Sky Garden

by Jenny Schwartz

  She stuffed the used tissue in her jeans pocket and managed to smile up at him. “Loveable though.”

  His arms tightened enough to make her squeak, and then, the paramedics ceased hovering and claimed her.

  Chapter 20

  The hotel room was expensive and discreetly luxurious. The view across London was breath-taking. Father and son ignored their setting. In the suite next door, Lanie was sleeping off her ordeal, the drug and her shock, while her family kept watch. She had a lot of family.

  Nick had needed time alone—or not quite alone.

  Beside him, Richard stared out the window, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets.

  Nick recognized the source of one of his own poses. How many of his habits, how much of his character, had been shaped by this man?

  “Do you forgive me?” Richard asked.

  “Huh?” Nick was lost.

  “Do you forgive me for abandoning you for the first fourteen years of your life?”

  It had been a day, a month, shattering enough to break down even the toughest emotional defenses. Nick stared at his dad. “I wasn’t abandoned. I was with Mum.” She’d been a larger than life figure; even as a kid he’d seen that she had something more than other parents. She’d been passionate and energetic, committed to causes, but most of all, to him. From her, he’d learned to pursue his dreams. Now he realized, she’d also taught him to love. “She made sure I always knew I was loved.”

  His dad looked sideways at him, then back at the view. “I love you.”

  Nick’s chest muscles seized, cramping as he fought to accept those three words. Fought to respond. “Dad, there was never anything to forgive. You did the best—better than most men—with a screwed-up situation. You could have left me with mum’s parents when she died.”

  “No. They were too old.” The instant response of a man who’d never evaded a responsibility in his life.

  And he was right. Nick’s grandparents had been too old and too frail to cope with a teenage boy angry at life and the unfairness of death. They hadn’t been anything like their daughter, or like Nick, himself.

  He leaned his back against the glass. It was cold and strong. Real. “I held onto my anger against you for too long. Some part of me stayed that teenage boy who had to blame someone rather than accept that life was unfair and uncertain. You were always so strong. I shoveled the blame for everything onto you because you could and did carry it. And then, there was Chloe. I was angry for her, too.”

  “She forgave me.” Richard’s voice was husky.

  “So she told me. Repeatedly,” Nick added wryly.

  Richard looked at him. “She said we needed each other.”

  “Yeah.” Nick stood straight.

  “What do you need me to do?” Richard asked.

  “Just be, here, Dad. Just be, here.”

  Lanie woke up to find herself the opposite of alone. Both parents and her brother sat by her bedside.

  “Nick,” Selwyn called. “She’s awake.”

  There was a stampede into her room, led by Nick.

  She smiled at him as she hitched herself up on her pillows, only to be nearly flattened by her family all trying to hug her at once, to scold her, to reassure her and to remonstrate with one another to give her space.

  “I’m never giving her space again,” her dad said. “She can’t be trusted, keeping secrets from us.” He blew his nose on a giant red and white polka dot handkerchief.

  Nick smiled at her over all the chaos, and she smiled back. “Where am I?”

  Her mum answered. “Richard booked out the whole floor of the hotel. No media. It’s heavenly. Enough room for all the family, without us falling over each other.”

  “The media.” Lanie winced.

  “You don’t have to talk to them,” Nick said instantly. “But Ann Khan is waiting in the next room.”

  Lanie hitched herself up in bed, again.

  Her mum put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. “Breakfast first, even if it’s nearly dinner time.”

  Lanie insisted on getting out of bed to eat. She showered and dressed in clothes her cousin Stella had fetched from the flat. It being Stella running the errand, the clothes were all black. Stella was never going to outgrow her Goth phase. At least the black linen tunic and yoga pants were comfortable. Lanie ignored the boots Stella had brought her, and walked barefoot into the suite’s main room.

  Her order of waffles arrived at the same time, along with breakfast/dinner for everyone else. The hotel staff wheeled in a relay of trolleys, abandoning them helplessly as her family descended, investigating the contents and snaffling plates.

