by Karen Swan
Camera pans to Marina, washed out, sleeping, hospital gown. One white stocking visible. Caesarean?
Camera pans back to baby. Pauses on photograph of Ella on bedside table. ‘Just wait till this little lady wakes up this morning and finds out she became a big sister overnight.’
Camera zooms in, then moves down to Finn. White jersey cap, no hair visible, fleshy cheeks already.
‘My boy.’
Blackness.
04/18/2011
14h27
‘Smile.’ Ted.
Marina, sitting in bed, looks up. Finlay in her arms, breastfeeding. She moves her hand and detaches the baby. Turns him and holds him up to the camera, her hands under his armpits, his body stretched long like a rabbit’s. Finn cries.
‘No, Marina, I didn’t mean—’ Ted.
‘What? Isn’t he beautiful?’ She smiles. Proud. Radiant but pale. Butterfly tube still in her hand.
‘Nothing.’ Ted. Quiet.
Blackness.
04/23/2011
12h31
‘Home sweet home.’ Ted. Walking ahead of Marina – she is stepping out of lift, pushing buggy with car-seat attachment. Bouquet of flowers in the tray.
Glossy wood floor. Metallic walls. Enormous blue heart-shaped helium balloon attached to basket of muffins. ‘A Baby Boy.’ Her eyebrows arch.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Ted says, as she stops to read attached tag.
‘Your parents.’
Walks into sitting room. Multiple vases of long-stemmed white roses on every surface.
‘Everything to do with me.’ Ted.
Marina looks around the room.
Camera moves towards her. Ted appears just in shot as he kisses her cheek. ‘Welcome home, honey.’
‘Ta-da boo!’ Ella springs up from behind coral sofa, holding her pink pig in one hand, a brand-new blue elephant in the other. Hair fair now, in plaits. Wearing red cord smock dress with red-piped white blouse.
She walks towards Marina, holding out the blue toy. Reaches up and places it in the buggy. It covers sleeping Finn’s face.
‘Oh my God!’ Marina cries, grabbing it and throwing it across the room. ‘How could you be so stupid, Ella?’
Blackness.
05/02/2011
11h27
Darkened room. Pale grey silk walls. Pink bed.
Ted asleep, bare-chested, thin sheet covering him, one arm dangling over side of bed. Other arm holding Finn in place on his chest.
Finn sleeping, his cheek against Ted’s chest.
Sound of deep, heavy breathing.
‘My boys.’ Marina. Whispers.
Ro sat slumped in her chair, her chin on her hands, earphones on, her eyes immobile on the screen. She wasn’t sure how much of this she could take.
‘So did not!’
The sudden sound made her start, automatically pressing ‘pause’ and sitting up like a naughty schoolgirl.
Hump and Melodie stopped at the sight of her.
‘Hey!’ Hump grinned from the doorway. ‘And what’s got you looking so guilty?’
‘I do not look guilty,’ she replied indignantly, watching as the two of them walked into the shaded studio. ‘I have nothing to feel guilty about.’
‘No? Then why are all the blinds down? You’re not hiding a guy in here, are you?’ He grinned devilishly.
‘It was too hot in here. And it makes it easier to see the screens.’
‘You missed class again,’ Melodie said pointedly, leaning on the opposite side of Ro’s tall counter as Hump wandered over to his desk and began bashing the keyboard.
‘I know.’ Ro’s shoulders slumped. ‘I’m sorry. Work.’
But that wasn’t strictly true. Things hadn’t quite returned to normal between them since her disastrous attempt to confide her fears about Ted had turned into an attack on Florence instead. And she had stopped looking to meditation as her way to connect with Matt; it was never Matt she found anymore.
‘She’s stalking some poor family,’ Hump offered from behind his screen.
‘Well, I guess too much work is a nice problem to have,’ Melodie said knowingly, watching Ro as though detecting the tiny dip in temperature between them. She was wearing all white today – either in homage to the heat or Ghandi – cropped harem trousers teamed with a draped-neck vest and a diamond anklet.
Ro frowned as she looked across at Hump, something occurring to her. He was wearing jersey track pants cut off below the knee and a white wife-beater vest. ‘Hump, don’t tell me you did yoga too!’
