Todd’s mean, wide-set eyes glared at him from behind thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses. He reminded Danny a bit of Himmler, although he definitely had no balls at all, so perhaps Goebbels was a better analogy.
“Daniel!”
“It’s Danny,” said Danny, sighing heavily, “and quite frankly, Todd, yes, you are boring me. So I suggest you stick your stinking job where the monkey stuck his nuts, and we’ll call it quits, shall we? I can see myself out.”
Strolling through the leafy streets of the West Village half an hour later, he already felt lighter, as if someone had unstrapped a backpack full of rocks and lifted it gently from his shoulders. He knew he was being irresponsible. It had taken him forever to land that job, and he still had a stack of bills to pay higher than the Eiffel Tower. This was no time to be skipping about feeling pleased with himself. And yet it was impossible not to savor the taste of freedom just a little bit. He’d felt like a rat in a cage almost since the day Diana had moved in with him, knowing that Brogan would coil himself around their lives like a cobra and not let go until he got her back. Then came the pregnancy, another closing door. Then the breakup, Diana going back to Brogan, the collapse of his business. One by one he’d watched the separate pillars of his life being flicked out from under him like matchsticks.
But today, as of right now, there was nothing left to fall. He had nothing, not one thing left for O’Donnell or anyone else to take. He could pick up and move to Malawi if he felt like it. Not a single tie bound him to anything, a thought that ought to have been depressing, but for some reason felt gloriously liberating instead.
“Hey, man. Your usual?”
Turning on a whim into Agostino’s, his favorite local coffee shop and usual Sunday-morning hangout, he returned the smile of Permanently Cheerful Toni, the world’s most upbeat barista, and ordered a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and sprinkles. Simple childhood pleasures were the only ones he could readily afford these days. Sinking down into one of the capacious leather sofas, he took a long, luxuriant sip and wondered idly what his twin brother was up to right now.
Two and a half thousand miles away, Jake turned out to be in a considerably less Zen-like frame of mind than Danny.
“No, don’t, don’t buy it. Not until you’ve seen the ring I’ve got you, Lexi.” Pacing the shop floor at Flawless, phone in hand, the volume of his voice was rising in direct proportion to his stress levels. “Please tell me you haven’t already done the deal? Alexis!” he shook his head in frustration. “Why?”
Alarmed by the shouting, a customer who’d been browsing idly through the higher-end necklace display case decided to try her luck elsewhere, scurrying out of the store with a silent wave at Perry.
“Jake!” Perry hissed crossly once she’d gone. “Do you have to do that here? You’re scaring away business.”
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK,” said Jake, hanging up and banging his fist down on the counter so hard that the credit card machine jumped. “Why are rich women so unutterably stupid?”
Perry rolled his eyes. He still adored Jake, but in the two weeks since Scarlett had been gone, he was starting to see what it was she’d found so impossible to live with. Everything had to revolve around him.
“What’s happened now?”
“Lexi Bennett, one of my so-called loyal clients, has gone and paid cash, cash, for an eternity ring from Tyler fucking Brett. I swear to God, that man must have clones. He’s everywhere.”
“All the more reason not to frighten away customers from here,” said Perry sanctimoniously. “There’s no point you being here, standing in for Scarlett, if you’re going to spend every waking moment working on Solomon Stones.”
It was fair criticism, and Jake knew it, but apparently his temper didn’t.
“And what exactly do you suggest, Liberace?” he snapped, casting a disdainful look at Perry’s appliquéd sequin jacket. “I’ve got Scarlett on my case day and night, begging me to be here. Although what the fuck it is she expects me to do, I’ve no idea.”
Run the business, maybe? thought Perry, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He’d only just been given a whopping pay rise and didn’t want to rock the boat too much.
“Meanwhile, that cunt Brett is waltzing off with what’s left of my clients,” fumed Jake, “and I’ve got you giving me a flea in my ear because you can’t keep customers in the bloody store for five minutes at a stretch. I mean, you’re the fucking manager, Perry. And Scarlett’s the designer. As you rightly say, I shouldn’t even fucking be here.”
