It was hard to put his finger on it exactly, but ever since last summer in France, when Ange had walked in on him and Tricia in bed on the yacht, Brett’s personal life had slid off kilter. Angie had changed afterwards. She’d forgiven him, and stayed with him, like she always did. But something was different between them. It made Brett feel profoundly uneasy.
He loved Angela as much as he always had, maybe more. He’d felt genuinely guilty about the Tricia thing – a stupid, opportunistic fuck if ever there was one. And yet that day at the High Court, when he saw Tatiana again, there had been a desperation about his need for his young ‘cousin’ that he wouldn’t have felt six months earlier. Back then, Angela’s blanket acceptance of his infidelities, of all his frailties and weaknesses, had given him the confidence to go forth and conquer, be it in business or in bed. Back then, he was pretty sure, he could have slept with Tati, enjoyed it and moved on, as he had with countless other beautiful young women before her. But now, unsure of Angela for the first time in his life, he’d come to Tatiana in a position of weakness, of need. Brett Cranley hated himself for that. He was sure it was the reason that Tatiana had spurned him afterwards. Ever since, a part of him had been feeling like Samson after his hair was cut. Preposterously, he found himself angry at Angela about it, as if she were somehow responsible for what had happened. He’d barked at Ange and bickered with her more in the last eight months than at any time during their marriage. Brett hated himself for that, too.
And now it was Jason’s birthday party, and the two women would be under the same roof, his roof, a prospect that made him feel guilty, anxious and enraged all at the same time, not least because he was powerless to stop it. Worse still, Tati was rumoured to be debuting her boyfriend at the party, a sure sign that things were becoming more serious between the two of them.
Feeling like a schoolboy guiltily thumbing through Playboy beneath his bedcovers, Brett turned on his iPad and opened the file on Marco Gianotti. There was Tatiana’s boyfriend, smiling professionally in his official Goldman headshot. Other pictures from Facebook showed him playing beach volleyball in Miami, or laughing with friends around the lunch table in Forte dei Marmi. No doubt about it, Marco was a great-looking kid. Twenty years younger than Brett (and less than half his net worth, but Brett sensed correctly that Tatiana Flint-Hamilton couldn’t give a shit about that), he was also both well born and well connected. Although raised and educated in America, Marco’s mother’s family had been Italian aristocrats. Brett felt his chest tighten with envy and dislike. He closed the file. Everything he had, he’d worked for. Marco Gianotti, on the other hand, had been gifted his advantages on a solid gold platter. Just like Tatiana.
Spoiled brats, the pair of them.
‘Do you know what you’d like for supper this evening, sir?’ A pretty stewardess wearing far too much make-up appeared at Brett’s side. Leaning over him, menu card in hand, she afforded him an excellent view of her ample cleavage, her large, milky-white breasts, pressed together beneath her blouse like two, perfectly round scoops of vanilla ice cream. In his younger days, Brett would have got the girl’s number and bedded her as soon as they landed, or maybe even before. Air stewardesses had some wonderfully uninhibited habits, in Brett’s experience – yet another good reason not to fly private. But tonight he had zero appetite, either for the girl or the food.
‘I’m not eating,’ he said curtly. ‘I’ll go straight to sleep. Please don’t disturb me.’
‘Of course, sir. Would you like to be woken for breakfast?’
An image of the breakfast awaiting him at Furlings popped into Brett’s mind. Angela, pretty and smiling in her apron with the cherries on it, pouring fresh orange juice; Logan wolfing down some ghastly sugary cereal, regaling him about what had happened at school since he left; Jason, happier than he had been in years, evidently, reading the papers contentedly by the Aga.
I have so much to be grateful for, thought Brett. Life doesn’t get any better than this.
Why can’t I enjoy it?
He looked at the stewardess. ‘No, thank you. I’ll sleep till we land.’
In fact, he barely slept at all. The flight was bumpy, a fitting backdrop for Brett’s turbulent emotions and the torrent of thoughts and fears racing through his head. Angela had called in him in high excitement earlier that day, overflowing with happiness about Jason.
‘He was playing the piano for about an hour after work, and then again after dinner. I happened to catch a glimpse when he got off the stool to go up to bed, and the look on his face, Brett! I wish you’d been here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy.’
‘That’s great,’ said Brett, trying to sound as if he meant it. He was pleased that the depression that had dogged their son throughout his teens seemed to be lifting. But it was almost as if the dark cloud had transferred itself from son to father. Now it was Brett who seemed incapable of any positive emotion.