by Huw Thomas
Until forced to think about it, Harper had not realised how many individual memories went into making up the picture of someone you love. Now he wanted to savour each one: examine every image for details disregarded when commonplace but now as precious as diamonds.
At the entrance to the building containing his flat, Harper paused and closed his eyes. He had never ached for a woman before, certainly not since his teenage years. Now he was desperate for her: to see her, touch her, speak to her and hold her hand, her hair, her body. Most of all, he wanted to give her his love, to whisper it in her ear, to shout it out in defiance. He also wanted to take her love, wrap himself in its security and shut out the words of madness.
The converted old house was silent when he reached it, all the other occupants out somewhere. At the door, Harper hesitated, hoping his key would not fit but knowing it would. As he entered the hall, where a central stairwell climbed to the upper floors, he breathed the musty air with distaste. Its sourness was not familiar; it tasted of defeat.
Still limping, the climb to the second floor took time. Once on the landing, Harper came to a halt as he studied the two panelled doors in front of him. He realised he had no idea which was his.
Confused by something so basic, he stood and stared hopelessly at the two doors. His mind denied this building was his home. But was it all a delusion, some mental disturbance brought on by a head trauma the medical experts had not spotted? He did not want that to be true but was not convinced he could dismiss the possibility.
Harper examined the doors: looking at the panels, the paintwork and the shape of the handles, struggling to find anything familiar, a little clue to jog his mind back onto another track.
But nothing stirred. He still had no idea which one was his. Brendan had only told him the flat was on the second floor. The only apparent answer to try each lock and see which opened to his key.
Harper was about to approach the door on the left when he heard the main door opening and shutting below. He stood silently and listened. Footsteps came into the hall, paused then began climbing the stairs. They reached the first floor and continued up. Harper dropped his keys back into his pocket. He waited a moment then started patting his trousers and jacket as if searching for them. He was just digging into his jeans and pulling out the keys when a woman came into view.
She was young, mid-twenties and looked tired. She had long hair pulled into a tight ponytail and her face looked pale, dark rings around darker eyes. As she approached, she slung a bag off her left shoulder and let it drop to the landing floor while she rummaged for her own keys.
‘Harper.’ She nodded without seeming particularly pleased to see him. Then looked at him with more curiosity. ‘My God! What’s happened to your face? Have you been in a fight?’
Harper smiled ruefully. ‘No, nothing like that. Not unless you count getting hit by a car.’
As she stepped closer, he realised he probably should know her name. But he was unaware of ever meeting her before. She looked concerned. ‘Wow! What happened? Are you okay?’
‘A bit shaky. My leg’s a bit stiff too. I was just getting my breath back while I was looking for my keys.’
She frowned and glanced at the door on the right. ‘You want a cup of tea or something? I don’t think I’ve got anything stronger.’
Harper shook his head. ‘That’s okay, thanks all the same. I’ve got some bits and pieces to sort out. I’m a bit sore but I’ll be fine.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Her voice was terse as she shrugged and turned abruptly away. ‘I was only offering sympathy. I wouldn’t try and cramp your style.’ She stepped over to the right-hand door and opened it without another word. She closed it behind her without looking again at Harper.
He stared at the closed door, wondering what subtext lay beneath the apparent bitterness in her voice. Or was that just her way?
Inside, the flat was nothing like Harper remembered from that one visit as a prospective tenant. It was the same rooms, the ones he looked at after first moving to the city but his memory was faulty. He had recalled the rooms as small and dingy but they were bigger than he remembered and, with sunshine coming in, felt large and airy. Superficially, they were fairly attractive.
Harper wandered from lounge to bedroom to kitchen-diner and back. It was strange seeing his possessions there. Clothing, books, CDs, even a couple of houseplants he recognised, were dotted throughout the flat. But the location was wrong and, while some things were definitely his, other items were totally unfamiliar. He was unable to work out whether he felt at home or like a stranger alone with someone else’s property.
One of the most unnerving moments came with the photos he found in the bedroom. Stuck in a big clip-frame was a collage of prints. Among them, old childhood shots and familiar pictures from his teenage years. Then there were images of parties at which he had obviously been but of which he had no memory. He recognised some faces but not others.
Fascinated, he moved closer to examine the photographs. This was evidence, real proof of a life of which he had no knowledge. The details were compelling, if frightening.
His eyes moved from a well-known snap of an early family holiday to a scene from what looked like a skiing holiday with two girls and a young man he did not recognise at all. Then, moving on, he suddenly spotted the woman from the landing. In this shot, she was with him. But this was another, laughing Harper who had his arm around her shoulders in a casual but intimate fashion. They were sitting outside a pub somewhere. There were glasses on the table in front of them and they looked like they were having a good time. She looked prettier in the picture too: relaxed and happy.
Harper stepped away from the collage. He felt like he was prying: a voyeur sniffing around someone else’s life.
