by Joanna Rees
Emma stood in Wrentham Hall, her suitcases and large bags by her feet. She stared through the empty ballroom. Dust motes swirled in the shafts of bright sunlight coming through the dome. Emma stared down at the spot where Natalya Khordinsky had died, seeing only the black and white tiles. No trace of blood. No ghosts.
She’d pictured this moment so many times in her mind and now she closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of the dust. Her dust. Her history.
She smiled. At last, she was home.
Despite Wrentham being one of Khordinsky’s seized assets, her team of lawyers had managed to negotiate with the Russian authorities and enabled her to get it back.
Now that the workmen had nearly cleared away all traces of the Khordinskys, she could finally move back in and begin the task of reacquainting herself with her possessions and making it a home once more.
But she knew that even if she could put back every picture in its original position, it would never be the same.
Emma was glad all the press attention had died down. Khordinsky’s arrest at Wrentham Hall had made headlines all over the world. And there’d been another flurry of interest after Khordinsky had been found dead in prison: assassinated in the showers by a fellow inmate, who’d already been serving a life sentence. Khordinsky had been stabbed so fast and hard, he’d bled to death before the prison guards had even had time to react to his screams.
The papers could only speculate on who’d ordered the hit from the outside. It could have been any one of a number of Khordinsky’s powerful former business associates. Or another crime lord asserting his dominance. Or simply the Bratva protecting their own interests, just in case Khordinsky made a deal.
Emma didn’t care. After what he’d done to Julian, he didn’t deserve any kind of justice. And his death had saved everyone the trauma of an expensive and lengthy trial. All that mattered was that he was now gone. Nothing but dust himself.
‘Hey, Mum, we’ve got our first piece of mail,’ Cosmo said, coming up behind her. ‘Look, a postcard. There’s no writing on it. Just our address. It must be a mistake.’
Emma took the postcard from him and turned it over and looked at the picture of the beautiful lake in Argentina.
‘It’s not a mistake,’ she said, feeling tears well up in her eyes. She smiled and held the card close to her chest. Emma had made Frankie promise that if she was happy she’d send just one postcard to let Emma know she was OK.
‘Oh, and Uncle Pim left this for us,’ Cosmo said, holding up a bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes. ‘Shall we?’ he asked with a grin.
Emma couldn’t wait to see Pim. He was a changed man now that he’d recouped his investment. Thanks to Cosmo’s tenacity, the true extent of the reserves of palladium in the Norilsk mine had been revealed. They were immense, enough for everyone to more than double their original investment, apart from Sergeyokov, of course, who’d sold all his shares. But Emma didn’t care about the money, only that Pim hadn’t lost Lechley Hall and he’d now be able to restore it properly.
After she’d toasted Wrentham in the ballroom with Cosmo, she took her champagne glass into the study and set up her laptop.
Whilst it was booting up, she took a picture from her case and hung it on a vacant hook on the wall. Raising a glass to the picture of Julian, she said, ‘Welcome home, my darling.’
She’d had the canvas made from a photograph she’d taken of him when they’d been skiing. Now she stood back to look at him. The tears she’d been expecting didn’t fall. The acute pain she’d felt for so long had given way to something else: a dull ache. Of loss? Of longing? Of regret? She wondered which it was.
Yes, she missed him. She missed him all the time. But so much had happened since he’d gone that she felt the time when he’d been here was consigned to the distant past. Locked inside a time vault to which she no longer knew if she had the key.
Her poor Julian. What had gone through his mind the second Khordinsky had pushed him out of the window in that grim Siberian hotel? It was a question she thought of often. She somehow suspected that his last thought would have been of her and Cosmo. Of how their future might become as grim as his own.
She desperately hoped he hadn’t died feeling that he’d let them down, because he hadn’t. He’d been deceived. And now that she’d punished the deceiver, their future hadn’t turned out to be grim at all.
Apart from the one terrible fact that Julian was no longer here to share it with them.
Emma sighed. She’d hoped that it would have been easier knowing that Julian was killed deliberately rather than trying to live with his suicide, but the truth was that neither one was better. There would always be an empty space where he should have been.
She hoped too that she’d be able to move on. In time. She’d try. She knew it’s what he would have wanted. But in the meantime, she was determined to keep herself busy and useful. And what better way to start, she thought, than by setting out to make the world a better place.
Emma had visited Norilsk six months ago and witnessed the devastation the mining industry had wreaked across the region. On her return she’d sold her Platinum Holdings shares. She’d be more careful about where she invested her money in the future. Her first step towards independence from Julian’s memory was that the business decisions she took from now on would be based on her own set of rules. And absolutely within the letter of the law.
She was using all the money she’d made from the mine to set up an environmental charity. Her first project was going to be in Russia. She was going to plant trees – a whole forest of them – around the mine itself in Norilsk.
And she and Cosmo were going to run the eco-community he’d planned, but here at Wrentham instead of up in Scotland.
Emma propped Frankie’s card up on her desk and smiled. Then she opened her emails. There was one from David, a reply to her invitation, saying that he’d be delighted to meet her and Cosmo in a few weeks’ time in Switzerland to ski.
