‘Keep your voice down,’ said Anna, steering Cath to a quieter alcove. ‘I don’t want to get fired again.’
Cath’s mouth was still hanging open.
‘My best friend has shagged a Hollywood star. This is historic.’
‘It was only one time,’ she said. Four times in one night, she thought dreamily, but now was not the time to go into that.
‘Only once? I swear if it happened to me I would think my work on earth was done now.’
It felt good to finally tell someone about it. After their time on the longboat, she’d been resigned to the fact that it had been a one-night stand brought on by the romantic setting. The whole experience had had a decidedly holiday romance feel to it. They were drunk, they were in India, they’d been caught up in the drama. It had been wonderful, and he’d been funny and attentive on the flight home, but she wasn’t kidding herself that she could expect anything else. He was Sam Charles, for goodness’ sake – and anyway, after dropping her home, he’d flown straight back to LA. Who knew what bimbos were waiting for him in his swanky Hollywood Hills shag pad? But Sam had surprised her. He had called her. Part of her had felt happy and hopeful that this was the start of something. The other part felt as if she was about to step on to a rollercoaster, and wasn’t sure if she was ready for the ride.
‘If you’re going to get all soppy over Casanova, I’m going to have a crack at a footballer.’
Anna put her hand on her friend’s arm.
‘There he is,’ she said.
‘Who? Sam Charles?’
‘No, Johnny Maxwell.’
He was standing in a group of model-type girls. In his mid sixties, wearing a loud purple and green checked three-piece suit, with his shoulder-length white hair swept back, he looked like a rock star gone to seed. Every now and then he would use the silver camera hanging around his neck to snap a shot of one of these beautiful women.
‘Is that the guy you need to speak to?’
‘I need to chat him up, actually,’ said Anna.
‘So you and Sam have an
open
relationship, then?’ She looked over at Maxwell. ‘Anna, he’s about eighty.’
‘Sixty-four, I believe.’ She’d spent an hour Googling him that afternoon. Whilst Johnny Maxwell had a decidedly sleazy reputation as a party animal, his lineage was pure. The son of a wealthy minor aristocrat, he was an Old Etonian who had dropped out of Oxford to join the Carnaby Street scene. Inspired by Bailey and Donovan, he’d become a photographer, primarily as a way to get girls. Since then, he had never really gone away, becoming a fixture on whatever was the most happening scene: Studio 54, eighties LA, Britpop London, finding his niche somewhere between portrait photographer and society party planner.
‘What do you want to chat him up for?’ asked Cath, wrinkling her nose.
‘I need him to invite me to something.’
‘What? A Saga holiday?’
‘Just run with me on this one, okay?’ said Anna seriously. ‘Think of it as role play. We’re going over to speak to him, and when we do, we’re going to have to pretend to be someone else.’
Cath frowned. ‘Would it ruin the surprise to ask why?’
Anna took a swallow of her cocktail and prepared to tell her friend a little white lie. ‘Johnny Maxwell organises these big parties, networking things, for this society guy. I need to get to one of the parties, but the host hates Donovan Pierce lawyers because we’ve sued him.’
She hated lying to her friend.
‘It’s like James Bond,’ laughed Cath, and Anna gripped her arm.
‘Come on, we’re going over. He’s looking at us. I think he wants to take our pictures.’
‘Pictures? What for? You sure this is kosher, Anna?’
‘Absolutely,’ she whispered, and stepped forward.
The weather had finally turned, the long hot summer slipping suddenly into melancholy autumn in just an afternoon. Light rain spotted the pavement and a brisk wind whipped off the river, making Matt wish he had worn his trench coat rather than this thin summer suit jacket. He looked up at the leaden grey skies, surprised at how jittery he was feeling. He’d had dinner with his father on numerous occasions before; always at some flash restaurant where everyone knew Larry’s name and would approach his table to exchange ribald anecdotes while Matthew fixed his gaze on his carrots and wished he was somewhere, anywhere, else. Tonight he was eating at Larry’s house; something that to most people would sound everyday and mundane. Yet this felt so much more significant. Matt had not eaten with his father, at his house, since he was four years old and it was the Donovan family home. Tonight didn’t feel just like supper. It felt like the start of a new family life. Or perhaps a way of claiming back a lost life that had been snatched away from him.
