A sharp alarm filled the air, so high-pitched that she had to put her hands over her ears. ‘What’s that?’ she said, panicked, looking at Beattie.
‘You seriously don’t know?’ Beattie asked her, as she switched off the hob and moved her pan of fat to a cooler place. ‘It’s your smoke alarm. I’ve set it off with my deep-fat frying. I’m always doing that.’
She moved around the room opening windows, then she climbed on a chair and flicked a tea towel at the screaming alarm, a white box protruding from the ceiling.
Kate had never heard the smoke alarm before because she had never fried anything in deep fat. Also, she rarely used the oven and never made toast.
‘Mark had better be home soon.’ Beattie lifted the golden, crispy portions of fried chicken from the pan and placed them in a warm dish. ‘This keeps, but it’s far nicer fresh . . .’ her voice trailed off.
‘What is it?’ Kate asked.
Beattie had stopped, tongs in hand, and was standing over the platter of chicken, her shoulders shaking. She turned to face Kate, tears spilling from her eyes.
‘Oh Emma. This was Ed’s favourite food. It’s the first time I’ve made it since – since –’
‘Oh, Beattie.’ Kate swept round the kitchen island and put her arms round her.
‘I miss him so much,’ Beattie sobbed into Kate’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been so scared.’
‘It will pass,’ Kate said, holding her tight. ‘It’s nearly all over with Jake and soon we’ll be able to live our lives again.’
‘Hello?’
Kate looked up and saw Mark standing in the kitchen doorway, frowning slightly.
Beattie hurriedly stepped out of Kate’s arms and dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Sorry, Mark. I was having a little moment and Kate was looking after me.’
‘So I see,’ Mark said.
‘Thank God you’re back,’ Kate said, moving towards him and kissing him on the cheek. ‘I was beginning to get worried: you, the bike, rush hour.’
‘Queen of the worst-case scenario as ever,’ Mark said.
Although he was clearly physically unscathed, he didn’t look altogether happy. Had he heard them talking? Kate felt the stab of worry that had plagued her entire life with him, but now carried a far more deadly weight than ever before: had he found her out?
He looked round at the state of the kitchen. ‘Jesus, what happened here?’
‘Remember? I’m cooking you supper,’ Beattie said in a singsong voice Kate had only ever heard her use on Mark.
‘Fantastic,’ he said, with little enthusiasm.
‘Kate’s been very kind,’ Beattie said. ‘She’s shown me around, taken me clothes shopping so I’m not naked.’
‘I heard about your room being ransacked,’ he said. ‘What bastards.’
‘It was my own fault for keeping the hotel key in my purse. Never again.’
‘You look worn out,’ Kate said. ‘Champagne?’
‘I’ll get myself a vodka,’ he said, running his fingers through his hair. Kate noticed he had a slight tic in his right eye. She had seen this twice before: during Martha’s illness and when his father fell down dead from a heart attack shortly after their wedding.
‘Is everything OK?’ she said.
‘Fine,’ he said.
‘You sit down, Mark. I’ll fix your drink for you,’ Beattie said, going to the fridge.
Mark mumbled his thanks and perched on a stool, tapping his fingers on the kitchen island worktop.
‘I’ll set the table, then,’ Kate said, heading for the cutlery drawer. ‘What is it, Mark? You look shattered.’
‘Oh, just some crap at work,’ he said. ‘But it’s the last thing I want to talk about right now. Worst part is, I’ve got to go back in again after supper.’
‘What? Oh no.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He slipped to his feet and paced around the vast living area, looking out of the windows, examining the self-loathing Tracey Emin, the Damien Hirst spots.
Again, Kate felt a flush of guilt. Had he read her mind about selling the artworks? Did he know? Was that why he was so edgy?
She didn’t think she could go on like this much longer. The layers of deception were spiralling out of control.
‘Do you have to go back?’ Kate said. He had clearly only come home early to be polite to Beattie. It was ridiculously over-solicitous of him.
