Brett wasn’t an introspective person. He’d learned long ago, as a child, to contain his emotions and repress them, brutally if necessary. He always looked forward, never back. But at times of severe stress, his subconscious didn’t always co-operate. For the last few nights he’d been plagued by unsettling, vivid dreams. Some were about his mother. The events were confused, but they always ended with his mother walking away from him, slowly and calmly, and with Brett calling out for her to return, shouting louder and louder, unable to make her hear him. He would wake from these dreams feeling quite desolate.
Others were about Tatiana. Those were similar and equally painful. Not erotic, which would have been something at least. Instead they mirrored the mother dreams. He needed to tell Tati something, but couldn’t make himself heard. These he would wake from with clenched fists, and a jaw that ached from a night spent grinding his teeth.
Bizarrely, Angela didn’t feature in his nightly torments at all. It was almost as if she were disappearing, slipping away from him on every level. Becoming a shadow in his life.
With an effort he brought his attention back to the screen in front of him.
He would work for an hour, then go down for a drink.
Get a grip, Brett.
At seven o’clock the lobby was starting to get busy. The gold and marble atrium buzzed with people, most of them in suits, heading either to the triple Michelin-starred Jean-Georges restaurant or the bar at Nougatine. It was resolutely a business, rather than a fashion crowd, which put Brett at his ease and was one of the reasons he had chosen this hotel over its many trendier, West-Village rivals. Brett liked the clack, clack of expensive stilettos on marble, and the way the sound echoed upwards, ricocheting off the high ceilings. He liked the ringing of mobile phones, too important to be switched off for something as trivial as dinner, and the constant, efficient tapping of the keyboards behind the concierge desks. It was a symphony of distraction, a scene dipped in wealth and privilege and comfort, like a strawberry dipped in warm chocolate.
Taking a seat at the bar, Brett ordered a Scotch on the rocks, which arrived immediately in a beautiful cut-crystal glass. The viscose amber liquid tasted as smooth as it looked. Brett already felt a little better. A couple of beautiful young women in skintight jeans and mink jackets sat together at a table in the corner, eyeing him in an overtly predatory manner. He felt better still, ordering a second Scotch, but deciding against sending a bottle of champagne to the girls’ table. They were clearly semi-pros, working models who supplemented their earnings with ‘gifts’ from rich men such as himself, but (oddly in Brett’s view) did not consider themselves hookers. New York was full of such women, and London was catching up fast. Not that Brett was averse to the occasional hooker. But he didn’t have the energy tonight, physically or emotionally.
Turning away from them, back towards the lobby, he’d just shovelled a handful of warm cashews into his mouth when he saw her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton, as he would always think of her. But, to the world now, Tatiana Cranley, his daughter-in-law. Jason’s wife. The words still stuck in his throat, like poison.
What the fuck is she doing here?
In jeans, flat ballet pumps and a loosely cut beige cashmere sweater, Tati looked far more casual than any other woman in the hotel and infinitely more desirable. Her hair was piled up in a messy topknot, with strands escaping everywhere, and she wore dark glasses to hide what Brett assumed were tired eyes. She had clearly come straight from the airport. A porter was busy taking her luggage while she checked in at the desk. Despite her slouchy clothes and half-hidden face, she still managed to radiate sex appeal, like a tigress casually sauntering into a room full of sheep.
Brett tightened his grip on his glass.
He hated her.
‘Cheque please,’ he said to the barman, spinning back around on his stool suddenly as if he’d been stung.
‘Certainly, sir. Is everything all right?’
‘Everything’s fine. I just want my bill.’
The bar was no longer an anonymous sanctuary. Slipping his black titanium Amex card across the polished rosewood, he signed the cheque and left a hefty tip. He would go upstairs, pack and check out before Tatiana saw him. The last person on earth Brett wanted to run into in his current, unsettled state of mind was Tatiana. Tatiana who had toyed with him and used him and weaselled her money-grabbing way into his family, to the point where she now had both of his children living under her roof. Even in his goddamned dreams she tormented him.
But he was too late. Walking towards the bank of elevators with a bus boy in tow, weighed down with her Louis Vuitton luggage, Tatiana saw him. Her upper lip instantly curled with distaste.
‘My, my,’ she drawled. ‘Look what the cat dragged in. And I thought this was an exclusive establishment.’
‘It was until you got here,’ Brett shot back, deadpan.
The lift arrived. Tatiana stepped inside. Brett followed.
‘Going up, sir?’ the bus boy asked Brett.