“Good. What about the other thing? Did you find anything on Jack Jones?”

  I sit forward to listen but the partition reaches the roof and I can’t hear a word. I’m too weary to deal with work and Jack Jones right now. I rest my chin on Sandy’s head and close my eyes.

  * * *

  Jackson wakes us and helps Sandy out of the car. Carrying my father’s torn clothes, Sandy’s handbag and the documents from my meeting at Eclectic—which feels like more than just a few hours ago—he walks alongside Sandy as I lead us to the house.

  “I think I’m going to make a cup of tea,” Sandy says. “Geoffrey, would you like tea?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  I hang my coat on the stand by the door then stare at the bloodstains—on the chair lift at the bottom of the stairs, on the wood floor, sprayed on the wall. “I’m going to clean this up.”

  “Would you like me to do that?” Jackson asks.

  “No. Thank you. You’ve already done enough.”

  As Sandy and Jackson move to the kitchen, I make my way upstairs, my eyes taking in each drop of blood. I follow them into my father’s dark and empty bedroom.

  I flick on the light and my eyes are immediately drawn to the soup bowl cast into the middle of the floor, red sauce spilled across the carpet. My father’s small lamp has also fallen to the floor by the bedside table, the bulb shattered. The bedside table is out of place from its normal position parallel to the bed. A water glass rests on its side in the crevasse between the table and the wall.

  I take a step back, absorbing the scene. The duvet is in a messed bundle, as if it’s been flung from one side of the bed to the other. I wonder if that’s what has knocked my father’s favourite picture out of place at the opposite side of his bed. It’s a framed photograph of my father, Sandy and me on Brighton Pier, each of us holding candy floss. It’s always positioned where he can see it, a perfect angle, just-so. Now it faces away from his bed.

  I rest my back against the wall and slide to the floor, taking in everything that’s wrong with this tableau, rubbing my hands up and down my suddenly ice-cold arms.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Jesus! Fuck! Jackson, you scared me.” He steps into the room and turns his head almost in sequence around the same evidence I just witnessed.

  “He struggled,” Jackson says, matter of factly.

  “He was weak,” I tell him, rising to stand by his side, my arms folded across my chest.

  Jackson continues to stare at the bed. “How weak?”

  I shrug. “Very weak. Struggled to feed himself, clean himself, walk even.” As I say the words my brows scrunch and the subtle shift in the air makes me think Jackson is having the exact same thoughts as me. “In theory, he’d have struggled to throw his bowl or even cast his duvet to the other side of the bed.”

  Jackson drags his brown fingers along his jaw but doesn’t speak.

  “And if he couldn’t do those things, I’m standing here wondering how he could’ve made it to the stairs alone.”

  My head starts to pound and a heavy shiver moves through my bones. Sandy said she was outside. I drop my head into my hands and rub my fingers roughly into my eye sockets. Of course she was. This is insane. He obviously did struggle to get out of bed, that’s why everything is such a mess.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’m nestled into the corner of the sofa under the lounge lamp, my knees curled up in my leggings to make a table for my sheets of case law, when my father walks through the front door. I hear him place his keys on the side table and drop his bag by the hat stand, then make his way to the lounge.

  “Hello, darling. You’re a still up.”

  “Reading case law for Torts,” I say, holding up the documents on my lap. “Sandy left your supper in the oven.”

  “Is she in bed?”

  “Yes. She fell asleep watching a movie.”

  “Just us then.”

  My father turns a crystal glass from the bar table the right way up and pours himself a glass of his single malt Scotch from a decanter.

  “Would you like one?” he asks.

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  “It’s nice coming home to see you in the holidays. I miss you in term time.” He takes a seat on the sofa next to me. He leaves his coat and scrubs at work but I can still smell the hospital corridors in his beige cords and caramel jumper. “Torts, eh? Negligence.”

  “Mmm hmm, not my favourite. I’m reading a clinical negligence case just now actually.”

  “Duty of care, professional skill?”