Then she opened the Write Message icon. There was only one person she really needed to tell that she was home.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in her beach house, Peaches heard the bleep of an incoming message. The curtains billowed in on the morning breeze, rising up above the packing boxes as she edged around the piled-up furniture to reach her laptop on the table.
Peaches smiled as she read and reread Emma’s email. She could tell how happy Emma was. She quickly replied, telling her that she’d be there for the skiing holiday too. Then she looked around her and put her hands on her hips.
Everything was going into storage whilst she went on a long vacation – or a well-earned sabbatical, as Tommy Liebermann had put it – and decided what she was going to do next. But suddenly, the next few months seemed huge and daunting.
Even though her deal with Harry Rezler had meant that the details of the Depravity Night party had stayed private, Peaches had received no thanks from the guests whose asses she’d saved along with her own. All those initially arrested alongside her had been quietly released, much – Peaches had been delighted to discover – to the fury of Detective Pounder.
But Peaches had paid the price too. It seemed that even a brief brush with the law had been way too much for the majority of her former clientele to handle. She’d been stonewalled, blacklisted from everywhere. She couldn’t even get a table in Larry’s any more. It was as if she’d been completely shut out from the industry she’d helped create.
Everything the British social élite had done to Emma after Julian’s death, Hollywood’s own aristocracy had now done to Peaches. And while there was no denying that the rejection sucked on a personal level, on a deeper level it had taught her how tenuous and ultimately temporary her position as pleasure-provider to the rich and famous had always been.
She might have been Queen Bee for a while, but LA was a ravenous beast with an insatiable appetite. It didn’t do sentiment, and had rampaged on without her in the blink of an eye.
It was
kind of funny in one way at least, she supposed. She’d struggled to make Harry Rezler believe she’d give up the game as part of her deal. Well, in actual fact, the game had already given her up and revoked her right to play.
Only Murray Seagram-Cohen had remembered Peaches. She’d been touched to learn he‘d left her his signet ring in his will. The clunky gold ring was useless to her, but at least his arrogant family were upset about it. And Peaches had a soft spot for Murray. Always would.
No, she’d done with this town now, which was why she was leaving. She’d already sold Delancy Heights, the condo in Mexico and her controlling interest in the lingerie business to Tommy Liebermann. And if Peaches ever felt a pang of longing for the cut and thrust of her old life, she consoled herself with the thought of how lucky she was. She was free, wearing a silk dressing gown and cashmere-lined slippers looking at the Californian beach, when she could be wearing Day-Glo dungarees in a penitentiary exercise yard.
Yet now, as she walked out on to the porch with her cup of coffee and looked at the fresh day and the clean, wave-washed beach, she sighed. She wondered, as she often did, whether she’d miss this place. Having given up her old life, she couldn’t help comparing herself to a reformed junkie. Sure, she didn’t want to go back to the errors of her old ways, but she had yet to find the new life that would replace it, which was why she so desperately needed a change of scene. Without one, she’d never shake the feeling that there must be some kind of reward waiting out there for her for being this good.
She’d feel better when she was on the aeroplane tonight, she told herself. A new place would be sure to cheer her up.
Just then, something caught her eye. She shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun. A man was walking along the beach towards her, his shadow stretched out before him on the sand, as if he was reaching out to touch her.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. It couldn’t be . . .
But it was. Harry Rezler was walking up to her house.
She hadn’t seen him for months, not since she’d left England. But she’d thought about him plenty. Too much. Always wondering whether she should get in touch and thank him: for cutting her a deal; for getting Emma back her house; for enabling Frankie and Alex to disappear. And for helping them all to bring Khordinsky down.
But she’d always stopped herself. She hadn’t been able to forget his face, and the way he’d treated her with professional courtesy, even after Khordinsky’s arrest, when she’d found herself hankering for something more.
Had he still been angry with her? she’d wondered. For who she’d turned out to be? Or because he’d known it would be him who’d take the rap for allowing Peaches to confront Khordinsky, as a result of which Natalya Khordinsky and Alex had been shot? Peaches had never got the chance to ask. Harry had already left when she’d gone to say goodbye. The British had been in charge. It was they who’d debriefed her before finally letting her go.
Then back in the States, it had been colleagues of Harry’s who’d taken over. She hadn’t seen nor heard from Harry again.
But now, here he was, walking back into her life.
He stopped at the bottom of the wooden steps leading down from her porch to the beach. He didn’t smile. Didn’t speak. Gave no clue as to why he was here.
‘Hey,’ he said, as if he was just passing by and this was something he did every day.
She’d thought about him so often, but now that he was standing here, she had no idea what else to say to him. She tried to read him, but she couldn’t see his eyes through the lenses of his shades.
There was a moment of silence as he continued to stare. She knew that she should take control of the situation: make chit-chat, invite him in for a coffee, behave normally, but Peaches wasn’t sure what normal was any more. Only that he was here and he shouldn’t be. And she wanted to know why.
Was there some part of the investigation that he still had to cover? Surely there couldn’t be more questions? Peaches had had enough of answering questions. She needed to move on. She had moved on.