But they were unused to visitors, which was why he was putting himself out so much. Despite the lavish guest suite, their only overnight guests in the past eight years had been a couple of business associates of Mark’s who were more friends than colleagues and a Martha’s Wish fieldworker who needed somewhere to stay in London for a couple of nights. The young woman had been completely charming, but the way she eyed the expensive furniture set in vast spaces and her comments on the quality of the guest suite’s toiletries had made Kate feel uneasy, as if she weren’t giving enough of her wealth away. Looking through her guest’s eyes, she had even detected a certain smugness in her own face in the big family studio portrait on the kitchen wall.
Having outsiders around exerted a pressure on her she could do without. She was far happier with just her fast-dwindling family for company.
‘I have completely and utterly no choice,’ Mark said, forcing a weak smile as Beattie handed him a glass filled with ice, vodka and a couple of lurking lemon slices.
‘Did Serena have any luck with the embassy?’ Beattie said, turning back to a sauce she had going in a double boiler. The excessive brightness of her tone must have been an attempt at lifting Mark’s mood, but Kate knew that sort of thing wouldn’t swing with him.
Sourly, he pulled out his iPhone and checked his calendar. ‘Nine next Thursday morning.’
‘Can’t it be any sooner?’ Kate said.
He turned to her. ‘They’re very busy, apparently. In any case, Claire’s welcome to stay, isn’t she?’
‘Of course. It must just be very frustrating for her.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t bother me!’ Beattie said. ‘It’s so lovely staying here with you guys.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Dinner time, Mom and Dad!’
Kate looked at her, puzzled.
‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ Beattie said. ‘It’s what me and Ed used to say to each other.’ She wiped a knuckle across her eye, smudging tear-wetted mascara onto her cheek. Then she smiled a little too brightly and set to serving up the food.
They each carried a laden plate to the table. Along with the sweetcorn fritters and fried chicken, there was fried banana – Oxford Street Marks and Spencer was clean out of plantains – buttered kale in place of the collard greens they also didn’t sell, corn bread which looked more like a cake, biscuits which were more like savoury scones, and gravy, which was more a sort of meaty white sauce. Kate knew she wouldn’t be able to eat all of the food on offer. In fact, the quantity on her plate made her nervous. But that unaccustomed hunger yawned in her stomach. She decided as she sat at the table that she would eat slowly and steadily then stop when the last of her two dining companions had finished. She didn’t want an issue to be made out of the food, or her eating of it.
‘I haven’t dined like this since I visited a client in Savannah,’ Mark said, tucking into his chicken. Kate noticed with relief that his eye was now still. Perhaps he had just been hungry. Perhaps that was all there was to it.
‘You were in Savannah?’ Beattie said, clapping her hands again. ‘I lived there for seventeen years!’
They carried on talking about the Historic District and the trolleybus, and the deliciousness of the figs. With Mark relaxing, Kate stood her guard down, stopped listening to the conversation and turned her worry back to the two knotty problems of eating the food on her plate and meeting Jake’s new demands.
She could feel her belly distending. Her stomach, unused to carbohydrates – well, unused to food, really – was as full as it could possibly be. Yet, for some reason, she couldn’t stop cutting and chewing and swa
llowing.
‘Isn’t she doing well?’ Beattie said, drawing Kate out of her stupor.
‘It’s the most I’ve seen her eat for years,’ Mark said, smiling at her.
Dessert was a homemade key lime pie with thick pastry and luminous green filling. Kate managed a mouthful. As he finished the last morsel on his plate, Mark’s brief relaxation evaporated and his eyelid recommenced its rhythmic batting.
‘I have to go now,’ he said, suddenly getting to his feet. ‘Thank you for a delicious meal, Beattie. I hope I can stay sharp with all of that inside me.’
‘Why don’t you take the car?’ Kate said.