  “Yep.”

  He takes a small sip of his Scotch and sighs heavily.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  “Yes, sweetpea, I’m just tired. It’s been a long shift.”

  I put my case law on the coffee table and lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder. “You’ve got sad eyes, not tired eyes. You’ve come straight in and poured yourself a neat Scotch, and even though the house smells of Sandy’s pastry, you haven’t even gone to look at the pie in the oven.”

  He wraps an arm around my shoulder and kisses my brow. “Do you remember Mr. Harrington, Gareth Harrington?”

  Of course I remember. One of the few patients my father has ever referred to by first name. Gareth Harrington has been in my father’s care for almost a year and a half. He was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour that was wrapped around his spinal cord. He was told he had six months to live.

  “The man that no one else would agree to operate on,” I say.

  Gareth has two young daughters and a wife. When my father looked at the scans, he knew all he could offer would be time but he told the family that he would try, if that was what they wanted. They begged my father to operate.

  “Yes, that’s him. He’s back in hospital now.”

  “He’s sick again?”

  “Well I guess he was never better. Not really. It was never possible to remove the whole tumour, but it’s grown back and there’s nothing more I can do.”

  “Is he palliative?”

  “I’m afraid so. He might have a week.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I know you like him and his family.”

  My father rests his chin on my head. “He’s stuck in a bed. He can’t hold a conversation and today the nurses couldn’t get him onto a commode so they’re taking his food away in the morning.” With a gulp, he drains the remainder of his Scotch and rests the empty glass on his knee. “Sometimes I wish we were like dogs. The way it all ends for dogs, it’s humane. When it’s the end, when it’s the end and the dog is ill, we don’t pretend. We do what’s fair. We recognise that they’re in pain, that they have no quality of life, that they don’t want to be around anymore and we make a decision to cuddle them whilst we put them to sleep and send them to a better world, a world where they won’t hurt.”

  I turn my head and kiss my father’s shoulder. “What you did for Mr. Harrington was humane, Dad. You gave him a gift that no one else was willing to give him. You gave him time, time to play with his daughters, time to say goodbye properly.”

  “I wish I could help him now, Scarlett.”

  The next day my father came home from work and told me he had been to visit Gareth Harrington and that Gareth had died in his bed, peaceful with his family around him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The hospital is even grimmer than last night, if that’s possible. The grey overcast sky shadows the corridors. Sandy and I are amongst the first visitors and if it weren’t for the occasional laughter of the nurses at their station, my father’s ward would be deathly quiet.

  “Hi, Dad,” I whisper, kissing his scalp.

  The deposits in my father’s catheter bag are dark and there’s a yellow cast to his skin that I haven’t seen before. I’ve called in a working-from-home day but I have no desire to look at work. Sandy and I nestle into two seats on either side of my father’s bed. We sit and we watch him. We take it in turns to make a coffee trip or a toilet trip, never leaving him alone. We exchange pleasantries with the nurses as they pass through to check on my father. One nurse tells us the doctor will be doing his rounds in the early afternoon and he intends to discuss my father’s condition with us.

  Amanda turns up on her lunch hour with two big bags of goodies: sandwiches, muffins, chocolate bars, pastries. A nurse brings in a third chair and Amanda tells ridiculous stories that seem to keep the three of us laughing continuously for an hour. She tells Sandy about her new casual relationship with Williams as if Sandy is her best friend. I cringe, hoping my father can’t hear.

  “Anyway, you’ve had your head in files all week but don’t think I’ve forgotten that you never told me what happened after the charity gala,” she says through a bite of brownie. “It didn’t go unnoticed that you and Gregory left together right after that steamy dance. They didn’t even say goodbye you know, Sandy.”

  Sandy raises a brow above the walnut whip that’s half in and half out of her mouth. She and Amanda share a cheeky giggle.

  “Gregory didn’t come back?” I ask.

  Amanda shakes her head as she munches down on a double chocolate chip cookie.

