THREE
December 20th, two years
ago
Qīngtíng Restaurant, Hong Kong
Oliver stared out
at the midnight sky, high enough above the flooding lights of Hong Kong to actually see a few stars, and did his best to ignore the screaming lack of attention being paid to him by Qīngtíng’s staff as they closed up the restaurant for the night.
The arms crossed firmly across his chest were the only thing keeping his savaged heart in his chest cavity, and the beautifully wrapped gift crushed in his clenched fist was the only thing stopping him from slamming it into the wall.
She hadn’t come
.
For the first time in years, Audrey hadn’t come.
FOUR
December 20th, last
year
Obsiblue prawn and caviar with Royale Cabanon Oyster and Yuzu
‘You’re lucky I’m
even here.’
The rumbled accusation filtered through the murmur of low conversation and the chink of expensive silverware on Qīngtíng’s
equally expensive porcelain. Audrey turned towards Oliver’s neutral displeasure, squared the shoulders of her cream linen jacket and smoothed her hands down her skirt.
‘Yet here you are.’
A grunt lurched in Oliver’s tanned throat where a business tie should have been holding his navy silk shirt appropriately together. Or at the very least some buttons. Benefit of being such a regular patron—or maybe so rich—niceties like dress code didn’t seem to apply to him.
‘Guess I’m slow to learn,’ he said, still dangerously calm. ‘Or just naively optimistic.’
‘Not so naive. I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You don’t look too pleased about it.’
‘Your email left me little choice. I didn’t realise how proficient you’d become in emotional blackmail.’
‘It wasn’t blackmail, Audrey. I just wanted to know if you were coming. To save me wasting another day and the flight from Shanghai.’
Shame battled annoyance. Yes, she’d stood him up last year, but she found it hard to imagine a man like Oliver left alone and dateless in a flash restaurant for very long. Especially at Christmas. Especially in a city full of homesick expats. She was sure he wouldn’t have withered away from lack of company.
‘And playing the dead best friend card seemed equal to your curiosity, did it?’
Because that was the only reason she was here at all. The relationship he’d had with her recently passed husband. And she’d struggled to shake the feeling that she needed to provide some closure for Oliver on that friendship.
His hazel eyes narrowed just a hint in that infuriating, corporate, too-cool-for-facial-expression way he had. But he didn’t bite. Instead he just stared at her, almost daring her to go on. Daring her, just as much, to hold his glower.
‘They got new carpet,’ she announced pointlessly, thrilled for an excuse not to let him enslave her gaze. Stylised and vibrant dragonflies decorated the floor where once obscure oriental patterns had previously lain. She sank the pointed tip of her cream shoe into the plush opulence and watched it disappear into Weihei Province’s best hand-tufted weave. ‘Nice.’
‘Gerard got another Michelin.’ He shrugged. ‘New carpet seemed a reasonable celebration.’
Somehow, Oliver managed to make her failure to know that one of Hong Kong’s most elite restaurants had re-carpeted sound like a personal failure on her part.
‘Mrs Audrey...’
Audrey suppressed the urge to correct that title as she turned and took the extended hand of the maître d’ between her own. ‘Ming-húa, lovely to see you again.’
‘You look beautiful,’ Ming-húa said, raising her hand to his lips. ‘We missed you last Christmas.’
Oliver shot her a sideways look as they were shepherded towards their customary part of the restaurant. The end where the Chinese version of Christmas decorations were noticeably denser. They racked up a bill this one day of the year large enough to warrant the laying on of extra festive bling and the discreet removal of several other tables, yet, this year, more tables than ever seemed to have been sacrificed. It left them with complete privacy, ensconced in the western end of the restaurant between the enormous indoor terrarium filled with verdant water-soaked plants and fluorescent dragonflies, and the carpet-to-ceiling reinforced window that served as the restaurant’s outer wall.
Beyond the glass, Victoria Harbour and the high-tech sparkle and glint of hundreds more towering giants just like this side of the shore. Behind the glass, the little haven that Audrey had missed so badly last Christmas. Tranquil, private and filled with the kind of gratuitous luxury a girl really should indulge in only once a year.
Emotional sanctuary.
The sanctuary she’d enjoyed for the past five years.
Minus the last one.
