It was also impossible to know how long she was confined. It felt like an hour, but could have been five minutes before the van stopped and the doors opened.
‘No, keep yourself covered,’ she heard David Gold say as Ellie went to unveil herself. A hand delved into the trolley to haul her out; a tricky manoeuvre as she needed to keep one hand on her dress so she didn’t flash her gusset to all and sundry, but especially him. ‘Let me help.’
David wrapped his arm round her waist. Ellie was aware of his tightly corded muscles but it wasn’t anything like that scene from An Officer and a Gentleman when Richard Gere sweeps Debra Winger up into his arms. He hauled her out like she was a sack of spuds. ‘The car’s just here,’ he said. Then Ellie could smell leather, posh air freshener and an expensive car smell as she was pushed down in the well between front passenger seat and back seat.
David Gold got in on the other side as Ellie uncovered herself. She caught a glimpse of his annoyed expression before he flipped the sheet back over her. ‘Stop that,’ he snapped, all charm gone, then put his hand on her head to keep her down when the car pulled away and Ellie tried to sit on the seat. ‘And stay there!’
‘But hasn’t the car got tinted windows? No one will be able to see me!’
‘Maybe I don’t want you to know where we’re going.’ While Ellie spluttered furiously, he continued, ‘You might be our press leak.’
‘Well, that’s unbelievable—’
‘Harry? Could we have the radio on? There’s a strange squeaking sound coming from the back of the car.’
Ellie settled down with an aggrieved huff. He still had his hand on her covered head, like she was a bloody dog. She shook herself free and wondered if this was actually her crisis being managed or if she was cooperating with her own kidnapping. Maybe he was sick of lawyering and had decided to abduct Ellie and demand a ransom from Billy Kay, who’d never, ever pay up, even when Ellie had run out of fingers and toes to chop off and send to him in Jiffy bags.
‘Ellie? Does Radio Four meet with your approval?’
Then again, if David Gold was kidnapping her, he probably wouldn’t give her a choice of radio stations and with all these cloak-and-dagger machinations at least the press wouldn’t be able to track her down.
They were twenty minutes into Woman’s Hour, when David said, ‘We’re here,’ as they were driven down a steep slope. The car stopped, Ellie heard the driver get out and she waited patiently, even though her knees were sore from kneeling on the rubber car mat and she still wasn’t convinced of the cleanliness of the sheet.
Finally the door opened. ‘Can I take this off now?’ she asked, and at last David was pulling off the sheet.
He got out of the car as Ellie carefully eased herself from her cramped position. He stood there watching as she gingerly rotated her ankle, then reached down to rub her right calf, which was cramping.
‘Sorry for all the subterfuge,’ he said, as the car drove away. ‘It’s best if no one knows that you’re here.’
Here was an underground parking garage but before she could ask exactly where she was, David Gold lifted up both her holdalls and grabbed her suitcase. ‘Can you manage the rest?’ he threw over his shoulder. Ellie picked up her laptop case, tote bag, handbag and a mysterious small cardboard box that Mohamed had given her as she left the hotel, and followed him to a lift.
‘Shouldn’t you be at work, then?’ she asked stupidly, once they were on their way up to the fifteenth floor. He was wearing an exquisitely cut dark grey suit, crisp white shirt and dark blue tie. Though he must have got home late and been up early in order to read the papers and call her before eight thirty, he looked remarkably fresh-faced. No shadows under his blue eyes, no harsh lines around his mouth.
On the other hand, Ellie was painfully aware that she didn’t have a scrap of make-up on, her eyes were piggy and swollen, and she was still wearing the creased and grubby dress from last night. She caught sight of her hair in the mirrors that lined the lift and wished she hadn’t.
‘You are work,’ David Gold said. ‘You’re the first item on today’s to-do list.’
He really seemed to take pleasure in reminding Ellie that she was a problem he was paid, handsomely no doubt, to deal with so Billy Kay didn’t have to.
She was saved from having to respond by the lift doors opening. They stepped into a lobby, then walked along a corridor that curved around the building, glass brick tiles refracting the brilliant sunlight outside.
