The Greek Escape

by Karen Swan

  She had another attempt at the crossword. Five down was driving her nuts.

  Understand wise words and oscillate.

  She chewed on the pen, trying to keep her mind mobile and elastic, trying not to think about how bad it must have looked when Poppy had been wheeled in here eight days earlier. Who was living with the image of having seen her, bloodied and broken, that night?

  The lift doors pinged open again and she looked up reflexively, even as she expected the disappointment of another stranger’s face. Only, this time, she recognized the bone structure of the woman walking towards her: a high forehead and broad cheeks, fine-boned hands and elegant ankles. She was a striking woman, the sort who looked as grand in wellies or an apron as in a ballgown. Her hair was cut in a short bob and she looked put-together in pearl earrings, even though her trousers were creased and there was a small tea stain on her shirt – trembling hands, no doubt. Her complexion was pale beneath her make-up and her smile took effort, as though being winched up on strings.

  Chloe rose to standing, her breath held.

  ‘You must be Chloe. I’m Rosalind, Poppy’s mother.’ Her voice was clear, albeit quiet, as though the fact of her words couldn’t be relied upon any more.

  Chloe wanted to say it was a pleasure to meet her at last, but the words got stuck in her throat. Where was the pleasure in this?

  ‘Poppy has told us so much about you.’

  ‘She’s awake?’ Chloe’s body stiffened with sudden hope.

  Rosalind hesitated. ‘Not yet.’ The words seemed like steel rods being pulled from her bones. ‘But the doctors have begun to withdraw the medication that’s been keeping her under. She should wake up any time in the next few hours.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Chloe felt a rush of panic. She had pulled Poppy’s mother away from her bedside, just as the prospect of her daughter regaining consciousness was suddenly a reality. ‘And you’re down here with me? I mustn’t keep you.’

  ‘I should have clarified – she’ll wake any time in the next few hours, to days,’ Rosalind continued kindly. ‘It’s fine for a few minutes.’

  Chloe stared at the flowers she’d brought, not sure what to say suddenly, and she felt a crisis of spirit that Rosalind was the one to have to find conversation, to comfort her.

  ‘I’m sorry you can’t see her yet. They’re being terribly strict about who can and can’t visit,’ Rosalind apologized, as though she was personally responsible for hospital policy. ‘But hopefully over the next week, if all goes to plan . . .’

  ‘Absolutely. We’ve all been desperate with worry, at work I mean. Everyone loves Poppy. She brings the entire team together. Every day we keep asking Jack if there’s any news.’

  ‘Yes, he’s been a great support to us, sorting out our hotel arrangements, transport and the like. He’s even been sending over hot meals for us.’

  Chloe winced. Hot meals. Why hadn’t she thought of it?

  Rosalind was watching her, seeing the recrimination, guilt and shame crossing over her face. She gestured to the seats behind them and they both sat. ‘It’s a great comfort to us to know that Poppy is surrounded by so many people who care about her. It can be hard knowing if that’s the case when your child lives so far away.’ She smiled. ‘Well, I imagine your parents must feel the same, don’t they?’

  Chloe nodded. ‘I’ve only been here five months. My mum still calls me weekly to check I’m eating enough fruit.’

  ‘You all grow up too quickly, that’s the problem,’ Rosalind said sadly. ‘One moment Pops was eleven and doing dance routines in the drawing room and bounding round the garden with Rollo – our Lab; the next, she was living out here and flying in private jets . . .’ She shook her head in bafflement. ‘It was all so fast. We were worried it would turn her head, this lifestyle. She was always such a down-to-earth girl and money always corrupts in the end, doesn’t it? We’ve seen it happen to friends of ours. It’s hard not to think that if she’d only been doing a normal job, this would never have happened.’

  Chloe knew that Poppy’s family, though rich in assets and heritage, were cash-strapped compared to the rich elite that now hobnobbed at their table. ‘Oh, you can’t think like that,’ Chloe said, reaching over to touch her arm, seeing the despair wash over her face like a storm surge, ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ taking root. ‘It was just a horrible case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t though, was it?’ Rosalind’s blue eyes shone bluer through budding tears.

