Never Tell (18 page)

Chapter Nine
LONDON, MARCH 2008

I spotted her straight away, sitting in the corner of the small restaurant by the window, Jackie O sunglasses shading half her face, a slash of dark red lipstick across the voluptuous mouth, an expensive green coat, thick wool despite the spring sun, collar turned up against a world she found grievous.

‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure you would.’

‘I was very pleased to.’ I smiled at her, and ordered salami and cheese, olives and sparkling water. ‘Though I don’t think your dad would be. What would you like? Some wine?’

‘I’ve already ordered,’ she said. She crumbled bread from the basket incessantly as we spoke, the henna tattoos still intricate across her slim hands. On her left she wore a twisted diamond ring that flashed blue when the sunlight hit it.

‘Were you engaged?’ I was direct. From our phone call, I knew she was ready to talk, and she’d told me she wouldn’t have much time.

She shrugged. ‘I was about to be married,’ she said, loosening her coat. ‘For all that it matters now. Then my father found out.’ She removed her glasses, and I was shocked at how sore her eyes looked. ‘My father is a terrible bully, you know. He likes everything the way
he
believes it should be. He is a relic.’ She spat the last word. ‘He is so old-fashioned, he refuses to come into this century.’

The waiter bought a carafe of red wine and Maya poured herself a large glass and drank half of it in one go. Then she offered to pour me some.

‘Just a little, thanks. I don’t really drink these days.’

‘Oh?’ She raised an immaculate eyebrow.

‘Bit all or nothing, me, unfortunately,’ I said, but she wasn’t interested in me, and that was how it should be. I was never the subject – that was how I preferred it; how I worked best.

‘So, why did you want to see me?’ I smiled again. She was rather like a nervous thoroughbred.

‘My father told me he was going to do an interview with you for the local paper. I want you to know the truth about him.’

I debated whether to tell her I wasn’t doing it any more. In the end, I pressed on.

‘Will you tell me about you first?’ I coaxed her gently. ‘It would help me. Why did he hate your boyfriend so much?’

‘Because he was not of his choosing.’

‘Not because he was a Muslim?’

‘Maybe once my father renounced Islam,’ she shrugged. ‘But he’s changed his views since 9/11. We all have.’

I sat up straighter. ‘Really?’

‘Everyone is so polarised today, don’t you think?’ She scratched her arm absently, trailing her fingernails up her smooth caramel skin.

‘Perhaps.’ I must not react. I must just listen.

‘We all hate the atrocities carried out in Allah’s name, of course. But that doesn’t mean anyone should have to renounce him.’

‘Of course not. So, did you grow up here?’

‘I lived in Tehran until I was five and then we had to leave. For various reasons, it wasn’t safe for us any more. I came to England and went to boarding school soon after. I didn’t see my parents for a few years. My father had angered the Ayatollah and he wasn’t allowed to leave Iran for some time, and my mother … ‘ she drank the rest of the wine in her glass, ‘my mother was busy losing her mind.’

I picked at the plate of ham that had arrived. ‘Why was that?’

‘Because my father drove her mad, I believe.’ A strange glassy smile appeared that tautened her face and never neared her eyes. ‘Because men in his family believe, like so many others of Arabic culture, that women are to be seen and to serve and ornament them, but are not to be listened to. That is like Victorian children, no? Seen and not heard.’

‘I don’t think that’s unique to Arabic men.’ I grinned at her.

The waiter arrived at her shoulder to top up her wineglass and she smiled up at him, a proper bewitching smile – and I saw how very beautiful she was, the planes of her face melding together so it was hard to drag your eyes away from what was almost perfection. How beautiful – and how deeply troubled. She spoke of her family and her brother and the war and the Ayatollah’s regime, and how when her mother died her father did not shed a tear. She told me of her teenage years after she left school and partied hard in London with the children of pop stars and politicians. Then she had left it behind, she said. Her diction was elegant and formal, her Iranian accent almost imperceptible, but she was edgy, nervous, constantly looking around. Occasionally she trailed off as if she couldn’t quite remember what she was saying.