  I have to fight from closing my eyes and rolling my head back, remembering that dance and the press of his lips against my skin.

  “Well, I honestly can’t tell you where he went but we didn’t leave together. We had a row and I left. I thought he would’ve carried on with the party.”

  “You had a row? But you looked so, so into each other. He couldn’t get enough of you. At one point, Sandy, I thought he was going to take her right there on the table in front of everyone.”

  “Bloody hell, Amanda!” I exclaim.

  Sandy laughs heartily through the last bite of her walnut whip.

  “Oh come on, Scarlett, we’re not three years old,” Amanda says, rolling her eyes and wiping chocolate remnants from the side of her mouth.

  “Still, you can’t say things like that. What if my dad can hear you? Pass me some of those goodies.”

  Amanda throws a cookie from her side of the bed to mine.

  “So, you had a fight, what about?” Amanda probes.

  I want to tell her but I can’t. I can’t betray Gregory and I can’t tell her that I willingly closed that deal, knowing what I know.

  “Something and nothing.”

  I walk Amanda out to her car after lunch, turning on my phone for the first time today. As I’m waving her off, I listen to my voicemails, ignoring all but one.

  “Scarlett, I didn’t get a chance to say how sorry I am about your dad. I can only imagine how you’re feeling and I’d like to help, in any way I can. I thought, if you’d let me, I could take you out tonight. Make up for last night and take your mind off things. I’d like to do this, Scarlett. Please.”

  What would you make of Gregory Ryans, Dad?

  I knew or hoped somewhere inside me that Gregory wasn’t offering the usual completion meeting last night. The norm would be all clients, Lawrence, Williams and Gregory, going for dinner. Toasting the latest addition to their empire. I think part of me wanted him to be offering dinner alone, just the two of us, and the other part of me wouldn’t dare to think it. He’s insanely attractive and wealthy, he could have any woman he wants. Sure, that’s part of it. The other part is that, I knew last night and I know now, if I’m alone in a room with that man, client or not, I won’t be able to resist the effect he has on me.

  My reasons for saying yes last night still stand. I have questions to ask him.

  And, God, I want to go and see that face, drown in that scent, be close to the heat of his body again.

  “Just go,” Sandy snaps when I’m back at my father’s bedside, my legs crossed beneath me in the chair.

  I stop twisting my bottom lip in my fingers. “No.” I sound much more emphatic than I feel.

  “You heard Doctor Jefferson, there’s no chance he’s going to wake up today. There’s no sign of improvement.”

  “Which is just another reason why I shouldn’t go. How can I go out for dinner when my dad is half...” I stop myself short of admitting that final word.

  “We’ve got to leave here sometime, Scarlett, and what else are you going to do except mope around the house?”

  “I...no. I’m not going.”

  “If your father thought you weren’t living your life because of him he’d be so cross with you.”

  “Sandy, I...it’s not just that.”

  “It’ll take your mind off all of this. It’s just dinner, Scarlett.”

  The thought that dinner could lead to me feeling his touch, feeling his lips against my flesh again, makes me crave everything about him. I know it would mean more to me than just dinner.

  Sandy reaches a hand to my shoulder. “Trust your instincts.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jackson pulls up before I’ve even finished my hair. Half the curls are pinned loosely to the back of my head, the other half still hang impatiently around my shoulders. As I pin frantically, I consider the two dresses hanging on my wardrobe, both black, one tight fitting to the knee with a high neck and open back, the other with tiny straps and a loose gather at the chest, also with a drooping open back.

  At least five minutes pass as I hurriedly finish my updo. Hearing the doorbell ring adds to the flutterflies in my chest and the anxiety churning low in my abdomen.

  Sandy opens the door and boisterously jokes with Jackson downstairs. By the time I’ve added the finishing touch to my make-up—poppy-red Clarins lipstick—and spritzed myself in Coco Mademoiselle, another five minutes have passed. I take a pair of black tights from my drawer and sit on my bed but before they reach my knees, I pull them off and swap them for stockings. I opt for the thin-strap dress and slip my feet into an uncomfortable pair of black calf-leather Jimmy Choos, possibly the most extravagant purchase of my life.