  ‘. . . What?’ Chloe’s voice became hollow, tympanic; and she felt an arrow of fear at the way Rosalind was looking at her.

  ‘Didn’t Jack tell you? The CCTV shows the driver deliberately swerving.’ Rosalind shook her head, as though baffled, mystified, the words not making sense. ‘How could anybody do that?’ she whispered. ‘To my little girl?’ Her voice split, cleaved in two like a seasoned log, and she dropped her head into her hands, weeping silently as Chloe, mechanically, automatically wrapped her arms around her, Rosalind’s words knocking against her ribcage and skull like hammerblows; they didn’t make sense. This had been deliberate?

  ‘Do they know who? Why?’ Chloe asked, when Rosalind began to regain herself. ‘Do they have any leads?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘The registration plates were stolen; and they lost track of the car over Brooklyn bridge. A couple of cameras not working, apparently.’

  There was a long pause as Chloe tried to digest what she was being told, a cold clammy chill rippling over her skin. ‘But is she safe now? What if . . . what if . . . ?’ She couldn’t finish the sentence: what if they came back?

  ‘There’s a police officer outside the room,’ Rosalind said, dabbing her eyes with crooked fingers, and steadily regaining her composure. ‘Hence why security is so tight.’

  Chloe blinked at her, feeling her own breathing speed up, the panic begin to rush. She had never imagined, not once in this crazy week when she’d thought she’d been so helpful standing in Poppy’s shoes, going shopping and to the opera and sparing the blushes of randy, elderly men in hotel corridors, not once had she considered that this was anything other than a tragic accident, a matter of passing the time until her friend came back. ‘So they don’t have any leads at all?’

  ‘None. No names, no motives,’ Rosalind said, her eyes glazed with fear. ‘All we know is that someone out there tried to murder my daughter.’

  ‘Open up!’ Her fist hurt but she kept on banging. She didn’t care whether security was called, or the police. She wouldn’t stop until—

  The door opened and Jack, dressed in sweat shorts and pulling a t-shirt over his head, looked back at her in bewilderment. ‘Jeez, what the hell, Chlo?’ he said, looking to see whether there was anyone else with her in the corridor.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ she said, angrily pushing past him into his hallway. Her entire apartment would fit into his hall. ‘When were you going to tell me what’s really going on?’

  He blinked, looking confused. ‘With what?’

  ‘With what?’ she echoed in disbelief. ‘With Poppy! I’ve just come from the hospital.’

  ‘Fuck, is she awake?’ He was rigid with attention now. Almost everyone reacted the same way.

  ‘No, Jack!’ she almost yelled. ‘She’s not! I’m talking about the fact that it wasn’t a hit and run at all – like you said. That the police are investigating it as attempted murder!’

  ‘Shit.’ He sighed, visibly slumping. ‘You’d better come in.’

  She threw her arms up in the air as if proving that she already had.

  ‘I mean wine. We need wine,’ he muttered, ushering her through.

  She followed him into an open-plan space, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides giving a view of the treetops on the west side of Central Park. Overscaled cubed sofas were arranged in a U-shape with faded, shaved-back rugs on the floors and a matt-black concrete-topped kitchen at the far end. His interior designer had clearly decided to
let the view do most of the decorating.

  He pulled a bottle of rosé from the fridge whilst she, like everyone else, walked over to the windows and looked down – as a relative newcomer to the city, she still hadn’t got used to the dramatic drops which were just part of life for real Manhattanites; Jack’s apartment wasn’t even considered to be that high on the fifty-third floor.

  ‘Here.’ He handed her a glass and jerked his head towards the sofas. ‘Come. Let’s sit soft and talk.’

  Reluctantly, still mad with him, she did as she was told, glaring at him from over the top of her wine glass as she sipped and he fidgeted.