But Harry didn’t look like he was here in a work capacity. He was wearing jeans and a loose blue shirt. His arms were tanned and he looked five years younger than when she’d last seen him. Now he took off his sunglasses and his eyes were soft.
‘You’re here,’ she said, immediately regretting saying something so obvious.
Harry Rezler shrugged. ‘I was in the neighbourhood. I thought I’d stop by.’
She stared at him, wondering whether this was as big a lie as it sounded. A part of her hoped it wasn’t, that this really was a social call, that he was here because . . . because he just wanted to know she was OK. But at the same time she knew it was wishful thinking. He couldn’t have made the trip all the way from Washington just for pleasure. There had to be more to it than that.
‘So . . . you heard about Khordinsky?’ he asked.
Peaches nodded, deflated. So he was here on business. He wanted to talk about Khordinsky. How silly of her to think that he might be here for another reason. Any other reason. Khordinsky was all they had in common.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said.
Peaches raised her eyebrow. ‘He had it coming. Why should I care?’
Harry Rezler sighed heavily. He put his foot on the bottom step. ‘I read all the background files, Peaches. About Gorsky . . . Irena . . . Rockbine too. Why didn’t you tell me all of that stuff in the first place?’
Peaches felt herself blush. Then stiffen. Why had he checked up on her? Why did it matter to him? ‘I didn’t need your pity. I was handling it myself. I survived, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah. You sure did.’
His eyes stayed connected with hers and she suddenly felt confused. A jittery nervous feeling started in her stomach.
She was just work to Harry Rezler, so why was he making her feel like this? Why did him talking to her about her personal life throw her into such a flap?
‘So, how’s tricks?’ she asked, deliberately lightening her tone, trying to move the conversation on. ‘Any more bad guys come your way?’
Harry shook his head. ‘Khordinsky was the one I was after. The slippery fish I’d wasted four years of my life trying to catch. You know, when you walked into my office that day, you just about saved my career.’
He stared at her and Peaches felt the unfamiliar sensation turn up a notch. She didn’t know what to say. This was certainly news to her.
‘You never did give me your job title and I never did figure it out,’ she said. ‘Were you CIA?’
Harry smiled and rubbed his face and she knew that even if he was, he’d never tell her.
‘It doesn’t matter what I was. I dropped by to tell you that I’m retiring,’ he continued.
‘Retiring?’
He shrugged. ‘Now Khordinsky’s done with, they’ve got no further use for me. Sure, there’re still bad guys out there, but I haven’t got the energy for them. I’m all done.’
‘Me too.’
‘You are?’ he asked. ‘Truly? Only . . .’ His eyes locked on hers in a way that belied the words that followed. ‘I . . . wouldn’t do anything about it, even if you weren’t.’
‘I made you a promise, didn’t I? I’m all wound up with that. And I can’t say I’m sorry. I don’t even have a cell phone any more. It’s kinda quiet, but I’m getting used to it.’
Something altered in Harry then, right in front of her eyes. His shoulders seemed to relax, as if he’d just let out a long, deep breath. For the first time since he’d got here, he smiled at her properly. Openly. Like someone who’d just spotted an old friend. Or maybe a new one, Peaches thought.
‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘Travel,’ she said, swallowing. That tingling feeling inside her still hadn’t gone away. ‘See what happens, I guess. I’m leaving. In fact, I’m all packed and ready to go.’ She turned to look back inside her house at the packing boxes, but all she saw was her own reflection in the large glass door. She was stil
l in her robe, her hair flying in the breeze. And she saw Harry on the step below her and he suddenly looked as if he was kneeling. Behind him was only sand, sea and sky.
She turned back to face him. He looked on the point of saying something, but instead he put his hands in his pockets.
‘Well, good luck, Peaches,’ he said.
He turned and began to walk away.
Panic stabbed her like a lance. She knew that if she let him walk out of her life now, she’d never see him again.
‘Harry?’ she called after him.
He stopped and turned. ‘Yeah?’
She stared at him. Was she mad? She shouldn’t do this. It could go so badly wrong. Peaches’ whole life had been built on risks, but somehow this was a bigger risk than them all.
‘Why don’t you come too?’ she asked.
‘Pardon me?’
‘Why don’t we go together?’ she hurried on, before she could change her mind. ‘Like a joint retirement trip. I haven’t got that many plans, except a bit of skiing in Europe . . .’
Harry looked truly shocked. And then for a terrible moment, as the corners of his mouth started to crinkle, she thought he was going to laugh in her face.
But instead he grinned. He walked towards her, rubbing the side of his face. Abashed. He stopped at the bottom of the steps. ‘You really want us to go together? You and me?’
Now that the question was out, now that he’d asked it and seemed to be seriously considering it, her answer was simple. Natural and automatic. Something she should have said a long time ago.
‘Sure. Why not?’
She could feel her heart hammering. This was such a huge, crazy idea. She hardly knew him. She hadn’t even so much as kissed him. And yet here she was, asking him to go around the world with her. She suddenly felt stupidly, girlishly excited. She wanted him to say yes so badly.
Harry laughed. ‘Well, you know . . . that may not be such a bad idea . . .’