Larry answered the door in a white apron scarred with something crimson.
‘What’s all this?’ said Matt, smiling.
‘You said you wanted supper, so I’m cooking for my son. How hard can it be?’
‘I had rather assumed you would be getting some famous chef in to do the hard work.’
Larry waved his hand dismissively as he walked back into the house. ‘Chefs? I’ve seen those telly programmes. They just drizzle olive oil on everything and bang it in the oven. I’m perfectly capable of that.’
Matt handed his father a bottle of wine and followed him into the warm kitchen. Whatever Larry was cooking did smell delicious. It reminded Matthew of the early days of his marriage, when Carla had just given up work and used to keep the house smelling wonderful with expensive candles and Waitrose suppers.
‘What’s cooking?’
‘Coq au vin.’
Larry held the bottle up, casting a critical eye over the label. Grunting, he quickly uncorked it, then pulled the roasting tin from the oven and poured Matt’s Merlot over the top of it.
‘That should perk her up a bit,’ he said.
‘Shit, Dad, that cost me forty quid.’
‘Good food is made from good ingredients,’ Larry quipped, closing the oven door with a clang. ‘Anyway, I’ve already got something waiting for us,’ he added, disappearing into the next room.
Matt walked over to the far wall, where dozens of photographs had been hung in smart black frames. There were some of Larry and Loralee’s wedding, and their honeymoon too, somewhere hot and beachy with the groom in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. Then there was a series of pictures of Larry with famous clients, and shaking hands with Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela. The biggest photo was of him laughing with Bill Clinton, looking like old friends.
‘Now that figures,’ murmured Matthew with a bittersweet smile, realising how little he knew about his father’s life but excited by the idea of hearing some of the stories behind these pictures.
Larry came back holding a balloon of red wine aloft.
‘Here, try this,’ he said. ‘One of the great bottles of claret of the twentieth century.’
‘Sounds expensive,’ said Matthew, sniffing the wine.
‘It was. I’ve just been waiting for an occasion to drink it.’
They clinked their glasses together and each took a seat at the oak-topped island in the middle of the kitchen. It was funny: there had been a time, not so long ago, when the thought of having a convivial supper with Larry Donovan would have been impossible. Matthew had been too angry, too resentful. He had grown up embarrassed by his father and ashamed of the failure of his family. It wasn’t the missed Christmases and birthdays and graduations that had upset him; it was all the little things. The disapproving whispers at the school gate, the sight of other dads having a kickabout with their kids in the park, the lack of anyone to ask about girls, shaving, even sport. His mother had done her best, trying to be enthusiastic about Lego and Action Man and rugby, stretching herself thin as she tried to juggle her career and Matthew’s needs. She was a stoic, independent woman who neither encouraged contact between father and son nor badmouthed Larry to Matt either. It was as if Larry barely existed. But the truth was, Matt had thought about his father a lot, never sure if Larry was some kind of monstrous bogeyman or whether life would be more exciting with this unreliable, but unpredictable man in it. And that was what he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive his father for. For abandoning him. For being able to cut him out of his life as if he was a piece of gristle on a prime cut of fillet steak. Since he’d become a father himself, it was something he felt more fiercely.
As if he was reading his thoughts, Larry gave his son a slow smile.
‘Who’d have thought we’d be doing this, eh?’
Matthew nodded. He felt bad about their argument in the pub, especially when his father was clearly not recovered from his heart attack. Still, he wasn’t sure if he was ready for the Hollywood ending.
‘So where’s Loralee?’ he asked, keen to change the subject.
‘She’s out,’ said Larry quickly.
‘Good.’
Larry raised an eyebrow.
‘I don’t think she likes me coming round.’
His father shrugged. ‘She’s jealous of you.’
‘Of me?’
Larry waved his glass at Matt.
‘Well, she’s jealous of us, what we could be. I think she liked it as it was before.’
Matt had always wondered about Larry and Loralee’s relationship. Was his father really arrogant enough to think that Loralee had married him for his sparkling wit and virile good looks, or had they struck the classic ‘Chelsea bargain’ of money and stability in exchange for youth and beauty?
‘I bet she hated you giving me the firm,’ said Matt quietly.