  ‘Look, I get why you’re cross with me but I swear, I was doing what I thought was best – for everyone. For the team, the company, our clients. If it gets out that this is a police investigation—’

  ‘It’s going to, Jack! There’s no way something like that can be kept secret.’

  ‘I know. And I wasn’t trying to keep it secret as such, I just wanted . . .’ He exhaled, looking beaten. ‘I just wanted to buy us some time. It’s been such a headfuck this week; everyone’s really low about the accident. Can you imagine what would happen to morale if they found out it wasn’t an accident at all but that someone had targeted her?’

  Chloe winced, unable even to hear the words. The very idea of it was disgusting, diabolical. ‘They must have some leads.’

  ‘I know, I think they do too but they’re not sharing at the moment.’ He shrugged. ‘They interviewed me last Sunday, routine stuff – wanting to know if I knew of any problems in her personal life, whether she’d made any enemies at work—’

  ‘Enemies at work?’ she laughed drily. ‘Do they know what we do? We make people’s lives better, nicer, prettier, funner.’ She tutted. ‘And yes, I know that’s not a real word,’ she said before he could. ‘But how could she have any enemies from that?’

  ‘That’s precisely what I told them,’ he sighed, drinking deeply and almost clearing the glass in a single gulp. He looked across at her. ‘I don’t suppose she ever mentioned anything to you? An irate ex? A client who wanted more? You sat together.’

  She frowned, scanning her mind, wishing it could work like a computer program looking for bugs. But it didn’t. She was flawed, forgetful and stressed, most of the time more preoccupied with her own problems, Jack like a screensaver in her mind. ‘No . . . nothing like that.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘As I can be. I’m certain I’d remember something like that.’

  He sighed. ‘Yeah. That’s what I thought.’

  She looked at him, staring at his profile as he looked out over the famous city skyline. ‘Jack—’

  He glanced back at her; her voice had dropped and softened, all the rage from five minutes earlier now spent. ‘Yes?’

  ‘If we don’t know why this happened to her, how can we be sure that . . . that the person who did this isn’t going to go back and try again? They’re still out there; they could just be waiting – waiting to see whether she wakes up or not. And if she does . . . ?’

  ‘You mustn’t think like that,’ he said sharply. ‘She’s safer now than she’s ever been; there’s an armed guard outside her door.’

  ‘I know, but—’ Her voice was tremulous and her eyes glistened. ‘The only consolation in this week has been telling myself that the worst has already happened; that every day that’s passed has meant Poppy was getting stronger, better, safer. But what if that’s a lie? What if this is only the beginning? No one seems to have any idea why this happened to her or what this person wants from her—’ She could hear her voice growing shrill.

  ‘Chloe, do you see now why I didn’t tell you? Why I’m keeping it from everyone for as long as I can? All it does is sow panic and fear and confusion.’

  She nodded, looking away, trying to keep the tears back. It didn’t help to fall apart on him. It didn’t help Poppy.

  ‘Right now, we all need to be clear-headed and . . . calm,’ he said with a heavy sigh, sounding exhausted himself. ‘We have to stay calm.’

  She wiped the tears away with the heel of her hand, not caring that she was probably smudging the vestiges of last night’s mascara. She stared at her hands. ‘Is this why Tom’s come over? Does he know too?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no—’

  She frowned, confused.

  ‘I mean, yes he knows about the police investigation, but no, I don’t think it’s the only reason he’s come over here.’

  She took another gulp of wine, trying to hide her expression behind the glass. ‘What then?’

  ‘Personal reasons.’

  Her heart went into a gallop.

  ‘P-personal? But what’s happened?’

  Tom sighed heavily again. ‘It’s him and Lucy,’ he said darkly, rolling his eyes. ‘I think it’s all off.’

  ‘Off?’ she mumbled, repeating him idiotically, but her brain wouldn’t work properly. She felt assaulted from every angle. She stared into her glass but she felt him watching her, a silence blooming. ‘But didn’t they just get engaged?’

