But?’
‘But I loved her more.’
She felt the blow of his words, but for the first time since that last morning in bed together, she knew for certain she wouldn’t crumble.
‘I’ve contacted a solicitor,’ he said. ‘I’ve set everything in motion. You can have everything in Australia. I don’t want it. I’m moving to Japan to be with Eiko and the boys. I’m so sorry.’
‘No,’ she said, moving closer to him and lowering herself closer to his face, conscious that the ward had gone silent as other patients and visitors stopped conversations in favour of this live melodrama. ‘You don’t get the last word. I do.’ She took a long look into his eyes, forming her final words in her mind.
‘I loved you. I was a good and faithful wife. And I deserved more.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I will go on. I will get my happy-ever-after. I will get my babies. You have nothing to offer me anymore. You are my past. My future is waiting for me here in London.’
She was just about to tell him to sell everything in Australia, that she didn’t want it, but she stopped herself in time. Why shouldn’t she get something out of this? She’d spent more than a decade with this man in another country, and her wages had helped pay the mortgage too. She deserved some sort of compensation, not because she was bitter and wanted to hurt him, simply because it was fair.
Straightening, she adjusted her clothes to make them neat. John fidgeted with the corner of the bed sheet. He looked small and boyish and like a totally different person from the one she remembered. And as she experienced this distancing, like nothing she’d ever felt before, the rage slid away and an unexpected calm descended. She was done.
‘Goodbye,’ she said.
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and nodded. He held out his hand to her and she took it, reluctantly at first, then relaxing into their final embrace. She didn’t hate him. But she didn’t love him anymore either. And she was pretty sure that somewhere in the future she would even forgive him. She could feel him and all their shared memories and experiences moving to a different corner of her heart, one reserved for important and significant people who had shared her life’s journey. And this opened a whole other space for the great love of her life to inhabit.
He smiled at her. There were a million more things to say and yet there was nothing more to say.
It just was.
She took back her hand, knowing it was the last time she would touch him, picked up her bag and left the room.
23
By the second night of lockdown, the violence had migrated to other parts of the country, leaving debris and burning buildings in its wake.
An unknown phone number appeared on Kate’s screen.
‘Have you any news?’ Lady Heavensfield’s clipped English tones asked without preamble; obviously she assumed Kate would know who she was. Kate was about to pretend she didn’t but the seriousness of the situation made her put pettiness aside.
‘No,’ she said from where she stood on the top step of the entrance to the Plimsworths’ house. She’d bravely unlocked the front door and taken a step into the cool and drizzly air, pausing just outside the entranceway. Colourful sweet peas reached up from where they grew in pots and waved at her legs. She didn’t actually plan on going anywhere. The street was deserted, quiet, but there were deep shadows that could be harbouring unseen menaces. It was enough for now just to take back the couple of square feet of space outside the door—a symbolic gesture of freedom.
Lady Heavensfield took in a short, impatient breath. ‘Nor do I.’
‘I could contact my rental agent,’ Kate suggested, kicking herself for not thinking of it sooner. ‘Let me call you back.’
‘Fine. Do that,’ Lady Heavensfield said.
Clive Evans answered his phone on the fifth ring.
‘Where are you?’ Kate said, hearing the sound of bird calls of some sort in the background, though she didn’t recognise them.
‘Oh, it’s my meeting night,’ he said, evasive.
Kate waited, blinked a couple of times, and listened to a raucous clatter of short, barking bird calls.
‘Are you in a jungle?’
‘It’s my ornithological evening,’ he said. ‘It’s our exotic bird gala.’
Now that she listened more closely, she could hear the gentle tinkle of glassware and murmurs of conversation, a spontaneous eruption of gentle laughter and a polite round of applause.
‘Can I help you?’ he prompted.
‘Oh. Yes.’ She tried to pull herself back to the task at hand, but she was absolutely fascinated by the prospect of something going on outside of this house. Anything would be better than the frigid, tedious and depressing mood that pervaded the air at Hemberton Road. ‘So you’re not in London?’
‘No. Cardiff.’
‘Wales?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have exotic birds flown in from around the world?’
A resigned sigh followed. ‘Nooo. We have bird calls on MP3 files and we’re currently competing to identify them and match them with the colour pictures around the room. Once a year all the ornithological societies in the UK come together for a black-tie gala.’ His voice was warmer now, buoyed by passion for his topic. ‘We raise quite a lot of money for conservation research. The theme for this year was “Out of Africa” and we’re studying East African birds.’
There came the sound of short, high-pitched, rapid-fire cheeping, not unlike that of a baby chicken, Kate thought.
‘Madagascar Flufftail!’ Clive shouted suddenly and a cheer broke out, along with some hardy roars of appreciation and good-natured ribbing.
‘That’s the Madagascar Flufftail,’ he repeated to her, his voice brimming with excitement.
‘So I heard.’
He sighed again, a happy winner’s sigh. ‘So, what can I do for you?’
‘Er, you know about the riots, don’t you?’
‘Of course. But there’s nothing I can do about
it so I decided to fulfil my duty as treasurer of our club.’
‘Okay, well, I’m just wondering if you’ve heard anything about our shop—or other shops in our road?’ Her voice pinched thinking about Manu and Randolph. ‘We’ve been locked away for two days now so we really have no idea if our shops have been burned to the ground, or looted, or what.’
‘I’ve heard nothing,’ he said. ‘But no news is good news.’
‘I guess. Not that it probably matters much now anyway,’ she muttered, still coming to terms with Quentin’s betrayal and what that meant for her and Mark. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. I hope you have a wonderful night.’
She called Lady Heavensfield to report she knew nothing at all and they both agreed that, providing the rioting didn’t resurge in their area, it would be in their best interests to go to their shops in the morning to see what, if anything, had happened. Until then, there wasn’t anything more they could do.
Kings Road the next morning was a far cry from its usual genteel self. Metal bins smoked. Glass crunched under Kate’s boots. Shocked faces of those venturing out for the first time, like her, stared around at the scene before them. It had rained overnight and there was a thin, tacky film of mud and ash covering the ground and footpath. A few voyeurs were there too, either actual tourists or hometown tourists, out with their cameras, chattering like excited monkeys.
Kate led the way, flanked by Elizabeth and Victoria, with Margaret and Angus bringing up the rear. Bill had seized the opportunity to get some space from Margaret and Angus, but had hugged Kate tightly before she left and promised to be there if she needed him.
They moved as one unit, mostly silent bar the occasional gasp and tut-tutting as they pointed to bent street signs or the blackened shell of a burnt-out car. Her heart was wedged firmly sideways in her throat.
She’d messaged Mark about Quentin and the money, but he still hadn’t replied.
They were nearly there. The road curved, obscuring The Tea Chest up ahead. They passed Lush, completely untouched, and her hopes soared. But then there was Ye Olde Lolly Shoppe, whose front window gaped open and whose contents spilled onto the footpath as though the shop had been shot and the wound had bled unchecked.
The Tea Chest Page 24