He left the flat later, nothing concrete achieved except to have had another shower and changed into fresh clothes. That selection disturbed him too. It was all decidedly low-rent, the kind of outfits he wore in his younger days and now only put on for decorating or tended to laughingly dismiss as his drinking clothes.
The sight of the ashtray in his bedroom also saddened him.
One of the few useful things to come out of the visit to the flat was locating his medical card and finding out who was his GP. He had booked himself an appointment for tomorrow. Hopefully he would get himself signed off work for a week or so; he was not sure he could face going into the newspaper at the moment. Even knowing what his position in the office was supposed to be, Harper was not positive of being able to act in the way others would expect. He was sure to say or do something wrong or out of character: get people speculating about his state of mind.
Work would have to wait. He had more important things to sort out first.
10. Bearding The Lion
Tuesday, 3.20pm:
Rebecca looked up at the map on the wall. It was an intriguing idea. Over the space of more than forty years, Paul Cash had produced a steady stream of highly-regarded portraits, earning himself a place in the pantheon of great British artists, up there with the likes of Lucien Freud. His life had also become a form of artwork: an exhibition of hedonism and social misdemeanour.
Now, Cash was proposing something new. He wanted to move on from oils and scandal. This time he planned to use the estate at Howarth Manor as his canvas.
He stared at Rebecca. ‘So, Miss Shah. Now you know my intentions. What about you?’
She turned to meet his gaze and almost flinched. Cash’s eyes were piercing. Pale grey or blue in colour but as deceptive as ice. Their depth could be no more than a wafer. Or they could stretch back to the dawn of time. His stare contained something primeval. Rebecca felt naked.
‘How do you mean,’ she said, knowing she was stalling badly. ‘What do you want to know?’
Cash gave her a blank look. She could have sworn his upper lip actually curled a fraction.
‘What I mean, Miss Shah, is what relevance does your company see in sending you? What do you bring to my party?’<
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Rebecca pulled her eyes away. Her thoughts skimmed over what she knew about Cash. Although now filthy rich and speaking like a public schoolboy, that was just one of his fronts. The painter had grown up in a place called Shirley Warren, a run-down council estate outside Southampton. His father was a dockworker, while his mother served meals at a local secondary school. Cash himself left school with virtually no qualifications but went to London, where he lived in a squat and made friends with musicians hanging around the fringes of fame.
The squat turned into a party scene for some of swinging London’s beautiful people and Cash helped turn it into a suitable venue, painting vast murals across walls, ceilings, floors, windows and doors. The house became known as Wonderland and as the parties got better so did the guest list. Soon after, the young rake was painting album covers, then murals in other houses and eventually portraits. That was back in the late sixties and Cash had never since been short of commissions, money or notoriety.
All in all, he was an intimidating character and Rebecca decided honesty was as safe an approach as any. She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I can bring a lot to the party but that’s not really my role, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, like you say, it’s your party. My job is to make sure everyone comes to the party.’
Cash snorted. She was unsure whether the sound was an expression of contempt or smothered humour. ‘Fine. That’s obvious. But why you? What made that woman decide to send you?’
Rebecca bit back on a smile. She wondered what Paul Cash thought of Claire Hamilton. And vice versa. And had he seduced her? Somehow she doubted it. The artist might have a rake’s reputation but from what she remembered of the conquests he had painted they were all extremely nubile, if not always conventionally attractive. La belle dame Hamilton did not fit into either category.
She shrugged. ‘I imagine “that woman” thought I was probably the best qualified person to send.’
‘What makes you say that?’
Rebecca turned to face Cash again. ‘I’m probably the closest thing they’ve got to someone with the right experience for your party. We don’t have any artists in the office… well, none I’m aware of. But my uncle was a photographer, quite well known. So, in the mind of someone working in the PR world that probably counts as an artistic background. And, before I worked for Claire Hamilton, I studied garden design.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s a long way from what you’re planning, I realise, but I guess that makes me the closest thing to an arboricultural artist in the office… or artistic arboriculturist if you prefer.’
Cash’s expression was hard to read. ‘Who was your uncle?’
‘VJ Shah.’
‘Really?’ His eyebrows lifted just a fraction. Cash fell silent for a moment, his pale gaze weighing her up.
Rebecca watched his face without comment, waiting for the outcome of whatever calculations were going on behind the artist’s eyes. She had guessed Cash would know her uncle’s name. Vikash Jai Shah had been her father’s elder brother. Born in Fiji, Vikash had come to England as a young boy just after the Second World War. As a teenager, while Rebecca’s father Mahesh worked in the family grocery store, the young Vikash somehow persuaded his parents to let him enrol at the local art college. Five years later his portraits were appearing in magazines worldwide, from The National Geographic to Vogue and Rolling Stone.
It was the money made by VJ, as he started calling himself, which had put his younger brother through university. It was thanks to her uncle that Rebecca’s father had become a respected GP rather than spend his life stacking shelves and selling cheap food to customers who looked down on him as just another foreign shopkeeper. Rebecca had always been very fond of her Uncle VJ, as well as extremely grateful for everything he had done for the family. Particularly as if Vikash had not made it possible for his little brother to go university, her father would never have met her mother and then there would have been no Rebecca.