  ‘Yeah. But listen, don’t repeat any of this, the last thing he needs is his personal life becoming office gossip fodder. I’m only telling you because I know you and him go way back; the two of you ran that office from the start.’ There was a pause as he watched her. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t told you, actually.’

  ‘Well we . . . we haven’t really had a chance to catch up yet,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s all been so crazy.’

  ‘I guess.’

  She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. It was no small amount of wonderment to her that Jack had never seemed to guess the relationship between her and his business partner; for the first month here, she’d been waiting for him to instigate ‘the chat’, where he would confide his suspicions or just come straight out with it. But he never had. Obviously, with Jack being based over here and her and Tom back in London, it had been easier for the two of them to be together without being rumbled; and they had always taken extraordinary precautions to make sure they were never seen together by the team – that they didn’t arrive at or leave the office at the same time, that they didn’t use nicknames or pet names, that she never sat in his office and no incriminating emails were sent. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘No idea, he’s being tight-lipped on the matter. But everyone’s pretty stunned – as you know they’ve been together since uni days; Lucy’s practically part of the furniture. It’s been “Tom and Lucy” as far back as anyone can remember.’

  ‘Right.’ It was certainly all she could remember. Lucy had got to him first – that was what it came down to. It simply didn’t matter that he loved Chloe more, that they both knew they were meant to be together, that their love was like a heat that kept her warm even when he wasn’t around. Lucy was fragile, a beautiful but frail creature who had never believed she was quite good enough for her highly social, rarely-there parents. She had low self-esteem, made manifest by an eating disorder in her teens and a heavy reliance on smokes and chianti now in her twenties. Tom hovered over her more like an anxious parent than a boyfriend, never quite sure if she was ‘okay’ to be left for long periods.

  Jack shrugged. ‘Lucy’s in a right state by all accounts.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ she mumbled.

  Jack shrugged. ‘Yeah, although . . . I dunno. I sometimes think these long-term relationships can . . . sort of peak, you know? You’re together for so long, you can’t imagine not being together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best match going forward. Life moves on. People change.’

  Chloe shot him a look, checking whether there was a question behind the statement. Besides, what would he know about going the distance? He considered anything that went past the weekend a long-term relationship. ‘I guess.’

  He regarded her interestedly. ‘What about you? Are you with anybody?’

  ‘Me? God, no,’ she said briskly, shaking her head just the once and hiding her face behind her glass a
gain. ‘What?’ she asked, as he continued to stare.

  ‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re just such a dark horse, that’s all. You never talk about yourself.’

  ‘Because it’s genuinely not interesting.’

  ‘Oh I doubt that,’ Jack demurred gallantly. ‘I think you underestimate yourself, Chloe Marston.’ He glanced out at the illuminated skyline. ‘. . . I only ask because Tom said he thought you’d been seeing someone in London.’

  ‘Did he?’ She tried not to look overly engaged in the conversation, even though it had made her heart skip two beats. ‘I wonder why he thought that.’

  ‘So, there wasn’t some big break-up then? That wasn’t the reason for finally relenting and coming over here with so little notice?’

  Exactly so. ‘Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Huh,’ he nodded, when she made no move to elaborate further. A silence stretched, cat-like, between them. ‘Well, anyway, Tom’s in bits, it’s all a right mess,’ he said finally as they both looked out onto the skyline. ‘I reckon he’s come here to clear his head; put some space between them and get some perspective on the Lucy thing, you know?’

  ‘Yes.’ But she wondered where the truth really lay: did he want more space from Lucy? Or less from her? ‘So how long’s he going to be out here for?’

  ‘A week, maybe two? A lot will depend on what happens with Poppy, of course.’

  ‘Where’s he staying?’ She asked the question as lightly as she could.

  Jack’s eyes darted back to her. ‘The Howard, I think.’ A quizzical frown puckered his brow. ‘Why?’