‘I’d rather cycle. Clears the mind.’ On his way to the door, he stopped and turned to Kate. ‘Will you be awake when I get back?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘That’d be great. See you later, then.’ He clattered down the stairs, his tread heavier than usual. Then, with the slam of the front door, he was gone.
‘Doesn’t he wear a helmet?’ Beattie asked, helping herself to another slice of pie.
‘Never,’ Kate said, frowning after the space Mark had left behind him, wondering what it was he wanted to talk to her about later on.
‘He really should, you know.’
Twelve
Having spent two hours scrubbing the kitchen clean, Kate sat up in bed with a notepad, trying to list ways out of the hole Jake had her in. All she could come up with were:
• Plead with Jake
• Expose Jake
• Tell Mark
• Kill self
It wasn’t extensive, but those appeared to be her options, all of them impossible except, possibly, the final one. But she couldn’t dump parental suicide on Tilly, and anyway, if she did that, wouldn’t Jake out the truth anyway and bring shame on her family? She sat there for a while, doodling around the page, racking her brains for another way around the problem.
After a while, she came up with one more:
• Kill Jake
After all, she had done it once already.
But her stomach clenched at the idea. She realised that, horrific as the situation she found herself in was, the fact that she was released from the burden of being a murderer had started to fix something deep inside her.
Then another item for her list came to her. But it was so terrible – worse by far than any of the other solutions – that she didn’t even dare write it down. The frightening thing about it was that, out of all the alternatives, it was the most achievable.
The front door slammed and she heard Mark’s heavy step on the stairs. She only just managed to slip the notebook into her bedside drawer before he blundered into the bedroom.
This was not his usual mode of entry late at night. Normally he would tiptoe in to avoid waking her up. She knew this, because she would often pretend to be asleep, not wanting him to press himself upon her with all the energy he seemed to draw from his working day. Tonight, though, it seemed like the energy transfer had been reversed. He looked awful: grey-skinned, hood-eyed and – despite his beautiful, bespoke suit – shabby. As he shut the bedroom door she caught a gust of whisky and tobacco.
So Beattie had been right. He was still smoking. Perhaps he had even shared her cigarettes the night before, when they went to the hospital and the police station.
For a fleeting moment, Kate forgot that she had no cause to be jealous of her.
‘I need a shower,’ Mark said, leaving Kate on her own in the bedroom, sitting upright, worrying and wondering what it was that was eating at him.
After a while, the shower door opened. The Florentine count’s bespoke scent followed Mark as he crossed the bedroom to his wardrobe.
‘I need pyjamas tonight,’ he said.
‘What’s the matter, Mark?’ she said as he stumbled into his pyjama bottoms as if he had become so unused to putting them on that he had lost the knack.
He threw himself on the bed and exhaled. Despite the shower and the expensive toiletries he had not entirely obliterated the tobacco smell. She turned to face him.
‘What is it?’
‘There’s trouble.’
‘Yes?’
He continued to look up at the ceiling, avoiding her gaze. ‘This is strictly confidential.’
‘Of course.’ The blood bloomed on her cheek – what was he about to say to her?
‘OK. I’m in the shit. My fund’s thirty per cent down and we’ve been winging it for quite a while.’
She let out an audible sigh of relief, which, had he been in a state to notice it, he would have found puzzling. ‘Why down?’
‘Oh, China, gold, low interest rates, limited liquidity, bad bets. Do you want to know the details?’
‘Not really.’
‘Good.’
‘Can you get out of it?’
‘Not sure. The Americans are wanting to pull out.’
‘New York?’
‘New York and Savannah.’
‘Gosh.’
‘And the Japanese, in amongst a lot of politeness, are also threatening to withdraw.’
‘Oh.’
‘And my big UK pension fund, too.’
‘How long have you got, do you think?’
‘A month. Six weeks.’ Mark closed his eyes and breathed out. ‘I’m going to JFK tomorrow, first flight, to try to stall the situation.’