It had been a genuine family tragedy when VJ died in a car crash in the south of France five years ago. He was driving his latest sports car too fast around the hairpins of the Cote d’Azur after a lengthy session photographing another Hollywood star. The only consolation for the family was that VJ died as he had lived: enjoying himself. Something Rebecca imagined Paul Cash could relate to.
‘That’s all very well.’ Cash gave an unimpressed sniff. ‘Your uncle was a good man with a camera. But do you really think his abilities qualify you to understand what we’re doing?’
‘No. But I think that’s completely irrelevant.’
‘What?’ Cash sounded irritated. This time he turned away from her and Rebecca’s heart sank a touch. He looked bored with the conversation but she decided to forge on.
‘Why should I be qualified in what you’re doing?’ She glanced at the third person in the room. Ron Meredith had hardly said a word except to say hello and had kept quiet while Cash lectured Rebecca on his grand project. Now looking distinctly uncomfortable, Meredith was fiddling with some pens on the desk. ‘You’re happy to work with a tree expert aren’t you?’ said Rebecca.
Cash glanced back over his shoulder. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Well, what other skills does your tree expert have? Are you an expert in publicity as well, Mr Meredith?’
The tree man shook his head. ‘No, sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m not. It just proves my point. Mr Cash doesn’t expect his tree expert to be a publicist so why should he expect his publicist to be a tree expert.’
She paused a moment. ‘After all, Mr Cash isn’t an expert on trees otherwise he wouldn’t be consulting you and he isn’t an expert on PR or he wouldn’t have engaged the Hamilton Agency. So, like I said, why should I be qualified in what you’re doing?’
Cash turned and grinned at her. ‘Damned if I know.’
It was the first time she had seen his mask melt and Rebecca’s stomach gave a little lurch.
‘So. Just a way of testing my mettle,’ she said.
‘Got it in one.’
‘And are you satisfied yet?’
Cash shrugged. ‘Oh, I’m never that,’ he said with a lazy smile. ‘But I’m sure we can work on it. You’ll do, Rebecca, you’ll do nicely. Beauty and balls.’
She held a hand up. ‘Please, leave the looks out of it.’
‘Ohhh.’ Cash looked mournful. ‘Do I really have to?’
Rebecca nodded. ‘Yes. If you want me to work for you, that’s a rule. I’m here to work. How I look is… at best irrelevant, at worst…’
‘Harassment?’
‘Condescending,’ she said. ‘Which is almost as bad.’
Cash smiled. ‘Do you have any other rules?’
‘Well…’ Rebecca’s expression thawed a little. ‘I’m sure I could make a few up if I need to.’
As she drove away from Haworth Manor half an hour later, Rebecca had a grin plastered across her face. She felt much better than earlier in the day. She sensed she was going to enjoy working with Paul Cash. She was not sure she entirely trusted him but, on the other hand, he made no pretence at hiding the type of person he was. He was challenging but refreshing too: certainly an improvement on the firm’s other clients.
11. Folds For Your Sheep
Tuesday, 3.50pm:
Van Hulle led the way out onto the balcony. They were on the fourth floor of the block. Below, landscapers were busy laying turf and breaking up ground compacted by heavy machinery: preparing the ground for shrub beds and trees. Across the road, a team of workmen was installing a playground.
He waved a heavy hand at the scene. ‘I thought you would get a better overall picture from here. It’s easier to appreciate the scale of what we’re doing.’
Louise Brent looked to either side. From the balcony, she could see another seven blocks. They were all four storey and each block contained sixteen flats. Beyond the playground, she could see more buildings going u
p. These were going to be rows of terraced houses, with a small precinct of shops and other community facilities in their heart.
Van Hulle smiled stiffly.
He seemed a little awkward to Louise, perhaps uneasy at being interviewed or simply reluctant to take time out of his office. He was big and his face had a heaviness that stopped him being good-looking. He possessed presence of a sort but there was also something unattractive about him. Dour, she decided: worthy but dull.
‘This will be the largest social housing development anywhere in the country,’ he stated, his stolid tone deadening the ambition of the claim. ‘This project will set an example to other cities. We will show them what can be done if they have the will to take responsibility.’
Louise nodded. In quick shorthand, she jotted the quote down in her notebook. ‘But you’ll still make a profit?’
Van Hulle’s face twitched. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That is so.’
He looked away from Louise and closed his hands slowly around the balcony rail. ‘We will. In one sense that is not important. As a company, we are not in this business to make money. But, in another, it is essential.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because we must prove this is cost-effective. To demonstrate it is not just charity; that it is possible to do good and not be out of pocket.’
He shrugged. ‘This project has been costed very carefully. If we were building ten houses it would be more difficult. Probably, we would have problems breaking even. But, because of the scale on which we are operating, we can make economies. When you are building dozens of units you can cut costs and make significant savings. And that means although we are spending millions on social housing we still expect to make a profit.’