‘This is nice,’ Ellie said. There were window ledges filled with plants. It was light and airy, but snug and safe too. Probably not a hotel, but self-service apartments, she thought. They reached a door at the end of the corridor. David Gold opened the top and bottom locks and gestured her through. ‘Very fancy.’
‘Yes, that was the general idea,’ he agreed. ‘It’s quite nice inside too.’
They were on a little dais, which led down to a open-plan living room, dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows. Over the buildings she could see a leafy expanse of green that stretched for miles. She’d never seen it from this high up before.
‘Is that Hampstead Heath?’
David Gold didn’t say anything at first. He busied himself parking her suitcase and setting down her holdalls, fussing until they were all neatly aligned, then turned to her with a shifty expression.
‘How would you feel if I told you things only on a need-to-know basis?’
‘Not very happy.’ Ellie folded her arms. ‘I need to know where I am. So will other people, like my grandparents and the gallery, and knowing where you are is a basic human need. It’s why they invented GPS. I can get my phone out and go to Google Maps, but it would be a lot easier if you just tell me.’
His mouth pulled. No smile for her until she toed the party line. ‘Very well, we’re in Highgate.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Actually, we’re in my flat.’ He frowned. ‘When I say that out loud, it sounds rather inappropriate, doesn’t it?’
Camden, London, 1986
They’d been recording songs in the studio under the railway bridge for two weeks when one of the girlfriends of the band in the studio next door asked if she had a spare tampon and Ari couldn’t remember the last time she’d needed a tampon.
She wasn’t worried. She often skipped periods when she forgot to take her pill, then doubled up the dose to compensate. She’d also been missing periods because ever since that first encounter with Billy at the Black Horse months ago, Ari had been living on red wine, cigarettes and the edge of her nerves, and her cycle was always screwy when she was stressing about gigs or men and … No! Her sister Carol had been trying for a baby for four years. Four years! It was really, really hard to get pregnant and most likely she was anaemic and needed to eat more red meat. That was the most likely explanation.
Not that Ari was already five months pregnant, even though her stomach was as flat as it ever was. She felt like some stupid schoolgirl so in denial about her condition that even her parents didn’t know she was up the duff until she went into labour after a hockey match.
Still, it was her body, her choice and Ari chose not to have it heavy with child. Didn’t even think twice about it. When Patti Smith had had kids, she’d stopped making music and Ari thought she might die if she had to stop making music.
She wasn’t even going to tell Billy because it would just fuck everything up when everything was so good. Then one night, a few days after, she’d peed on a stick with disastrous results. Billy played her a song he’d been working on. It was good but she knew how to make it better, and after hours of plugging away Ari stumbled upon a chorus that sounded like nothing she’d heard before but was so catchy, she could have sworn she’d been humming the melody all her life, even as she riffed on The Crystals’
‘He Hit Me’: ‘He touched me and it felt like a kiss.’ She pulled a face as she scribbled down the lines in one of the Black n’ Red Notebooks they were using to make notes on each song. ‘Lyric needs work, doesn’t it?’
Billy didn’t answer at first. They were sitting side by side on a sagging sofa in the seedy studio that always smelled of damp, even on a hot September evening. Then he lifted her hand to his lips. ‘You know something? The songs have never sounded like this before. You’re my muse.’
It was the kind of crap that always made Ari snort in derision, but this time she burst into tears and when Billy held her and kissed her damp cheeks, she said it. ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Is it mine?’ he asked, without missing a beat.
‘Of course it’s yours,’ she snapped back. ‘Don’t worry, there’s no way I’m having it.’ It was that simple. Ari pushed Billy’s hand away when he splayed it across her belly. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘And don’t go sentimental on me. It doesn’t suit you.’
Chapter Seventeen
Ellie nodded. ‘Inappropriate does seem to cover it.’ Now that she knew exactly where she was, she couldn’t step away from the front door because if she did, then she was committing to this crazy scheme. She’d never thought David Gold would do crazy. ‘Is this just for today, while you sort something else out?’
‘Really, when you’ve calmed down—’
‘I’m not uncalm. I’m just … perturbed.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ he said a little sharply. ‘You can’t possibly think that this is some elaborate scheme to get you on your own so I can … what? What could you possibly think my ulterior motive might be for bringing you here?’