Hump shrugged. ‘Yeah. Why not?’
‘Uh . . . because you said it was for pussy-whipped men who couldn’t throw a ball!’ she laughed, crossing her arms and tipping back in the chair.
‘I knew he’d capitulate,’ Melodie said, standing on one leg effortlessly and relaxing into the tree pose in the way other people dropped into a slouch. ‘He couldn’t bear that I can do more press-ups than him.’
‘Yeah, but on an arm wrestle . . .’ Hump replied, flexing his biceps.
‘Hump, do I look like the kind of woman who arm-wrestles?’
Ro listened to her two friends’ banter, feeling slightly like the dumped friend (even if she was the one ducking out). She had grown in lots of ways since living here – she could now order a flagel without laughing, she thought nothing of pouring almond milk in her tea, and it felt almost normal to wear her swimsuit as underwear, but she still couldn’t move from stranger to bosom buddy in less than twenty stages.
Melodie turned back to Ro, her gaze steady and enquiring, as though trying to draw the truth from Ro without words, and Ro found she couldn’t quite meet her eyes. The intensity of their friendship had passed; Ro had changed. She wasn’t the depressed, slightly lost girl anymore that Melodie had found on the steps that summer morning, and Matt wasn’t the only one struggling to adapt. Ro didn’t need Melodie in the way that she once had, and she was almost beginning to resent Melodie’s assumed authority over her – as though she knew Ro better than Ro knew herself, and always knew best.
‘So what are you up to for the rest of the day?’ Ro asked lightly.
Melodie checked her watch quickly and groaned. ‘I’ve got my hairstylist coming over in an hour. Another night, another dinner.’
Hairstylist? Ro felt a stab of disappointment at the revelation. Crazy hair that came with its own ASBO was her and Melodie’s link; it was what they had bonded over. That Melodie actually had her hair professionally styled seemed like . . . cheating, somehow.
‘How about you?’
‘Nothing so glamorous. Are we doing anything, Hump?’
‘It’s Mighty Meat Feast specials night at Pedro’s Pizzas tonight,’ he said, punching the air with both hands.
‘I guess we’re slobbing out doing that, then,’ Ro sighed happily.
‘I would do anything for a night in like that,’ Melodie replied, making Ro frown – she knew full well that nothing that wasn’t macrobiotic went near Melodie’s mouth.
‘Well, you could if you weren’t so busy being one half of a power couple,’ Hump teased, from across the room. ‘But I guess someone’s got to rule the world.’
Melodie looked unimpressed. ‘My husband’s job doesn’t define me, Hump.’
‘No? You always look pretty happy to be found at every A-list party, chairing every fancy-pants charity—’
‘I hear you’ve got another big night tomorrow night,’ Ro butted in, a sympathetic look on her face as she clocked Melodie’s affronted expression. Sometimes Hump took his teasing just too far. ‘The . . . Artwalk, is it?’
‘Oh yes!’ Melodie replied brightly. ‘Can you make it? I’d love you to be there.’
‘Thanks, I will be. Florence has already invited me.’
‘Oh, that’s such a shame. I thought we could go for dinner after.’
‘Sorry.’ Ro bit her lip. ‘Isn’t Brook going?’
‘Yes, but he gets our driver to actually drive him between the galleries.’ She
rolled her eyes. ‘Missing the point completely. Artwalk, darling?’
‘Oh dear,’ Ro sympathized.
‘Take my advice – never marry an older man,’ Melodie stage-whispered wickedly, before straightening up and tapping the counter with her hand. ‘Right, well, I’d better get going. Zen counts for nothing when your hair won’t behave, am I right?’ She blew a kiss to Ro, pointedly ignoring Hump as she walked across the room and out of the studio.
A moment later, she popped her head back in again. ‘I forgot to ask – how’s Bobbi doing?’
‘Bobbi?’ Ro echoed. ‘She’s good. Getting through it.’
‘Send her my love, OK? Tell her to try to get down for some more classes. I could really help her with her grief, get her to find the light in this time of darkness.’
