First Jones rang and told her (not asked, she noted) that he wanted to meet the following evening for A Talk. Words guaranteed to place a clammy hand around her heart. Seven weeks and three days ago, Daniel had told her he wanted A Talk. “We’ll go out somewhere. Away from . . . distractions,” Jones said. He meant Ellie, she knew.
“I’ll baby-sit,” Mrs. Bernard had said approvingly the following day. “Good for you to get out a bit.”
“As the hangman said to the condemned man,” muttered Daisy.
And then, on Monday, shortly before he was due to arrive, the phone rang again. This time it was Marjorie Wiener. To tell her, breathlessly, that she’d finally heard from her son. “He’s been staying with one of his old friends from university. He says he’s been having a bit of a breakdown.” She sounded flustered. But then Marjorie Wiener always sounded flustered.
Daisy’s initial heart stop had been replaced by a slow, simmering anger, which swiftly rose to the boil. A breakdown? Surely if one were having a nervous breakdown, then one couldn’t be together enough to recognize one was having a breakdown? Wasn’t that what catch-22 was all about? And how easy for him to have a breakdown with no child to look after. Because, as far as she was concerned, a breakdown was a luxury
—she
didn’t have the time or energy for a bloody breakdown.
“So is he coming back?” She was having difficulty keeping her voice level.
“He just needs some time to work things out, Daisy. He’s really in a state. I’ve been quite worried about him.”
“Yes, well, you can tell him that he’ll be in even more of a bloody state if he comes anywhere near us. How does he think we’ve survived without him? Without even a bloody five-pound note from him?”
“Oh, Daisy, you should have said if you were short. I would have sent some money—”
“That’s not the fucking point, Marjorie. It’s not your responsibility. It was Daniel’s responsibility.
We were Daniel’s fucking responsibility
.”
“Really, Daisy, there’s no need for language like—”
“Is he going to ring me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What, he asked
you
to ring me? Six years together and a baby, and suddenly he can’t even speak to me in person?”
“Look, I’m not particularly proud of him at the moment, but he’s not himself, Daisy. He’s—”
“Not himself. He’s not himself. He’s a father now, Marjorie. He’s supposed to
act
like a father. Is it someone else? Is that it? Is he seeing someone else?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone else.”
“You don’t think?”
“I know. He wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Well, he seems to have had no trouble doing pretty well everything else to me.”
“Please don’t go getting yourself in a state, Daisy. I know it’s hard, but—”
“No, Marjorie. It’s not bloody hard. It’s bloody impossible. I’ve been left alone with barely a word of explanation by someone who can’t even bring himself to talk to me. I’ve had to leave our home because he didn’t think about the fact that I and
our
baby had no money to support ourselves. I’m stuck in a building site a million miles from nowhere because Daniel took on a bloody job that he had no intention of completing—”
“Now, that’s hardly fair.”
“Fair? You’re going to tell me what’s fair? Marjorie, no offense, but I’m going to put the phone down. I’m going to—No, I’m not listening. I’m putting the phone down now. La, la, la, la, la . . .”
“Daisy, Daisy dear, we’d really like to see the baby—”
She had sat, trembling, her dead phone in her hand, Marjorie’s feeble request buried under her burgeoning sense of outrage. He hadn’t even thought to ask how his daughter was. He hadn’t seen her for more than six weeks, and he hadn’t even wanted to make sure she was okay. Who was this man she had loved? What had happened to Daniel? Her face crumpled, and she dropped her head onto her chest, wondering how this pain could continue to manifest itself so physically.
And even as she fought to contain her sense of anger and injustice, a creeping voice asked whether she should have lost her temper at all. She didn’t want to do anything to put him off coming back, did she? What would Marjorie say to him now?
Conscious suddenly of another presence in the room, she turned to find Mrs. Bernard standing very still in the doorway, Ellie’s dirty clothes in the crook of her arm.
“I’ll take these home with me this evening and put them through the wash. Save you walking all the way to the launderette.”
“Thank you,” said Daisy, trying not to sniff.
Mrs. Bernard still stood there, looking at her. Daisy fought the urge to tell her to go away.
“You know, sometimes you just have to move on,” the older woman said.
Daisy looked up sharply.