When he put it like that, like he was spitting out cherry stones, Ellie felt chastened and ashamed. It was as if he could read her mind; knew about her ridiculous crush on him and the dirtybadwrongporno fantasies that were beginning to blossom.
‘It’s just odd,’ she said woodenly. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. But she’d had barely any sleep in the last two days and she was in David Gold’s apartment with nowhere else to go, and if he kept barking at her, then she would weep. ‘Please don’t talk to me in that tone of voice,’ she managed to add.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but he didn’t sound it. ‘Surely you understand that you need to be contained.’
‘I’m not an airborne toxic virus,’ Ellie protested, and when he stepped down into his huge living space, she stayed where she was. ‘Mr Gold, when you said you were going to help, I didn’t expect you were going to hold me hostage.’
‘You’re not a hostage,’ he said, sitting down on a huge oatmeal-coloured modular sofa, so he could see the mulish expression on her face. ‘You’re a reluctant house-guest. A guestage, if you will. I think you can call me David now, don’t you?’
Ellie didn’t want to call him David as though they were first-name-term buddies. It was better to keep things on a professional footing. She also didn’t want to stay in his flat where she’d have to remain on her best behaviour. Did he even have a spare room? And what if she bumped into him while she was wearing only a towel or something? Or he was in a towel? It was too unsettling. She’d never be able to relax, she thought as she took one tiny step that led her to the second stair down. ‘This is really going above and beyond for the sake of your client, isn’t it?’
‘It really is,’ he agreed smoothly, without even a hint of censure at said client.
‘Did Billy Kay ask you to do this? Does he know I’m here? At this stage, it would be kind of polite for him to call me up, check that everything’s OK, don’t you think? Or is that entirely your remit? Making sure the bastard daughter is locked away in case she goes rogue again? You totally think I tipped off the tabloids about the hotel, don’t you? Don’t you? Why would I even do that? Why would you think that I’d want yet another picture of myself in yet another state of undress on the front pages? Do I look like any part of this is fun?’
She was nodding her head like a demented children’s toy and her voice was climbing higher and higher to a pitch where she’d be able to shatter every single one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Ellie was also aware that her legs didn’t want to hold her up any longer. But mostly she was painfully aware of David Gold sitting there and looking at her as if she was a living, breathing encapsulation of everything that was wrong with the world.
Ellie sat down heavily on the steps staring at the living room, which was sleek and spotless, the walls a glossy white that didn’t seem like paint, the wooden floorboards so smooth it was impossible to believe they’d started life as trees, and rested her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands.
‘Velvet?’
‘Can’t you even get that right? It’s Ellie!’ It was almost a scream.
He stood up. For a second Ellie imagined that he’d stride over, slap her face and tell her to stop being hysterical. Lola would have, but he was walking away, only to return with a glass of water, which he handed to her, then sat down next to her.
‘Drink that. You’ll feel better.’
She was already gulping it down, her swallows deafening in the sound-proofed silence of his fancy fifteenth-floor flat. Not that Ellie cared any more. It was obvious what he thought of her and it wasn’t anything good and there was no point trying to summon up the energy it would take to change his mind.
‘Now, you need to stop firing an endless round of questions at me,’ he continued, folding up his long bony legs. Tabitha had once told Ellie that she should never take a lover whose thighs were thinner than hers … ‘Some of them are none of your concern. Some of them are extremely insulting to you, me and Billy Kay and some of them I’ll try to answer when you’re feeling calmer.’
Ellie swallowed again, even though she’d finished the glass of water. ‘I’ve already told you that I am calm,’ she said mutinously.
‘No, you’re not,’ he said, and he put his hand on her knee. It was wholly inappropriate touching but his hand was large, his skin cool, when she felt small and like she was burning up from some inner conflagration. His touch was comforting, anchoring, and Ellie needed to snap out of this. She didn’t really know anything about David Gold, but he didn’t smile nearly as much as he had at first, and that steely edge was showing more the longer she spent with him.