Ro nodded, not quite sure what to say to that, already quite sure of Bobbi’s retort if she told her to ‘find the light’. She listened to the sound of Melodie’s bare feet padding back to the studio next door.
‘You should apologize to her, Hump. She gets really sensitive about that stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘She hates being seen as just some socialite.’
‘But she is! Every time I open Dan’s Papers, there she is, arm in arm with Brook and some benefactor billionaire.’
‘Just because she’s rich doesn’t mean that’s all there is to her. She takes her spiritual life very seriously.’
‘Yeah, don’t I know it,’ Hump grumbled.
Ro frowned. ‘You’re down in the dumps all of a sudden.’
Hump tutted but didn’t say anything more.
‘Well . . . I can’t believe you did yoga,’ Ro muttered after a few minutes’ silence.
‘I thought it wouldn’t hurt to work on the mind as well as the body for a bit,’ he mumbled. ‘Just while all this crazy shit’s going on.’
Ro looked up at him from her stool, but he was engrossed in reading an invoice on his desk. It was easy to forget that he bruised too. He seemed so indestructible with his puppyish grin and loping run, his boundless energy and good humour. But events had taken a toll on him too, and he was still playing doctor, putting one after another of his housemates back together again. Ro realized she hadn’t seen a single woman emerging from his room for weeks now.
‘Well, I wish you’d told me, that’s all. I’d have loved to see you doing the monkey pose,’ she drawled, trying to make him smile at least. ‘I’d have paid good money for that.’
‘Is that the one with the splits?’
‘With your arms overhead, yeah.’ She chuckled at the thought. Flexible he wasn’t.
‘Well, you can, next time you go along,’ he shrugged, unusually flat.
‘You mean you’re going to go again?’ Her eyes popped wide with surprise.
‘Maybe,’ he said after a moment. ‘It was fun.’
‘Fun,’ Ro repeated, frowning and wondering whether he’d caught too much sun driving the Humper today.
‘So how is Bobbi getting on really? You heard from her today?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘No, not yet. I called on her mobile, but it went to voicemail. She said yesterday she had a stack of meetings to get through. I’m worried about her, Hump. I think she’s doing too much, trying to prove a point. Now it’s all out in the open about her and Kevin, I think she thinks her position is precarious.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s face it, it doesn’t look good for the firm to have an associate who was having an affair with a murdered client.’
‘Right.’ Hump shook his head in silent dismay. He looked about twelve.
‘How about Greg? How’s he doing?’ she asked.
‘Same.’ He pulled a face. ‘Working harder than ever too – who knew it was even possible, right? Says he probably won’t get down this weekend.’ He tutted. ‘Honestly, him and Erin, Bobbi and Kevin – life just got tangled in such a twisted mess that weekend. I don’t think Greg wants it in his face.’
‘You can understand that,’ Ro said sadly, wondering if she actually would ever see Greg again. She wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed in the city for the rest of the summer now. He’d only ever come out to see Erin anyway. ‘It’s such a shame. He looked so happy that night – you know, before.’
‘Yeah . . .’ Hump kicked back in his chair, newly focused, his eyes falling to the screen behind her. ‘It was a night full of surprises, that was for sure.’
Ro looked across at him. Something in his tone . . . ‘What?’
‘Well, when I came back to get you at the Southampton fundraiser, I was sure I’d walked in on something between you and Long Story too. The two of you looked guilty as hell.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Ro said quickly. ‘And for the last time, stop calling him that.’
‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you when we were standing on the lawn. I thought I was going to have to challenge him to a duel or something, to uphold your honour.’
Ro swallowed back the words. If only he knew what was really going on, the thoughts that were really going round in her head about him. ‘He’s a client, Hump. A married/divorced/whatever father-of-two with a girlfriend. Hardly my type! And you know I’d never cheat on Matt.’
‘I know you wouldn’t.’
There was a silence.
‘But?’ she demanded. ‘There’s definitely a “but” coming.’ Her cheeks were flaming, indignation building up inside her because anything he said after the ‘but’ was going to undermine her and Matt. She already knew that. That was what ‘buts’ did.