  Nick served Lanie before settling beside her with a plate of pizza.

  She rolled her eyes. They were in a five star hotel and he ate pizza!

  Her family ate everything from vegan salad to roast dinner, settling around her on furniture or on the floor.

  Ann Khan and a colleague appeared bemused, especially when Lanie’s Aunt Fiona passed them plates of the vegan salad. “About your kidnapping,” Ann began, putting aside the salad. “We’ll need a formal statement, but for now, I have a few questions.”

  She wasn’t the only one. Lanie’s family hung on her every word as she described her kidnapping. There was rage and frustration in their expressions, and she could feel Nick’s rising tension beside her.

  “What did you intend to do?” he asked when she reached the point of describing her desperate plan.

  “I couldn’t bluff him much longer. I didn’t know his name. I had to do something, so I hoped to fool him into thinking that I ran to the door. He’d parked under the main roof beam. I figured that I could scramble up from the van’s roof onto that, edge along it, and…jump out the window.”

  Her family gasped, but Nick had seen the warehouse. His face set in an expression of brutal vengeance. The window was high and the ground outside, asphalt. At best she’d have broken bones—if she’d made it out the window at all. It had been an insane plan.

  It was all she’d had.

  Nick addressed Ann. “How long will Jackson get?”

  Lanie’s kidnapper had a name now, Theobald Jackson, a political adviser with a small mortgage and a hobby of collecting snuffboxes. The sick joke of it had disgusted Ann. A man who watched snuff films, collected snuffboxes.

  “The maximum,” Ann said, equally harsh. “And we’ve thrown him to the media wolf pack. His life is effectively over.”

  Nick and Richard traded looks.

  Lanie abandoned her waffles and snuggled into Nick. No matter the outcome from the justice system for Theo Jackson, Nick and his dad would keep him away from her. She looked at her brother as he assessed the two men and his own battle-readiness relaxed. So Selwyn, too, had read the Tawes men’s determination, and he accepted it. They would protect her.

  They were family.

  It took a while to empty the hotel suite after the police left. Lanie’s parents were the last to leave, hugging her, and then, Nick; something that seemed to startle him. They made it obvious that they were leaving her in his care.

  She was grateful.

  The hotel staff had swiftly and efficiently emptied the suite of used plates and uneaten food during her family’s departure, which meant she and Nick could sit comfortably back on the sofa. Having slept the day away, Lanie wasn’t ready to sleep again.

  There was a television, but they left it off.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Nick asked, elbows on his knees, hands loosely interlocked, dangling.

  Lanie stared at him, at the down bent head, at his careful reserve—hiding his emotions. She’d hurt him with her lack of trust. But it hadn’t just been about a lack of trust. “I think that in some ways, I was still trapped back in that cellar with Purvis.”

  Nick clasped her hands. “Never. You’re safe.”

  “Yes.” She turned her hands to hold his. “But emotionally, subconsciously, I’d locked into terror. I was in survival mode. I got away f
rom Purvis, but I was still waiting.”

  “Hiding,” he corrected. “The 1950s clothes, pulling away from your family—although now that I’ve met them, I don’t know how you managed that.”

  She grinned. The Briers clan was loud, loving and constantly there. Nick would have to adjust, and so would Richard, because the Briers had adopted them. “They love me, and I told them I needed space. They gave it to me.” Her humor died. “I was protecting them, too. Them and everyone, by keeping people distant. I didn’t know who Theo Jackson was. Purvis bragged that his friend was someone in Westminster. I thought he might be a member of parliament. I didn’t know how much power or reach he might have, and my family is inclined to jump in, and damn the consequences. I feared he could hurt them.”

  She released Nick’s hands and pushed into him, demanding a hug.

  He shifted on the sofa and pulled her close.