“To survive. Sometimes you just have to move on. It’s the only way.”
Daisy frowned. Opened her mouth as if to speak.
“Still. As I said, I’ll take these home with me when I leave. The little one dropped off with no trouble. I’ve put the extra blanket on, as it’s a bit chilly with that easterly wind.”
Whether it was the wind or the Wieners, Daisy found herself infected with a kind of recklessness. She had run upstairs and pulled on a pair of black trousers—the first time she’d been able to do so since Ellie’s birth—and a red chiffon shirt that Daniel had bought her for her birthday, back before she’d become pregnant and consigned to shapeless tents. The combination of stress and a broken heart might inflict terrible damage to your peace of mind, she thought, her jaw set, but, boy, did it help your figure. She teamed this with a pair of stiletto-heeled boots and an unusual amount of makeup. Lipstick could do wonders for one’s sense of self-worth, her sister had said. But then Julia had never been seen without it, not even in bed with the flu.
“You can see your bra through that,” remarked Mrs. Bernard as Daisy tripped down the stairs.
“Good,” said Daisy spikily. She was not going to be swayed by Mrs. Bernard’s miserable asides either.
“You might want to tuck your label into your collar, though.” Mrs. Bernard paused. Smiled to herself. “People will talk.”
J
ONES RUBBED AT HIS BROW AS HE PULLED THE
S
AAB
into Merham High Street and headed up toward the park. His head had begun pounding shortly after he passed Canary Wharf, and by the time he was halfway along the A12, the slight throb over his eyes had become a full-blown headache. He had fumbled in his glove compartment on a whim and located the headache pills that Sandra, his secretary, had secreted there. A bloody marvel, that woman. He would give her a raise. If he hadn’t already given her one three months ago.
The discovery of the Tylenol was the one high point in a week of lows. Which said something about his week. Alex, his ex-wife, had announced that she was getting married. One of his most senior barmen had almost come to blows with two influential journalists who’d decided to play naked Twister on the pool table. It hadn’t been the nakedness he’d objected to, he protested to Jones afterward, it had been the fact that they wouldn’t move their drinks off the baize. But now there was barely a day where the Red Rooms wasn’t mentioned in society or gossip columns as “past it” or “failing,” while his attempts to woo the columnists with a crate of whiskey had come unstuck when they reported the gesture and branded it “desperate.”
And in a month’s time a rival club—the Opium Rooms—was opening two streets away, its proposed membership, ambience, and ethos suspiciously close to the Red Rooms’, its arrival already generating a buzz in the circles Jones called his own. That was why this Merham retreat had become so important; you had to stay ahead of the game. You had to find new ways to keep your members close.
And now this bloody girl was screwing it up. He had suspected that she wasn’t up to it when she kept whining on about his calling “at a bad time.” He should have listened to his gut instinct; in business there
were
no bad times. If you were professional, you just got on and did the job. No excuses, no prevarication. It was why he didn’t really like working with women—there was always some period pain or boyfriend that meant they couldn’t quite focus on the job at hand. And then if you confronted them about it, they usually burst into tears. In fact, apart from his secretary, there were only two women he felt completely comfortable with, even after all these years: Carol, his long-standing PR person, who had only to raise a manicured eyebrow to express disapproval, whose loyalty was absolute, and who could still drink him under the table. And there was Alex. The only other woman who wasn’t either particularly impressed by him or frightened of him. But Alex was getting married.
Alex was getting married.
When she first told him, his first, childish, instinct had been to ask her to marry
him
again. She’d burst out laughing. “You’re incorrigible, Jones. It was the worst eighteen months of both our lives. And you only want me now that someone else does.” Which had, he had to admit, been partially true. Over the years since, he had made the occasional pass at her—which she gracefully refused (he was secretly glad)—but they had each valued their continued friendship (to the annoyance, he knew, of Alex’s new partner). But now she was moving on, and things were going to change. And the seal on their past would be absolute.