Perry waited a few moments for the self-righteousness storm to pass before speaking again.
“Would you like me to answer the question now?” he said archly, pretending to polish the walnut countertop with a little felt cloth.
“What question?” said Jake.
“The ‘what exactly do I suggest’ question,” said Perry. “Because as it happens, I do have one or two ideas.”
“Be my guest,” said Jake, throwing himself grumpily down into one of the customer armchairs with all the surly gracelessness of a spoiled sixteen-year-old. “God knows I’m fresh out of ideas myself. Unless you were thinking of flying to Scotland, kidnapping Scarlett, and getting her bony ass back here pronto.”
Perry smiled. He missed Scarlett, perhaps not as much as Jake, but acutely nonetheless, from both a business and a personal perspective. If he could have beamed her back to LA, he certainly would have, but as it looked like she’d be stranded in Blighty for the foreseeable future, his mind was turning to more practical solutions.
“If your friend Mr. Brett has clones chatting up your clients,” he said, “perhaps it’s time you called on your own clone for assistance.”
“English please,” muttered Jake. “What are you on about?”
“Your brother?” said Perry slowly. Honestly. Getting through to Jake in one of his moods was like trying to teach calculus to a chimpanzee: slow going. “Super-twin? The one you always used to say could sell ice to Eskimos. Didn’t you tell me he was between jobs at the moment, and miserable as sin in New York?”
“He’s got a job,” said Jake. “But he is miserable.”
Ridiculous. Why hadn’t he thought of this? It was so obvious. Danny should move out to LA and take on Tyler Brett while he stepped into the breach at Flawless.
“So call him,” said Perry. “By the sounds of it he hasn’t got much to lose. Nor will you soon, if you keep on screaming at customers the way you are right now.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” grumbled Jake, but he was grumpy only because he knew Perry was right. All he’d been thinking about was Scarlett and how much he wished she were back. But the truth was she wasn’t coming back, at least not anytime soon, and in the way that he wanted, probably not ever. In the meantime, having Danny here could make all the difference, emotionally as well as professionally. They’d be a team again, just the two of them. The Meyer boys, back in action. Why the hell not?
Perry had returned to his pretend polishing and had the good sense not even to look up, never mind smile triumphantly, when he heard Jake punch out the numbers of his next call.
“Dan? Yeah, hi, mate, it’s me. Listen. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
It might have pleased Jake to know that, while he was reaching out for brotherly support, desperate for Scarlett’s return, she was equally desperate to reclaim her life in Los Angeles.
Sitting in Hugo’s office in Drumfernly, surrounded by mounds upon mounds of unfiled estate paperwork, she barely glanced at the dramatic, bloodred sun oozing out the last of its light over the pine forest outside her window. Now that spring was finally here, and the days had at last begun to lengthen, there was enough beauty in this part of Scotland to sustain even the most depressed of souls. But Scarlett, for once, was oblivious. All she could see was the Herculean task ahead of her—the task of securing the estate’s future. Everything else, not least her own hopes and dreams, had slipped from her grasp like so many grains of sand.<
br />
It had only been two weeks since she’d landed in London, but already it felt like years. Flawless, Jake, and her American life had started to take on an almost dreamlike quality, utterly divorced from the reality she now found herself living, cooped up in Drumfernly with no reprieve, no escape, no parole in sight.
So much had happened since those first, awful days at The Mitre. On the face of it, much of the news had been good. The News of the World, to everyone’s relief and astonishment, seemed to have decided not to run the story after all. This was particularly bizarre, given Scarlett’s deeply unproductive conversation with the deputy editor two Thursdays ago, when he’d basically confirmed to her that, yes, they were going to press, yes, they had pictures, and, no, nothing she could do or say would change those two facts, although she was welcome to make a quote on behalf of the family. At which point Scarlett had given him a quote that no family newspaper would be able to print without exceeding the legal limit for asterisks, and the phone call had screeched to an abrupt, terminal halt.