And Oliver Harmer was a central part of all that gratuitous luxury. Especially looking like he did today. She didn’t like to notice his appearance—he had enough ego all by himself without her appreciation adding to it—but, here, it was hard to escape; wherever she looked, a polished glass surface of one kind or another offered her a convenient reflection of some part of him. Parts that were infinitely safer facing away from her.
Chilled Cristal sat—as it always did—at the centre of the small table between two large, curved sofas. The first and only furniture she’d ever enjoyed that was actually worthy of the name
lounge
. Certainly, by the end of the day they’d both be sprawled across their respective sides, bodies sated with the best food and drink, minds saturated with good conversation, a year’s worth of catching up all done and dusted.
At least that was how it normally went.
But things weren’t normal any more.
Suddenly the little space she’d craved so much felt claustrophobic and the chilled Cristal looked like something from a cheesy seduction scene. And the very idea that she could do anything other than perch nervously on the edge of her sofa for the next ten or twelve hours...?
Ludicrous.
‘So what are you hunting this trip?’ Oliver asked, no qualms whatsoever about flopping down into his lounge, snagging up a quarter-filled flute on the way down. So intently casual she wondered if he’d practised the manoeuvre. As he settled back his white shirt stretched tight across his torso and his dark trousers hiked up to reveal ankles the same tanbark colour as his throat. ‘Stradivarius? Guarneri?’
‘A 1714 Testore cello,’ she murmured. ‘Believed to now be in South East Asia.’
‘Now?’
‘It moves around a lot.’
‘Do they know you’re looking for it?’
‘I have to assume so. Hence its air miles.’
‘More fool them trying to outrun you. Don’t they know you always get your man...or instrument?’
‘I doubt they know me at all. You forget, I do all the legwork but someone else busts up the syndicates. My job relies on my contribution being anonymous.’
‘Anonymous,’ he snorted as he cut the tip off one of the forty-dollar cigars lying on a tray beside the champagne. ‘I’d be willing to wager that a specialist with an MA in identification of antique stringed instruments is going to be of much more interest to the bad guys than a bunch of Interpol thugs with a photograph and a GPS location in their clammy palms.’
‘The day my visa gets inexplicably denied then I’ll start believing you. Until then...’ She helped herself to the Cristal. ‘Enough about my work. How is yours going? Still rich?’
‘Stinking.’
‘Still getting up the noses of your competitors?’
‘Right up in their sinuses, in fact.’
Despite everything, it was hard not to respond to the genuine glee Oliver got from irritating his corporate rivals. He wasted a fair bit of money on moves designed to exasperate. Though, not a waste at all if it kept their focus conveniently on what he
wasn’t
doing. A reluctant smile broke free.
‘I was wondering if I’d be seeing that today.’ His eyes flicked to her mouth for the barest of moments. ‘I’ve missed it.’
That was enough to wipe the smile clean from her face. ‘Yeah, well, there’s been a bit of an amusement drought since Blake’s funeral.’
Oliver flinched but buried it behind a healthy draw from his champagne. ‘No doubt.’
Well...
Awkward
...
‘So how are you doing?’ He tried again.
She shrugged. ‘Fine.’
‘And how are you really doing?’
Seriously? He wanted to do this? Then again, they talked about Blake every year. He was their connection, after all. Their
only
true connection. Which made being here now that Blake was gone even weirder. She should have just stayed home. Maybe they could have just done this by phone.
‘The tax stuff was a bit of a nightmare and the house was secured against the business so that wasn’t fun to disentangle, but I got there.’
He blinked at her. ‘And personally?’
‘Personally my husband’s dead. What do you want me to say?’
All the champagne chugging in the world wasn’t going to disguise the three concerned lines that appeared between his brows. ‘Are you...coping?’
‘Are you asking me about my finances?’
‘Actually no. I’m asking you how you’re doing. You, Audrey.’
‘And I said
fine
.’
Both hands went up, one half filled with champagne flute. ‘Okay. Next subject.’
And what would that be? Their one reason for continuing to see each other had gone trundling down a conveyor belt at the crematorium. Not that he’d remember that.
Why weren’t you at your best friend’s funeral?
How was that for another subject?
But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Unfortunately, for them both, Oliver looked as uninspired as she did on the conversation front.
She pushed to her feet. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a—’
‘Here we go!’ Ming-húa appeared flanked by two serving staff carrying the first amuse-bouche of their marine-themed Christmas degustation. ‘Obsiblue prawn and caviar with Royale Cabanon Oyster and Yuzu.’