Larry swilled the wine around the bottom of his glass in wide circles.
‘I have enough money. The law’s been good to me. I wanted it to be good to my son too. After everything that’s happened, I suppose it was the best way of telling you that I loved you.’
Matt felt a spike of emotion so strong he thought it would knock him off his bar stool.
‘You could have just said I love you.’ He grinned. ‘But thank you,’ he added slowly.
They sat there and smiled at each other, and Matt knew then that their relationship had mellowed.
‘You know Loralee is having an affair?’ said Larry, still caught up in their moment of complicity.
Matt looked at him in shock. ‘What? You’ve only been married three months.’
‘Like that ever stopped anyone,’ he said. ‘Me included.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘It’s more what I was hoping you could do for me.’
Matt felt himself move into professional mode.
‘Of course, Dad, anything. Obviously I couldn’t actually represent you, but . . .’
Larry put his hand on top of his son’s. It looked smaller, weaker than Matt remembered.
‘You misunderstand,’ he said. ‘I was rather hoping you would check on the cats next Friday. Feed them. Loralee insists they have Jersey milk, you see. I’d get the housekeeper to do it, but she’s going back to Poland on Friday.’
‘The cats?’ frowned Matt. ‘What about Loralee?’
‘I’m taking her away for the week. Somewhere fancy.’
‘When you know she’s having an affair?’ said Matt incredulously.
Larry gave him a sad smile.
‘I’m not stupid,’ he said quietly. ‘Would Loralee be with me if I was thirty and poor?’ He shook his head. ‘I think we both know the answer to that one. And I know it looks pathetic, a man my age with a woman like her. People see us together, they think she’s only after me for my money. Well maybe that’s so, but the truth is . . .’ Larry’s voice caught in his throat. ‘The truth is, Matty, I love her. I open my eyes in the morning and I look at her lying next to me, and I think how lucky I am to be with her. I know you think – everyone thinks – she’s just a gold-digger, but she’s been good to me. Through the illness, I don’t suppose it’s been easy for her.’
‘But you can’t just pretend she’s not having an affair.’
Larry waved his hand dismissively. ‘I tell myself it’s just sex. Since the heart attack, I’ve not exactly been active in that department.’
‘Dad . . .’ began Matthew, but Larry squeezed his hand.
‘It’s what I tell myself,’ he repeated, and Matthew knew that this particular conversation was finished. They sat in silence as darkness fell outside, sipping their wine, the rich smell of the meal filling the kitchen.
‘So how about you?’ said Larry finally. ‘Seen any more of Carla since her separation?’
Matt rubbed his chin.
‘I slept with her,’ he said in the spirit of shared secrets.
He felt a wave of relief that he had finally told someone. Granted, it was embarrassing discussing such things with your father, but Larry had more experience with difficult women than any man he knew.
‘My, my. It has been all go in the bedroom department.’
Part of Matthew wanted to bury the thought of what had happened between himself and Carla and put it down to the raised emotions of the situation, but he knew he had to talk about it, to try and make sense of what he wanted to happen next, because he was struggling to do it on his own.
‘Does she want to get back together with you?’ asked Larry.
‘I don’t know. She’s in Ibiza. We’re meeting for dinner when she gets back.’
‘And how do
you
feel about getting back together?’
This was the difficult part. If you’d asked him two, three years ago whether he wanted to get back with the beautiful ex-wife whom he had loved and who had hurt him so much, the answer, despite himself, would have been an unequivocal yes. But everything felt much more complicated now. For the first time in a long time he felt happy, secure, confident in his own skin and the life he had built for himself. He had got used to being alone, and in many ways, he enjoyed it.
‘She’s a beautiful woman.’ He meant the sex, of course, but he didn’t want to elaborate any further; Larry was still his dad, after all.
‘Do you love her, or are you just lonely?’ asked Larry.
How were you supposed to tell the difference after so long? thought Matt, opening his mouth to speak.
‘The day at the New Forest, Jonas was so happy . . .’
‘I didn’t ask how Jonas felt about it,’ replied Larry.
Matt shifted in his chair. ‘But this is everything to do with Jonas. I’m his dad. We’re a family. If that’s not a bloody good reason to get back together again, I don’t know what is.’