‘I don’t understand you. You have a brain but you waste it. I’ve given you an education. I’ve given you all the tools you need to make something of yourself but you take nothing seriously. You are not a child any more. Is there anything you care about, Jack? Anything you truly want?’
‘A long cool woman in a black dress …’
His father’s nostrils flared.
‘No, sorry. Of course not. World peace. That’s it, world peace.’
A long silence.
‘Well, I’ve had enough.’ His father’s face was set.
Jack looked at him warily. He had heard these words before but this time they sounded different. Something told him he wasn’t going to like what came next.
His father opened the drawer of his desk and removed an envelope.
‘Here. An e-ticket to London. You have a seat booked on the late flight to Heathrow.’
London. Well, that wasn’t so bad. If his father wanted to banish him from home and hearth, he could think of worse places to hang than London. Jack pushed his hand inside the envelope and removed the ticket. Economy class. Still …
‘An English friend of mine has a problem. He thinks you might be able to help. His name is Daniel Barone.’
The name stirred a recollection. In his father’s study at home were dozens of tastefully framed photographs showing his father glad-handing the rich and famous. Pushed into the back row was a picture of three men and two women. They were a striking group: young, beautiful, confident. On the photograph his father still had a shock of black hair and a jaw as planed as Clark Kent’s. Next to him, a handsome man with dark blond hair was looking into the camera with hooded eyes. ‘Barone,’ his mother had told him years ago when he had asked her about the photograph. ‘He was a friend of your father’s when they were both at Oxford. He was a famous scientist. I met him once. Charming man.’
‘And the girls?’
His mother frowned. ‘I don’t know. When your father moved to the States he said he lost touch with all of them except Daniel.’ His mother had frowned again, touching her hand thoughtfully to the glass pane, her fingers hovering over the young faces.
Jack replaced the ticket in the envelope. ‘What kind of problem are we talking about?’
‘Daniel’s ward disappeared.’
Ward. To Jack the word tasted old-fashioned. Like something from Jane Eyre.
‘Surely this is a matter for the police?’
‘You don’t understand. His ward disappeared but she has been found again. But there are … complications.’
‘I don’t see how I can help.’
‘This is not open for discussion, Jack. You will get on the plane tonight and when you arrive at the other side, you will place yourself at Daniel’s complete disposal. If you refuse —or if you make a mess of things over there—I will cut you off. No allowance. No apartment. No trendy little art gallery for your friend, Nicola. No more funding for your mountaineering expeditions or that ridiculous stock car racing. And this time, I mean it. You will come back to New York to nothing. And don’t go crying to your grandmother—I’ve discussed this with her and she finally agrees with me that the time has come for you to get on track.’
Things were looking grim.
‘How long will I have to stay?’
‘You will stay until Daniel no longer has any need of you.’
Leon Simonetti reached for the phone. Jack knew he was being dismissed but for a few moments he simply stared at his parent. People always remarked on the strong resemblance between father and son and he supposed it was true. He had inherited his father’s Roman profile and they had the same colouring: black hair, blue eyes. They shared the same long-limbed build as well, although his father’s body had a softness to it, which his own had yet to acquire. Maybe, thirty years from now, he too would have a fleshy roll around the middle and a crumpled jaw like a Caesar gone to seed. And who knows—maybe he had inherited other traits as well. Perhaps, with the passage of time, he too would become a destroyer of worlds.
His father looked up and lifted his eyebrows—an impatient, ‘is-there-anything-else’ expression on his face. Jack shook his head and stood up from his chair. But as he reached the door, his father spoke again.
‘Life is what you make of it, Jack.’
He turned to look at his father across the wide expanse of the Aubusson rug separating them. Ordinarily, he would have shrugged off these words as just another platitude. But his father’s voice sounded strange: small, cold.
‘The choices you make, determine the life you lead. Remember that.’ Still that small, far-away voice. ‘You live with those choices … and die by them.’
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The Midnight Side Page 25