He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Look, Big Foot, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. You know you love Matt. I know you love Matt. Bobbi does not know you love Matt, but she wouldn’t know love if it punched her in the face, so . . .’ He made a dismissive gesture with his hands. ‘But you’ve lived with me long enough now to know I’m the freaking king of seduction. I know chemistry when I see it and there’s something between you two.’
‘Yes, and it’s called suspicion!’ she blurted out, unable to keep the words down any longer. She couldn’t let him say those things. ‘I’m not attracted to him, Hump. I’m almost frightened of him!’ She was nearly shouting, her breath coming in shallow sips as the words tumbled out of her – all the fears and misapprehensions that she’d kept to herself finally breaking free.
‘Frightened of him?’ Hump echoed.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re frightened of him?’ His eyes moved pointedly to the frozen image on her computer screen of Ted sleeping with his baby son on his chest.
Her mouth dropped open. Admittedly, Ted Connor did not look remotely worrisome at that moment in time.
The phone rang on his desk and he shook his head, a small smile on his lips. ‘Nuh, you’re not frightened of him.’ He picked up the phone, cupping his hand over the receiver. ‘You’re frightened of how he makes you feel.’
He winked, swivelling away from her in his chair as he began talking with his newest advertiser.
Ro glared at his back from across the room, mute with rage. Scared of an attraction? To Ted Connor?
She’d never heard of anything so bloody stupid.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Knock, knock.’ Ro poked her head round the door to find Bobbi sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. ‘Hey.’
Bobbi turned at the sound, but her eyes were vacant.
Ro sat down softly on the bed beside her, squeezing her shoulder lightly. She was wearing a black suit that three weeks earlier had been vixen-tight on her, but now hung loosely on her hips, a string of pearls round her neck, flat shoes instead of her signature heels. Ro guessed she was going to find putting one foot in front of the other a struggle today.
A tiny, white scale model of the ‘stepped’ house she had designed for Kevin – the job on which they’d met – was on the dormer’s deep windowsill. Ro studied it from the bed. Now that the plot was laid out for Ro to see, she realized how co
mpromised it was and how ingenious Bobbi’s solution had been. The house complied with regulations, looked beautiful and accommodated everything Kevin had wanted. The girl had talent. But had her ambition meant she’d overreached this time? In trying to secure the deal, she’d crossed lines she had no business dancing near. She’d gambled and lost, and everything she cared about was on the line.
‘The car’s here. Are you ready?’ Hump had ordered a black Chrysler to take them to the church. Turning up to a funeral in a bright yellow Defender didn’t seem appropriate, even to a maverick like him.
‘I just keep trying to figure out why,’ Bobbi murmured, as though she hadn’t heard Ro.
‘Bobbi, that’s something for the police to discover. You need to focus on looking after you.’
‘But maybe he said something . . . maybe he tried to warn me. Do you think he might have? I could have missed it.’
Ro paused, knowing better than try to get Bobbi to do something she didn’t want to do. And right now, she wanted to talk. ‘Well, did you ever get the impression he was frightened or being threatened? Maybe he was nervous or agitated? Couldn’t sleep, eat?’
Bobbi shook her head.
‘There you go, then. And even if he had known he was in trouble, he probably went out of his way to act normal around you. He wouldn’t have wanted you to worry, or to have become involved.’
‘Unless he didn’t know he was in trouble.’
‘In which case, that would have been a blessing,’ Ro murmured.
‘He was just so . . . so relaxed that night. I’ve been over it, like, a million times in my head, wondering whether I forgot to tell the police one thing, one detail that might make all the difference.’
‘They’re trained in interview techniques, Bobbi. They know how to get all the information they possibly can out of people. Whatever you know, they now know.’
Bobbi dropped her head in her hands. ‘I shouldn’t have let him go that morning. I’d tried talking him out of it the night before. I wanted us to have a whole weekend together, but I was so sleepy when he got up. I hadn’t slept well and . . . well, he said he’d come back. He wanted to meet you all.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t even open my eyes when he kissed me goodbye.’ Her voice – her strong, bossy, don’t-mess Manhattan voice – was thin and reedy, climbing higher.