She looked around. There was a dining table at the furthest end of the living space and beyond that a kitchen. ‘Have you got a spare room?’
‘Let me show you,’ he offered.
There was an archway through the kitchen, which led to an internal corridor off which was the master bedroom, the door firmly shut, a huge bathroom, a perfectly nice guest room, whose windows opened out on to a balcony that stretched the length of the flat, and a study.
‘I absolutely can’t stay here, even if you think that’s only because I’ve got an urgent appointment with a tabloid hack,’ Ellie said tightly, though after one glimpse of the double bed in the guest room with its fluffy white duvet and mound of pillows, she’d really wanted to hurl herself on it. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t impose.’
‘If I minded the imposition you wouldn’t be here,’ David Gold said. He shut the door of the guest room. The tour ended back where they’d started: on the dais by the front door. ‘Let’s talk about this later. I need to get back to the office now.’
‘I already told you, I’m not staying here. You said you’ve had clients who’ve been in this situation; I bet you didn’t kidnap them. You must know a hotel I can go to where the staff won’t tip anyone off,’ Ellie argued, but her voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way away and she was leaning against the wall because her body wasn’t doing a very good job of holding her upright.
‘Please stop being so melodramatic. I’m asking you to stay here for a few hours so you can regroup, sleep if you want to, get some peace and quiet,’ he said to her, but he was distracted as if his mind was already in his office in Clerkenwell. ‘I don’t see how you could find anything sinister in this arrangement. On the contrary, help yourself to anything in the fridge. Make yourself at home.’ He attempted a welcoming frown. ‘But please eat at the table and use a coaster.’
Then he was gone.
Aft
er four days of non-stop weird, Ellie wondered if this was the weirdest thing yet – being trapped in David Gold’s well-appointed Highgate apartment. She didn’t think he liked her. He certainly didn’t trust her, so why had he left her here where she could rifle through his belongings or nick the family silver?
Ellie waited for him to come to his senses, burst through the door and order her off the premises. When he did neither of those things, she decided to unpack everything she’d need for the next eight or so hours. She longed to sleep but peeling off her clothes and sliding between the covers of his spare bed would be a tacit admission that she was happy to stay here, when actually she wasn’t, which was why she would only unpack essential items.
The mysterious cardboard was a food parcel thoughtfully provided by the hotel: sushi, fruit salad, a box of miniature pastries and a bottle of vegetable juice that Ellie hoped tasted better than it smelled. She packed it all away in David Gold’s huge fridge, which contained very little in the way of food: milk, a jar of pickled cucumbers, a carton of eggs with added Omega 3, plus bottles upon bottles of the electrolyte-replacing drinks that she and Tess had become obsessed with when they’d signed up for a five-kilometre sponsored run for Breast Cancer Care.
He didn’t have much food in his cupboards either, apart from energy bars, packets of peanuts (the pallid, non-salty ones from health food shops) and a gigantic tub of protein powder. It was just as well that the hotel had provided lunch, or she’d have starved, Ellie thought balefully as she headed to the bathroom.
Ostensibly she was going to brush her teeth, which she hadn’t had a chance to do yet, but really? One of the life lessons Chester had taught her, along with being able to mix the perfect Martini and not to trust a fat roofer, was that you never really knew someone until you’d had a good root around in their bathroom cabinet. It wasn’t like rummaging through a nightstand or a sock drawer. The bathroom was communal. It was a common area. Any visitor to David Gold’s flat who needed a wee after having an electrolyte-balancing drink would come in here so there was nothing wrong in opening his bathroom cabinet door and doing a quick inventory: Deep Heat, liniment, a tube of Voltarol, a bottle of arnica tablets, an elasticated bandage, some ibuprofen, the usual detritus of plasters, tweezers and miniature toiletries purloined from hotels, a tube of Clinique Age Defense Hydrator, which was manspeak for moisturiser, and a bottle of Tom Ford Grey Vetiver, which Ellie sniffed cautiously. It was citrussy and expensive, and now she remembered when he’d stood close to her at Glastonbury, so that even though their bodies hadn’t been touching, it had still counted as touching, and despite the lack of witnesses, Ellie blushed.