Not that there weren’t distractions. It was very easy to get laid running a club. When he started out, he frequently slept with the waitresses, usually tall, slender, wanna-be actresses or singers, all hoping to rub up against some producer or director while serving drinks. But he had realized quickly that that led to staff rivalries, tearful demands for pay raises, and eventually the loss of good staff. So for the last year and a half he’d led the life of a monk. Well, a mildly promiscuous monk. Occasionally he would meet a girl and take her home, but it seemed to give him less and less satisfaction, and he always offended them because he could never remember their names afterward. Half the time it wasn’t worth the aggravation.
“Jones.”
“It’s Sandra. Sorry to bother you while you’re driving, but the date has come through for your licensing appearance.”
“And?” He fiddled to get the hands-free set into his ear.
“And it’s the same time as your trip to Paris.”
He spit out an expletive. “Well, you’ll have to ring them. Tell them to reschedule.”
“What, Paris?”
“No. The court appearance. Tell them I can’t make that date.”
Sandra paused. “I’ll ring you back,” she said.
Jones pulled the Saab up the hill and onto the gravel driveway that led to Arcadia. Problems, problems, problems. Sometimes he felt that he spent his entire time sorting out other people’s messes, rather than simply getting on and doing what he did best.
He turned off the engine and sat for a minute, his head still painful, his brain too full of stress and clutter to appreciate the silence. And now here was more. The girl was going to have to go. It would be for the best. He was a great believer in terminating a situation before it got too bad. He would cut his losses and go with the other firm, the one based in Battersea. Just please don’t let her burst into tears.
Jones reached into the glove compartment and shoveled another handful of headache pills into his mouth, wincing as he swallowed without water. He sighed, closed his car door, and walked up to the front door. It was opened, before he could ring the bell, by Mrs. Bernard. She stood with that steady gaze she had, the one that suggested she knew quite what you were all about, thank you.
“Mr. Jones.”
He could never quite bring himself to correct her. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.” He stooped to kiss her on the cheek.
“That’s because you’ve never had children.”
“What?”
“Someone has to baby-sit.”
“Oh.” He stepped in, glancing around him at the half-stripped walls, the piles of builder’s debris. “Yes.”
“Things are warming up.”
“So I see.”
She turned and walked down the hallway, neatly sidestepping the empty trays of paint. “I’ll tell her you’re here. She’s just on the phone to the plumbers.”
Jones sat on the edge of a chair and took in the half-finished drawing room, with its musty smell of drying plaster and newly repaired floor. In the corner of the room stood an aluminum pyramid of Farrow & Ball paints, while swaths of fabric ran like rivers over the back of the tatty old sofa. Arterial gulleys dissected the room, revealing where electricals had been stripped out and replaced, and on the floor a sheaf of catalogs offered light fittings in “Miami,” “Austen,” and “Blink.”
“That was McCarthy and his boys. They’re starting on the front two bathrooms tomorrow.”
Jones looked up from the catalogs to see a woman he didn’t recognize striding across the room, a mobile telephone still in hand.
“I’ve told him any more delays and we start deducting money. I said we had one percent for every day lost written into the small print of the contract.”
“We do?” said Jones.
“No. But I figured he’s too lazy to actually check, and it obviously put the frighteners on him. He said he would cut short the other job he’s on and be with us by nine
A.M
. Are we going, then?” She grabbed her wallet and keys and a large folder from a bag on the floor.
Jones fought the urge to search the house for the girl he remembered, the rather soggy-looking one wearing shapeless old clothes and with a baby attached to her hip. This one did not look flaky and tearful. This one would not have looked out of place in his club. This one’s shirt revealed a black bra and what appeared, underneath, to be a compelling pair of breasts.
“Is there a problem?” she said, waiting. Her eyes glittered, held something that could have been challenge or aggression. Either way it made his balls tighten unexpectedly.
“No,” he said, and walked after her up the drive.
They chose the Riviera, partly, Jones said, to suss out the opposition, but in the main because there were no pubs or bars in Merham. Those who wanted to drink socially did so at the hotel or at one of the two licensed restaurants in the town, or they went farther afield. In normal circumstances—or as much as any of her circumstances could be considered normal at the moment—Daisy would have felt pretty uncomfortable going in there at all. But something about the evening, and her red chiffon blouse, and the fact that she knew she had already unbalanced Jones, for all his bluff and bluster, made Daisy bullish, so that she positively sauntered when they walked together into the bar.