  “I’m so sorry, Jackson,” I say, interrupting the surprisingly flirtatious conversation taking place in the hallway.

  Both Jackson and Sandy turn sharply, as if they’ve been caught in the act. Sandy hands me my tailored black winter coat and tells me to have fun as I pull the waist belt tight. I give her a cursory what-was-that? look before leaving house.

  “I doubt Mr. Ryans will be thrilled with my timekeeping,” I say to Jackson as he holds open the door to the empty back seat.

  “Somehow, I think you’ll be forgiven,” Jackson says, buckling himself in.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  Jackson shrugs and chuckles. Something, or rather someone, seems to have put him in a peculiar jovial mood.

  Just before seven-thirty we roll to a stop alongside a red carpet. My eyes trace gold railings from the pavement up to the theatre entrance. There, on the top step, Gregory is waiting, legs parted, shoulders back, hands tucked into the trouser pockets of his dinner suit, separating the tails of his jacket from the fastened button at the waist.

  Jackson winks as he opens the door and gives me a hand out of the Mercedes.

  I can’t take my eyes off Gregory. Everything else in the world disappears as I get lost in this perfect man.

  He walks down the steps and kisses my cheek. His lips linger against my skin. The sensation exactly as I’ve replayed countless times in my head. I lean into his kiss, wishing I could feel his mouth on mine. When I open my hazel-greens, he’s gazing right back at me. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispers.

  My insides defy the concept of gravity.

  He traces one finger down the side of my face to my chin, never dropping his gaze from mine. I try to swallow my insatiable need to touch what lies beneath his suit, to have his naked body take over mine the way I’ve imagined. He gives me a half, knowing smile. I’m defenseless against my own desire.

  “Some completion meeting when we’re the only two people here, Mr. Ryans.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t mind if we celebrate closing the deal alone tonight.”

  “Presumptuous,” I tease, raising a brow.

  “Indeed,” he says, his half smile still arrogantly toying with me. Delicious. “Come on, you kept me waiting, the show’s about the start.”

  I shake my head and ask myself as much as him, “Why can’t I seem to say no to you?”

  “I’m not the kind of man who takes no for an answer. Especially not from you.” He steps to one side, gesturing for me to move into the theatre, and rests his hand at the bottom of my back. A small move that makes me internally scream at all the sensitive sites in my body to back the hell down.

  “What are we going to see?”

  “The new Dame Judi Dench play.”

  There’s a distinct air of cocky self-satisfaction about him but I’m too delighted to care.

  An attendant leads us into the box Gregory has reserved. A bottle of Dom Perignon with two glasses and a selection of canapés are waiting for us on a low, dark wood table between two velvet chairs. I manage to catch a glimpse of the flavours written on small white place cards before the lights turn down.

  The band strikes up and there’s rapturous applause when Dame Judi Dench, followed by Jude Law, enters the stage for the opening scene. My grin is so big I feel like Julia Roberts. Gregory watches me as I clap loudly from the edge of my seat.

  Leaning in to his ear I whisper, “This is amazing, thank you so much.”

  He snaps his head round to face me, his lips almost brushing against mine, his minty breath drifting into my mouth. My stomach leaps. I want him to do this. He lifts my chin with his index finger and my lips open wider, my tongue braced, ready for his taste. Something about the dark room full of people increases my need for the forbidden touch. His thumb trails my lips, then he audibly swallows any desire he might have had and hands me a glass of champagne. He clinks my glass with his and turns to the stage, leaving me feeling utterly confused, disoriented and desperate.

  Have I imagined everything?

  “I can’t believe you remembered,” I say as the applause for the end of the first act dies down.

  “I think I remember everything you say to me and the exact manner in which you say it. Some of it I wish I didn’t remember.”

 

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