‘I saw how empty and vacuous that world is.’ Her bread plate was now a sea of crumbs, but not one morsel of food had passed her lips since I’d sat down. ‘The world of nightclubs and celebrity and people who believe they are owed respect because their father once had a Number One hit or followed a fashionable cause like – like Live 8. It no longer interests me. In fact,’ she drained her glass again, ‘it disgusts me now.’

‘So what do you do yourself?’ I asked, and she gazed at me as if she didn’t see me.

‘I am retraining. I am more interested in the academic life now. The history of my nation, for example.’

She refilled her glass. I was alarmed at the speed she was drinking, but I knew it wasn’t my place to interfere. I topped up my own glass of Perrier. I was finding it hard to get a real sense of Hadi Kattan from her; she was so angry and unhappy, but vague about his current pursuits. I touched gingerly on the recent CIA investigation that Xav had mentioned.

‘Very likely.’ She shook her head vaguely. ‘But you must understand we don’t talk of such things. All we have done for a while is argue.’

‘Why did he move to the Cotswolds, do you think?’ I asked, and a sneer caused her lovely mouth to twist downwards.

‘Because he does not want people to see what he really is, and my brother persuaded him,’ she said. She twisted her glass round and round. ‘But the trouble is, Rose, the trouble is we do not belong anywhere. My family does not belong. We are neither one thing nor the other. And now this is what my brother, Ash, is trying to leave behind. He would like to be the consummate English gentleman. And what I really wanted to talk to you about was my own political beliefs. They are—’

She jumped as her phone rang in her coat pocket.

‘You see.’ Her hand was trembling as she showed me the display. ‘It’s him. He will want me to return home now. I will have to go.’ She was suddenly in disarray as she started to pull her coat on, all anxiety. ‘He likes to know where I am every hour of every day.’

I had one last chance to ask the questions I really needed to, and took a deep breath. ‘Does he lock you in?’

‘Who?’

‘Your father,’ I murmured. ‘I thought – did I see you upstairs at the manor?’

She stared at me. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘yes, he does lock me in occasionally. And if I do not go home, he sends someone to retrieve me.’

‘Who?’ I asked urgently. ‘Danny Callendar?’

She kept gazing at me until I felt an eerie chill.

‘Danny,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, he sends Danny sometimes. Sometimes other people. Sometimes men or family from home.’

She stared at me. I saw a light sweat break out across her face. I couldn’t tell if she understood what I meant; but I held her gaze. She was broken, like a beautiful vessel that had cracked fatally, but was still just about in one piece. Her phone bleeped again.

‘I’m sorry, but I really have to go.’

‘Can you – would you tell me the beliefs you just mentioned? About your boyfriend?’ I said quickly. ‘About what happened.’

Her almond eyes filled with tears. ‘I can’t speak of Nadif yet. It is … ‘ she clutched the green coat shut across her chest, ‘it is too painful. It is killing me.’ She started to slide out of the booth, a waterfall of sleek hair falling across her pinched unhappy face.

I reached over and put my hand on her arm. ‘Maya, I just want to know – why, why did you say your father was a murderer?’

‘That’s simple.’ Maya Kattan put her dark glasses back on. ‘I said my father was a murderer because he is. Because he killed Nadif. You ask him, if you dare.’ She was standing now. ‘I must go. Thank you for lunch.’

And she was gone, out into the bright sunlight of Marylebone High Street in her high heels and diamonds. I noticed she walked with a slight limp; I remembered her kicking her father’s car outside the manor house. Her words rang in my ears:
‘Because he killed Nadif.’

I felt an urgent need to speak to my children. I phoned my mother from the table and spoke to Alicia and Effie. Freddie refused to come to the phone because he was ‘busy, Mummy’, drawing Spiderman, apparently. I told the girls I’d see them all tomorrow and how much I missed them; judging by the excited squeals it wasn’t much reciprocated.

Hanging up, I delved in my bag for my purse, still thinking about the children and the fact I should try to make up with James, if only for the children’s sake, when I sensed someone watching me. I looked up sharply. Across the road I thought I saw Danny Callendar standing in the shadow of a shop canopy, leaning back against the glass window, hands in his pockets, staring right at me. My heart felt like it had just stopped.