  It was easier, surrounded by him, to talk about her fears. She’d lived with them for too long, been constricted and constrained by them. “And then you came along. It had been eight months since Purvis died, and there had been no problems, no hint that anyone was tracking me.” She shuddered for how sly Jackson had been.

  “It’s all right. He can’t hurt you, now. He can’t hurt anyone, again.”

  Lanie had her own thoughts on that. Men like Jackson, psychopaths who enjoyed manipulating people, wouldn’t stop just because they were in prison. But then, the other prisoners would have their own, more brutal, ways of retaliating. Either way, Jackson wouldn’t hurt her again. He was a coward and she was too well protected. Too secure.

  “I never meant to fall in love with you,” she said. “I thought loving anyone, spending time with them and showing that they were important to me, might put them at risk. But as spring passed and summer arrived, I hoped that I’d been jumping at shadows. I began to believe that the monster in Westminster was no more than a bogeyman. I came back to life. You brought me back.”

  He rubbed his cheek almost roughly against hers, a caress without finesse but with immense love behind it.

  She hugged his arms as they held her, turning her face so that their lips met.

  “I shouldn’t have left you,” he said. “After Chloe’s funeral. You’d been there for me. I should have been there with you. I just…”

  “You were dealing with a lot of emotion.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you came back to me, and in doing so, you saved me.”

  Their hearts thudded as they rested against each other. How close she’d come to death would scare them both for a long time, maybe forever.

  She refused to live her life in fear or regret or accepting less than everything. She kissed Nick’s throat, shifted, lifted up and kissed his mouth.

  “Are you sure?” A subtle change in his hold from possessive and protective to sexual.

  “Love me, Nick.”

  The Horry Museum’s volunteers, Mrs. Smith, Lanie’s family and Richard were all present for the final filming of the museum’s roof garden. The early September day was golden, bright with sun and warmth, filled with laughter and energy, an incredible celebration of the forthcoming Harvest Festival.

  Nick looked as relaxed as Lanie had ever seen him, and Nelson more stressed than she’d ever have believed. She had her family to thank for the latter. They were interested in the roof garden television program and intent on “helping”. She laughed.

  “We missed your laughter,” her mum said. “We missed you. I’m glad you’re happy.”

  “Very.” Lanie smiled at Nick.

  He abandoned his conversation with Ophelia, the cameraperson, and crossed to them. “We’re almost finished.”

  “If Dad stops helping,” Lanie observed.

  Nick grinned. “My dad’s been busy, too.”

  Surprised, she glanced over at Richard who appeared to have been simply relaxing in the sun all morning, chatting with Mrs. Smith.

  Richard was thinner than when she’d first met him, but there was a new quality of peace about him. He grieved for Chloe, but he and Nick had built a new relationship and the effect of that joy was obvious. He saw he had their attention and looked a question.

  “Thirty minutes,” Nick called.

  “What do you have planned?” Lanie asked.

  He kissed her swiftly. “Wait and see.”

  “I like him,” her mum said as Nick took his place in camera frame.

  “The end of summer is a dying of the days,” Nick spoke to the camera. “The Edwardians countered some of it by having glasshouses and conservatories to extend the growing season of their fruits and vegetables and exotic plants, but unlike many of us, today, they remembered to celebrate the change of season. With air-conditioning and foods flown into the supermarkets, we forget, and in doing so, we miss out. As we ready the garden for the cold months ahead, we give thanks for the joys of summer.”

  Standing on the roof, in the middle of his garden, with family and friends and Lanie smiling at him, Nick was truly thankful. He wrapped up the filming with a few final words on creating spaces that supported community and creativity, and respected the natural and built environments. Then he was free.

  “Come on.” He grabbed Lanie’s hand, pulling her up from her bench seat near her mum. “Dad and I have a surprise for you, and I know you’ll want everyone to see it.”

  It took a while for everyone to either descend the outside staircase or ferry down in the small elevator, and by then, the coach his dad had hired was waiting out front.