Sunday morning had found the entire Drummond Murray family rushing to the newsstand at the crack of dawn, poised for the worst and fully expecting to be locked in a crisis meeting with Hugo’s lawyer at ten a.m., only to discover that the dreaded exposé never appeared. Another week passed, another Sunday, and still nothing. No one from the news desk would talk to Scarlett, and a phone call from the lawyer had failed to shed any further light on the reasons behind this editorial about-face.
But there it was. No story.
Unfortunately, not even this great good fortune meant an end to the family’s problems. Despite his early flashes of lucidity, Cameron remained seriously unwell. Taking Dr. Garfi’s advice, Scarlett and her parents had flown back home to Scotland and were not scheduled back in London for more visits until next month at the earliest.
“I think it’s harder for him to work through these identity problems in front of those people closest to him,” the doctor had informed them tactfully; a statement Scarlett interpreted correctly to mean that their mother’s visible disappointment was an added pressure that Cameron’s fragile psyche couldn’t bear. Caroline had swung from total denial to a gushing “acceptance” of her son’s sexuality that was equally cloying.
“It doesn’t surprise me in the least,” she insisted, repudiating her earlier attitude in an about-face so shameless it would have made Bill Clinton blush. “So many truly brilliant men are, you know. Think of Oscar Wilde.”
Scarlett tried to think of any human being on earth who had less in common with Oscar Wilde than Cameron, without question the dullest, least witty conversationalist in the whole of Banffshire (a county that sported numerous, Olympic-level bores), but failed utterly. Not that she was about to point this out to her mother. Like her father, she hoped Caroline’s fag-hag phase would eventually mellow, once she’d gotten over the initial shock, and she could focus like the rest of them on the real issue, which wasn’t Cameron’s sexuality but his mental instability.
He would never go back to banking. That much was certain. At this point it was questionable whether, and at what point, he’d be well enough to live independently again at all. All of which left Drumfernly’s future hanging in the balance and Scarlett’s own life plunged into a permanent state of hold.
“Poppet, good gracious, are you still in here?” Hugo, back from another day’s salmon fishing (the important things in life must go on, after all), wandered into the study to find her slumped, Bob Cratchit–like, over one of last year’s ledgers. “Come and have a G and T.”
“I can’t, Daddy.” She sighed heavily. Accounts had never been her strong suit, but even she could see that Drumfernly had been allowed to slip into an appalling degree of debt. Whatever skill Cameron had as a banker, he clearly hadn’t been applying it to his inheritance. As for the so-called estate manager, the man deserved to be shot, or at the very least fired. “It’s all such a mess.”
“I daresay it is, darling,” said Hugo, blithely unconcerned. “But it’s been a mess for long enough now that your burning the midnight oil is unlikely to sort it out. Not in your first week on the job, anyway.”
“All right,” said Scarlett, stretching as she got to her feet and thinking fondly that Hugo would have made a marvelous captain of the Titanic, passing out the gin and tonics while his passengers sank into an icy grave. “I could use a drink. But I need to get back to it after supper, for an hour or so at least.”
She was still clinging to the hope that, if she worked hard and efficiently, she might be able to sort things out enough to leave the rest to a new estate manager and get back to California by midsummer. So far she’d done nothing to look into Andy’s death, a thought that shamed her deeply. Nor had she followed up on the momentum they’d gained from the radio program and pursued next steps for the Yakutian miners that Andy had given his life for. As for her own professional obligations, she still hadn’t finished the designs Jake needed for Flawless or responded to about a thousand unread e-mails from Perry. Even Nancy’s calls had gone unreturned. Poor Boxford had probably forgotten who she was by now. Sometimes she felt she was in danger of forgetting who she was herself.
Following Hugo into the Great Hall, where Mrs. Cullen had laid out the usual silver salver of predinner drinks, Scarlett warmed her bottom in front of the roaring log fire while her father fixed their drinks.
“Hugo. There you are.” Caroline, gliding into the room in a tight tweed pencil skirt and tan cashmere sweater—how Scarlett longed for half her mother’s elegance—looked happier than she had in weeks. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. Marvelous news.”