Audrey got ‘prawn’, ‘caviar’ and ‘oyster’ and not much else. But wasn’t that kind of the point with degustation—to over-stimulate your senses and not be overly bothered by what things were or used to be?
Culinary adventure.
Pretty much the only place in her life she risked adventure.
She sank politely back onto her sofa. It took the highly trained staff just moments to place their first course
just so
and then they were alone again.
Oliver ignored the food and slid a small gift-wrapped parcel across the table.
Audrey stared at the patched-up wrapping. Best he was prepared to do after she’d stood him up? ‘Um...’
‘I don’t expect anything in return, Audrey.’
Did he read everyone this well? ‘I didn’t imagine we’d be doing gifts this year.’
‘This was from last year.’
She paused a moment longer, then pulled the small parcel towards her. But she didn’t open it because opening it meant something. She set it aside, instead, smiling tightly.
Oliver pinned her with his intense gaze. ‘We’ve been friends for years, Audrey. We’ve done this for years, every Christmas. Are you telling me you were only here for Blake?’
The slightest hint of hurt diluted the hazel of his eyes. One of the vibrant dragonflies flitting around the enormous terrarium matched the colour exactly.
She gifted him with the truth. ‘It feels odd to be doing this with him gone.’
She didn’t want to say
wrong
. But it had always felt vaguely wrong. Or her own reaction to Oliver certainly had. Wrong and dishonest because she’d kept it so secret and close to her heart.
‘Everything is different now. But our friendship doesn’t have to change. Spending time with you was never just about courtesy to a mate’s wife. As far as I’m concerned we’re friends, too.’
Pfff.
Meaningless words.
‘I missed you at
your mate’s
funeral.’
A deep flush filled the hollow where his tie should have been. ‘I was sorry not to be there.’
Uh-huh.
‘Economic downturn made the flight unaffordable, I guess.’ They would spend four times that cost on today’s meals. But one of Oliver’s strengths had always been courage under fire. He pressed his lips together and remained silent. ‘Or was it just a really busy week at the office?’
She’d called. She knew exactly where he was while they’d buried her husband. ‘Or did you not get my messages in time?’
All eight of them.
‘Audrey...’ The word practically hissed out of him.
‘Oliver?’
‘You know I would have been there if I could. Did you get the flowers I arranged?’
‘The half-a-boutique of flowers? Yes. They were crammed in every corner of the chapel. And they were lovely,’ honesty compelled her to admit. And also her favourites. ‘But they were just flowers.’
‘Look, Audrey, I can see you’re upset. Can I please just ask you to trust that I had my reasons, good reasons, not to fly back to Sydney and that I had my own private memorial for my old friend back home in Shanghai—’ Audrey didn’t miss the emphasis on
‘old’
friend
‘
—
complete with a half-bottle of Chivas. So Blake had two funerals that day.’
Why was this so hard? She shouldn’t still care.
She shouldn’t still remember so vividly the way she’d craned her neck from inside the funeral car to see if Oliver was walking in the procession of mourners. Or the way she’d only half attended to the raft of well-wishers squeezing her hand after the service because she was too busy wondering how she’d missed him. It was only later as she wrote thank-you cards to the names collected by the funeral attendants that she’d finally accepted the truth.
Oliver hadn’t come.
Blake’s best friend—their best man—hadn’t come to his funeral.
That particular truth had been bitter, but she’d been too swamped in the chaos of new widowhood to be curious as to why it hurt so much. Or to imagine Oliver finding a private way of farewelling his old mate. Like downing a half-bottle of whisky.
‘He always did love a good label,’ she acknowledged.
A little too fondly as it turned out since Blake’s thirst for good liquor was deemed a key contributor to the motor vehicle accident that took his life. But since her husband sitting in his den enjoying a sizeable glass or three with the evening newspaper had given Audrey the space and freedom to pursue things she enjoyed, she really couldn’t complain.
The natural pause in the uncomfortable conversation was a cue to both of them to eat, and the tart seafood amuse-bouche was small enough that it was over in just mouthfuls.
Behind her, the gentle buzz of dragonfly wings close to glass drew her focus. She turned to study the collection that gave the restaurant its name. There were over one hundred species in Hong Kong—vibrant and fluorescent, large and small—and Qīngtíng kept an immaculate and stunning community of them in the specially constructed habitat.