‘OK . . .’
‘Sorry. It’s totally last minute. Serena booked my tickets this evening. I’ll be gone three days. But at least you’ve got Claire to keep you company.’
‘Don’t worry about me. But your shirts . . .’
‘It’s not about shirts, Kate,’ he said.
She looked away and ran her fingers down her cheekbones, feeling their sharp edges. Then her knuckle strayed to the tip of her nose. She didn’t like being told off like that.
‘Look,’ he said, taking her hand and turning her to face him. ‘Kate, love. I’m under big stress here. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. My heart’s fluttering all over the place, my blood pressure’s sky high.’
‘Your blood pressure?’
‘I saw the doc last week. Dizzy spells.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You’ve not been so well yourself. I didn’t want to worry you.’
‘I thought we had no secrets,’ she found herself saying, but he wasn’t listening.
‘But I need to tell you now. In case . . . It’s in my family, isn’t it? My father. And my grandfather.’
He took her other hand as well and turned so that he was kneeling on the bed, facing her. To see him like this, no defences, not in charge . . .
For the first time ever – not ever, actually, she reminded herself, but since Ikaria – she felt the butterfly wings of desire play inside her. She extracted one hand and moved it up to his face. But he retrieved it and held it still on the bed. ‘Look, Kate. We need to act.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Where do we stand with cash? Have you looked lately?’
‘Um, about two?’ she said, trying to breathe steadily. She looked down at the bedcovers, unable to meet his eyes. Was he going to want to see it? Was she going to be able to get away with this?
‘Really? I thought it was more than that.’
She shook her head, relieved that he had so little idea.
‘I’m going to sell the best artworks. Bonham’s have got a twentieth-century auction coming up soon and I’ve had an email valuation of fifteen million on the collection. We need to liquidate and get the money out.’
‘Even the Tracey?’
‘Even the Tracey, I’m afraid.’ He smiled. He knew she hated it. ‘I’ve set up an offshore account so if the shit hits the fan we can still feed ourselves. We need to move our cash out of the UK as soon as possible.’
‘Give me the details. I can do that,’ Kate said, quickly.
‘Can you do it tomorrow?’
‘I can do it yesterday.’
He
didn’t know how true this was.
‘That’s my girl.’
He let go of her hands, turned on his side and settled down on the bed, facing away from her.
Feeling quite unhinged by this new development, she ran her fingers along the cool skin of his back, breathing in the scent of him.
He half turned and kissed her on the top of her head, and she moved down to touch his neck with her lips.
‘Do you mind if we don’t?’ he whispered. ‘I’m done in, and I’ve got to be up in four hours.’
‘Of course not.’ She withdrew her hand.
‘Spoon around me,’ he said, and she did as she was told.
Thirteen
‘Hey, Patience.’
Mark was on his way to New York, and Kate had two days to go until Jake’s deadline. Having told Beattie she needed to work, she sat at her desk, on the phone to the Martha’s Wish office. The trousers of her velvet tracksuit felt a little tighter than usual. This, she supposed, was a good thing.
She was worried about Mark, of course she was. He could lose his business, and the stress was clearly playing on him. But the reprieve offered her by his instructions to clear out their UK accounts and his plan to sell the art outweighed all of that. Whatever happened, they could survive on that money. The artworks would bring in so much that the relatively small amount she had diverted from their funds wouldn’t even be noticed by Mark.
However, the artwork sale wouldn’t address her own immediate problem, which was finding five million pounds in less than two days. Not at once, anyway. But she still had that plan, the plan so awful that it didn’t make it onto her list.
‘Kate! How are you?’ A machine whirred behind Patience’s greeting. An office printer, perhaps.
‘I’m back on it.’
‘That’s great!’
Beyond the windowsill cactus garden it was mid-morning; the whole of London was encased in fog: shapes of buildings bled into the air.
The Long Fall Page 28