  One of Lanie’s cousins, and Nick was still learning names, boarded and started a drinking song, as if they were jaunting off to the seaside. Instead, the bus transported them across the city to their destination.

  Lanie blinked at the over-the-top Neo-Gothic monstrosity in front of her and identified it instantly. “Your London house. Chloe described it perfectly.”

  Richard helped her down the last step from the coach. “And it was Chloe’s idea to cancel the lease and free the house for your and Nick’s use. It’s your new home, if you’d like it.”

  Nick slung an arm around her shoulders.

  For once, Lanie’s crazy family were silenced. As one, they all stared at the mansion in its expensive, fenced and secure grounds. It was a fairy-tale house, a romantic fantasy conceived with imagination and scrupulously maintained, but needing to be renewed by passion. Windows of every style jumbled and jostled and the skyline was fantastical. Even the white portico resembled a mini-castle rather than anything sensible.

  “It’s empty, so you can look around and explore before you decide if you want to live here,” Richard said.

  Lanie hugged him. “Thank you.” Then she spun and caught Nick’s arm. “Have you seen it? Of course you have. Do you like it?”

  “Let’s go and look at it.” He refused to influence her decision.

  Not that there was much question what her decision would be, not once she saw the double staircase sweeping up in elegant grandeur in the cream and gold entrance. “Oh yes.”

  Her family ran here, there and everywhere, exclaiming and offering suggestions.

  The house had been extensively updated in the 1920s and 1960s, but since then it had merely been maintained. New fittings had replaced worn out ones, but no one had given the house new life and a stamp of personality. Nick had a feeling that was about to change.

  Now that Lanie was free of fear and secrets, her closeness to her family was obvious. He wouldn’t be working from Dubai or a suitcase. He needed to be based in England so that she could have her life.

  And he wanted to cement his new relationship with his dad.

  Richard would run Waterhill and the Tawes empire for years, but Nick had to learn it, too. The reality of his inheritance meant responsibilities. The London house showed some of the benefits.

  Lanie and he climbed all the way to the attics before they acquired some privacy. The view was nice, but not amazing. The location was enviable, though.

  She re
garded him seriously, questioningly. “There’s no roof garden.”

  He smiled at her note of doubt. “We don’t need one.”

  It wasn’t just that the real garden was substantial, and boring enough to require redesign. When you looked down at it, as they did now, the manicured grounds were filled with family and friends.

  “I’d like to live here.” Lanie leaned back against him.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist. “We’ll make a home.”

  “A special one.” And as she told Richard a few minutes later in the hall. “Thank you for telling us that this was Chloe’s idea. It’s like having her blessing.”

  “And you can continue her work,” Mrs. Smith called from the front room.

  Everyone turned and looked at her.

  She was sitting, resting, in a large maroon wingback chair angled to command a view of the garden and entrance. “Tcha. Think of your skills, girl. You can convince people of anything. You’re a natural fundraiser. Put that to use and charities will be knocking down the door to hire you.”

  Especially with her Tawes family connection.

  Nick crossed to Mrs. Smith and kissed her powdered cheek. “Clever. Thank you.” Now Lanie had a purpose and an independent identity; not subsumed by his family’s name, but using it. Independence and a way to use her talents, positively, without shadows from the past.

  Lanie studied Mrs. Smith as she beamed up at Nick, her short legs swinging from her perch on the over-large chair, her pink sneakers as bright as her cardigan over a banana yellow trouser suit.

  Suspicion sneaked in.

  Mrs. Smith smiled like a cat with a bowl of cream, smug and happy. It seemed incredible, but had the old lady seen, or even maneuvered for, this outcome? Mrs. Smith had known Chloe, she enjoyed meddling and the Horry Museum was proof of her generosity. She’d be an unlikely, zany fairy-tale godmother, and yet, why not? Mrs. Smith understood and valued lifelong passion and devotion.