He knew Lynn’s brief because they’d begun at the same time and she’d confided in him. She’d been given a secretarial job at British Gas, then instructed to hang about on the fringes of a back-to-the-earth eco group, voicing timid doubts about the morality of her employer. He didn’t think that in reality there was anything mousy about Lynn at all, but she managed to inhabit her character just as convincingly as Sheila did hers.
“It’s about time things got interesting around here,” said Mickey with an obvious leer, and someone else gave a wolf whistle. The temperature seemed to have gone up in the room right along with the level of testosterone. The atmosphere in the room had changed—he could feel it.
This whole thing was a very bad idea, he thought, looking round the room as wine was poured into paper cups and more cigarettes were lit. Someone turned up the sound on the cheap boom box on the coffee table and Aerosmith’s “Livin’ on the Edge” blared out.
He wondered that no one else could sense disaster in the air.
Monday morning, Melody was awakened by the light from the flat’s east windows. She opened her eyes, squinted at the brightness, and closed them again. She lay still for a moment, trying to hold on to snatches of a pleasant dream, but it was gone. Oh, well, it had been nice while it lasted . . . There had been dancing in it somewhere, something she never did. With a little sigh of regret, she stretched and opened her eyes again, scooping her mobile from the coffee table to check the time. It was 6 a.m. She’d slept for twelve hours. And if she’d stayed on the sofa again, at least this time she’d had a pillow and a duvet, and there was an empty cup of hot chocolate on the coffee table rather than an empty bottle of wine.
Having left the café yesterday with a mumbled excuse to Hazel, she’d blindly set off walking, taking great gulps of air like a winded runner. She couldn’t let herself think about Ryan. She couldn’t let herself picture his blue eyes the way she’d first seen them in his smoke-smudged face. They’d gone into the fire at St. Pancras together, three months ago, and they’d both survived. And now he was gone.
Walking faster, she fought the nausea, concentrating on breathe in, breathe out. Slowing at last, she’d found herself outside High Street Kensington tube station. What the hell was wrong with her? She rubbed her palms against her cheeks.
She needed to get to Oxford Street. She’d promised Andy, before he left, that she’d look in on the cat, but she still felt too shaky to drive. Not to mention that it nearly required an act of God to find a parking spot near Andy’s flat in Hanway Place. The tube, then, she’d decided, glad it was Sunday because she knew she couldn’t have borne the weekday crush.
Bert, Andy’s big ginger cat, had been happy to see her, butting against her ankles and purring madly. After checking his food, water, and litter tray, she sat down on the futon and lifted him into her lap. But the cat soon tired of the attention and stalked to the other end of the futon, settling down to groom his paws with great deliberation. Melody hadn’t grown up with cats and it had taken some adjustment for her to learn that Bert’s sudden rebuffs weren’t personal.
They’d had dogs in the country house, a succession of spaniels and retrievers, but cats had been strictly relegated to the stables. “I should think you’d be glad of the company,” she said aloud, but Bert flicked his tail and gave her a glint from his golden eyes.
Restless, she stood and roamed the flat, touching Andy’s guitars, straightening posters, brushing the dust from the top of the turntable cover. She’d stayed here often when Andy was just out and about, but now she felt awkward, out of place. She’d slept here, too, for a few months more often than she did at home. A glance at the futon made her think of it open, the covers rumpled, and she felt hollow with sudden, fierce desire. Time to go.
Scribbling a note for the neighbor who was looking after Bert, she let herself out with a last long look round the flat, wondering if she would see it quite that way again.
Back in Kensington, she’d hurried past her parents’ town house to retrieve her car, then driven the short distance to her flat just north of Notting Hill Gate. Her father owned this flat in the 1930s mansion block. Her living here had been their compromise when she took the job—a job her parents didn’t approve of—with the police. They’d wanted to feel that she was at least living someplace safe. Melody had never particularly liked the flat, never invited anyone there, and had done nothing to make it seem as if it belonged to her. But suddenly she’d wanted nothing more than to shut herself in and lock out everything and everyone else . . .
Enough, she thought now. What good had running away done, other than getting her a decent night’s sleep? She sat up and threw off the duvet. How humiliated would she be if anyone learned how she’d behaved yesterday? Hopefully Hazel wouldn’t have said anything to Gemma.
She was fine, just fine. She’d only needed a rest, and a fresh start.
A run and a shower later, she put on her best red skirt and red silk blouse. No dark suits today. She was going to start as she meant to go on. Bold. No nonsense.
But before putting her mobile in her bag she checked for missed calls. She was early, but that didn’t mean that something important couldn’t have come in from work. There were no new calls. Nor had there been anything last night from Andy, or Doug, or Gemma. Shrugging, she popped the phone in her bag and let herself out of the flat. Why had she thought she needed any of them?
Melody walked out of the building with a deliberate attitude to her step, then stopped short. A late-model, gun-metal-gray Mercedes sedan idled against the curb. Through the tinted windows she made out her father, using the steering wheel as a prop for a folded newspaper. He was working the Times crossword. As he did every morning, in ink. He timed himself. He was bloody fast and seldom wrong. She’d always thought it odd that Ivan didn’t play chess, but he claimed he had no patience waiting for someone else to make a move.
Glancing up, he saw her, put down the paper, opened the door, and stepped out. Ivan Talbot was dressed for work, early as it was, in a perfectly tailored Saville Row suit a shade lighter than his car. His well-barbered fair hair gleamed in the sun and Melody noticed that the silver was definitely overtaking the blond. An elegant man, her father, and a powerful one. Certainly a man not to be taken lightly when he had a mission.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Melody eyed him warily.
Ivan kissed her on the cheek and she caught the spicy scent of his cologne. “You look bright as a poppy this morning.”
She stepped back. “Dad.”
“Considerably better than yesterday, I must say. You worried your mother. She asked me to check on you.”
Worrying her mother was a cardinal sin in her father’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . feeling well. A bug or something. I’ll ring her today.”
Ivan regarded her, his face unreadable. Passersby parted around them and fleetingly Melody wondered what they must think. The well-off older man, the car, the younger woman. But Londoners were not a curious lot as a rule, and no one gave them a second glance.