“Really? What’s that, my love?” said Hugo, absentmindedly handing the gin and tonic he’d made for Scarlett to his wife.
“They’ve lifted Cameron’s compulsory detainment order.”
“His what-do-you-call-it-now?” said Hugo.
“It means he’s no longer committed under the Mental Health Act. He’s free to leave the Maudsley if he wants to and come home.” Caroline beamed. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Scarlett shot her father a worried glance. If Cam had improved enough not to be held against his will, that was obviously good news. But bringing him back to Drumfernly surely had disaster written all over it. Caroline was convinced she could “cure” him with homemade rice pudding and lots of bracing country walks. She didn’t want to admit how deep his problems ran.
“It is wonderful,” said Hugo cautiously. “We mustn’t rush things though, darling. Let’s talk to Dr. Garfi in the morning and see what he advises.”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed.
“Dr. Garfi?” She made it sound as though the very idea of asking Cameron’s psychiatrist was ludicrous, as if Hugo had suggested they consult with Dr. Pepper.
“He is Cam’s doctor,” said Scarlett gently.
“And I’m his mother,” snapped Caroline. “I think my thirty-two years of experience trump your little Persian friend’s thirty-four minutes, don’t you?”
“It’s not a competition, Mummy,” said Scarlett. “We have to think of what’s best for Cameron.”
“I am thinking of what’s best for Cameron,” retorted Caroline crossly. “I always have. And don’t think I can’t see what you’re up to, young lady. You might be able to pull the wool over your father’s eyes, but you don’t fool me. Not for a second.”
“What are you talking about?” Scarlett frowned. She tried to make allowances for her mother’s mood swings. She was, after all, grieving for the healthy, high-flying, straight son she’d “lost,” and she was still angry at Scarlett for, as she saw it, unleashing the hounds of hell upon all of them with her ill-considered Trade Fair campaign. But it was hard to keep her temper sometimes, when she’d left so much behind to come and sort out Cameron’s mess. Did her mother think she wanted to be here?
“You’re after your brother’s inheritance,” said Caroline bluntly.
“What?” said Scarlett.
Choking
on his gin, Hugo tried to defend her from such a wild accusation, but his words dissolved into a violent coughing fit.
“As soon as you heard he was ill, you swooped in like a vulture. Do you think I don’t have eyes, Scarlett? Do you think I don’t see you huddled away with Daddy and the lawyers day and night?”
Dumbstruck with indignation, Scarlett could do nothing but shake her head.
“Well, now he’s better, and surprise, surprise, you want to stop him coming home, stop him muscling in on your little scheme before it all comes to fruition.” The vitriol in her mother’s voice was quite astonishing. As though all the years of pent-up envy and disappointment, all the strains in their relationship had been waiting for this moment to be unleashed.
“He is not ‘better,’” said Scarlett, with a calmness she was far from feeling. “Nor will screaming at me, or Daddy, or Dr. Garfi make him better.”
Caroline opened her mouth to answer back, but Scarlett was too quick for her.
“I came back to England because you and Daddy begged me to,” she said. “For the record, the last thing on God’s earth I want is to inherit Drumfernly.”
“Ha!” Caroline snorted.
“The reason I’m cooped up with the lawyers all day,” said Scarlett, ignoring her, “is that I’m trying to save at least part of this place from going under. If someone doesn’t turn the estate around, and quickly, there won’t be any inheritance. Not for Cameron, not for anybody.”
Hugo, having at last got his breath back, moved himself physically between the two women.
“Now, come on,” he pleaded. “We’re all under a lot of strain, but there’s no need for all this. The one thing Cameron doesn’t need is for the rest of us to fall apart. Hmm?”
Caroline and Scarlett glared at one another, but neither of them said a word. In the end, it was Scarlett who broke the impasse.
“I’m going to go for a run,” she said, addressing herself exclusively to her father. “I need a bit of fresh air, to clear my head. And you and Mummy should talk.”
Flawless Page 42