But when I dashed out onto the street, looking desperately amongst the busy shoppers and the ladies who lunch, he was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Ten

The house was so quiet when I got home, it was unsettling. I fed the cat, and then made myself some tea and took it out into the garden. It was chilly now, just before dusk. I sat on the bench beneath the magnolia tree that was about to bloom, its pale buds like hands tightly cupped in prayer.

I contemplated the past week’s events. I couldn’t see what the right thing to do was any more. I thought I should probably stop, not for James’s sake or my own, but for the children. Who was I truly chasing Kattan for? I was lying to myself. But if I gave this last thing up, what was there left for me, apart from motherhood? Just James and I struggling to get through the days.

The cat came out for a while and made a half-hearted attempt to catch a couple of chaffinches on the bird table, but they were too fast for him. Despondent, he slunk back inside.

The sun set, sinking slowly into the wood behind our garden. James was right: I couldn’t do everything, couldn’t be all things to everyone. I was deeply intrigued by Maya Kattan and her father but I should turn my back on this life, at least for now. James’s words in the car echoed in my ears and I remembered LA: the guns and the panicked yelling police and the grim-faced gang members cursing and sobbing over their baby brother, who’d died for a bag of heroin. I’d been eight weeks pregnant with Alicia without realising it at the time; I’d been racked with guilt when I discovered I might have risked my baby’s life. I’d sworn then never to put any of us in any danger ever again, and up to now, I’d kept my word.

I sat outside for so long my tea grew cold and my fingers were blue around the cup by the time the weak sun had finally disappeared for the day. I went back inside and had a hot shower to warm up. Then I tried to ring James, thinking we should make peace, but his voicemail was on, though his plane must have touched down in Vietnam by now.

I went through to the study, switched the computer on to email Xav and looked for my diary to find the number for the Rex Hotel.

It wasn’t in its usual place on the desk.

I’d scribbled Maya’s number on the front leaf when she’d rung me last night; early this morning, just before we’d left for the airport, I’d run into the room to transfer the number into my phone. I knew I’d left the diary right there on the desk; it lived there permanently.

And the picture of the children had been moved. My favourite photo of the three grinning up at me on a Cornish beach last summer, Freddie’s head turned towards his grinning sisters, his fat tummy swelling above little blue shorts, Effie’s face pink from the sun, with ice cream on her chin, and Alicia straw-hatted, sticking her tongue out mischievously. The picture always sat in front of the printer so I could see it when I wrote. Only now it was slightly to the left, eclipsed by the screen.

Perhaps McCready – but it was Saturday. She never came in on the weekends unless I asked her to especially. I began to rummage on the desk, moving papers, going through the in-tray.

My heart beat a little faster; I knocked over a leaning pile of
New Yorkers
that went tumbling, slapping to the ground. And then I stopped.
Come on, Rose
. I was getting paranoid. I’d probably left it in the car, or upstairs, or—

‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ a low voice asked.

I screamed.

Afterwards I felt ashamed, but it was an animalistic noise that came instinctively.

‘How the hell did you get in?’ My heart was banging.

Callendar held my diary like a trophy, extending it towards me. ‘You left the back doors open.’ He actually smiled at me and I felt anger rise quickly now, replacing the fear. He crunched the sweet he’d been sucking.

‘Well, you can walk right out of them again then, can’t you?’ The wash of adrenalin was making me shake. ‘You really frightened me, you know.’

‘I can see that.’ He took a step towards me. ‘I didn’t really mean to.’

‘Didn’t
really
mean to?’

He shrugged. ‘Didn’t mean to, then.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ I glared at him. ‘What the hell are you doing here? What the hell are you doing with that?’

‘Returning it.’

His nonchalance irritated me beyond belief. ‘But you’ve just stolen it.’

‘Stolen it?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘No, Rose, you left it somewhere.’

‘Somewhere?’

‘The exact location escapes me.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah, really. I’m just returning it. And I also came to ask you,’ he stepped nearer to me, throwing the diary on the desk, ‘what
you
think you’re doing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.’ He rubbed his face wearily.

I pushed past him and into the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of water and drank it in one. I heard him walk into the room behind me.