‘Dear Ari, you’re embarrassing yourself,’ Olivia says coolly, but Ari can see how her hands shake before she folds her arms and tucks them out of sight. ‘Please don’t.’
‘I should have known this was about money.’ Billy stands up and walks towards her, and the lawyers and even his doggedly devoted wife cease to exist. It’s just her and Billy. Ari stands up too and he sidles up close in that snaky way that had always got Ari in a panic that he was going to kiss her. Or that he might not. ‘If you wrote those songs, then how come you never wrote anything that was half as good as them since? Huh?’
Ari wishes she knew the answer, but Billy does apparently.
‘I get it, darling. I get why you’re mad, why you’re flinging accusations around,’ he says, his breath caressing her ear, arm stealing round her waist. ‘It was your decision, Ari. You chose the kid over me. You chose her over the music. I tried to tell you that you were never going to get anywhere if you were stuck with a baby who demanded every single thing you had to give. I warned you.’
So this is what people mean when they talk about epiphanies. This is her eureka moment! Ari actually raises her eyes as if she expects to see a light bulb going off above her head. ‘No, she didn’t,’ she says and she’s laughing because it’s so obvious now. ‘It was you. You sucked me dry and after you went, I was empty. Ellie didn’t ruin me, she saved my life.’
‘Whatever,’ Billy says, and he turns away as if Ari isn’t amusing any more. She’s boring and Billy never got on well with boring. But Ari’s not done yet.
‘Anyway, what kind of man makes the mother of his child choose between them? A really shoddy excuse for a man, that’s who. Jesus, your ego was always the most constant thing about you.’
‘It wasn’t about my ego.’ He’s angry now; it’s the first real emotion he’s shown. ‘I left because you didn’t love me enough.’
He sounds like a lost little boy. Ari can’t bear to see him so diminished. She glances over at Olivia and something fleeting passes between them. It’s not hate on the other woman’s face but resignation – acceptance, even – because she put Billy first and she stood by her choice and wasn’t going to let Ari judge her for it. ‘Billy.’ Ari sighs his name, because she’s wasted too much time being angry with him. ‘No one could ever love you as much as you need to be loved.’
‘No, you mean, you couldn’t. You’re not capable of loving anyone.’
‘That’s not true. Not any more,’ Ari insists, willing away the tears. ‘I’m full of love.’
‘You never even wanted her,’ Billy says, spite making the words sting. ‘You would have had an abortion if I hadn’t talked you out of it. Then you tried to fob her off on your sister. I think that would ruin her life, if someone told her.’
This man tried to destroy her for having the audacity not to love him to the exclusion of everything else. Fine. Ari can take it, but Billy isn’t going to destroy Ellie, simply to punish her for being chosen over him. Ellie should never have to doubt how much she’s loved.
‘I did love you back then but I never trusted you,’ Ari says, folding her arms and looking straight at Billy. He’s put his Raybans back on but Ari knows she has his full attention. ‘You might have the reel-to-reels we recorded but sometimes I ran a tape straight off the mixing desk. Gave them to Tabitha to look after.’ She shook her head. ‘And Georgina only had five minutes to clear out that room. She didn’t think to look in the summerhouse where there were half a dozen of those Black ’n’ Red Notebooks that we wrote lyrics in. Come on! When you rerecorded the songs, you must have realised you didn’t have hard copies of all the lyrics.’
A muscle in Billy’s cheek gives an involuntary spasm. Ari thrills to the sight of it. ‘You’re bluffing.’
Ari grins. Suddenly her heart feels light. ‘You’ll never know. Just don’t come near me or mine again.’ She shakes her head. ‘You’re not capable of understanding that if I lived my life a hundred times over, I’d always choose Ellie over you. Always.’
Ari knows that she’s never going to see or hear from Billy again and that’s reason enough not to look behind her as she walks out of the door straight into the path of Ellie’s lawyer.
Chapter Thirty-five
Ellie wasn’t even halfway down the corridor when she heard the door open behind her and, before she could quicken her pace, David had caught up to take her arm.
‘Don’t touch me!’ It was a shriek.
‘Ellie … what I said in there, I had to say it.’ He didn’t even care that she was trying to bat him away with her handbag. ‘I was doing my job.’
‘What? You were just following orders? Do you even know how that sounds?’
David obviously did because he scowled, then closed both arms around her to prevent the damage she was intent on wreaking, and marched her down the corridor to an office, its door wide open, which he slammed shut after them.
It was a fancy corner office panelled in gleaming dark wood and shelf upon shelf of leather-bound books. David pushed her down into one of two stiff-backed chairs in front of the huge desk, which was empty except for a computer and a telephone. He didn’t even have a pen tidy or an in-tray and an out-tray, because he was a cold-blooded, heartless drone.
His hands were still on her shoulders and Ellie pulled her bag close like a cushion she could cuddle for comfort. Now that she wasn’t trying to cause him physical damage, he stopped touching her.
The only thing worse than David touching her was when he wasn’t touching her, which made no sense, but then, everything that had happened today had been completely senseless.
David grabbed the other chair, turned it round and pulled it so close to Ellie that when he sat down, their knees bumped. ‘You should take the money,’ he said in a low voice. ‘He owes you that much, doesn’t he?’
Ellie wanted to smack her forehead in despair. Or his forehead. ‘I don’t care about the money.’ She exhaled slowly. ‘I don’t care about him. And I especially don’t care about you any more.’
David looked her steadily in the eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’ His voice didn’t waver. ‘You wouldn’t be so upset if you were indifferent to me.’
‘I didn’t say I was indifferent,’ Ellie argued, clutching her handbag even tighter to her chest. ‘I said that I don’t care about you any more.’
‘Apart from the first time we met, you’ve always known what I did for a living. Unfortunately, my job requires a certain amount of dissembling,’ David said levelly. Ellie hated when he was like this: cool, watchful as he mentally weighed her up, like he was predicting her next move before she even knew in which direction she was heading. Sometimes she wished that he’d lose his temper and have a good shout. Recently she’d become a big fan of having a good shout.
‘Those people in that room, they’ve corroded your soul.’ She wasn’t even trying to hurt him now, but to warn him before it was too late, though deep down she knew that it already was. He was too far gone and she couldn’t save him. There was a good reason she’d sworn off saving men from themselves. ‘The things they make you do should be beneath you.’
He recoiled a little. ‘I have tried again and again to protect you,’ he protested.
‘No, you’ve been trying to protect your clients and your own career path,’ Ellie scoffed. ‘None of it was for my benefit.’
David suddenly reared up and grabbed her seat back so he was there, right up in her space, close enough to kiss, not that he looked as if he wanted to kiss her. ‘I haven’t been protecting my clients, I’ve been protecting you from my clients.’
Ellie screwed up her face in contempt. ‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it!’
‘I’ll admit that I was determined to think the worst of you. I saw that scene with Richey. And when I read his story in the papers, well, it was obvious you had absolutely no self-respect.’
It was Ellie’s turn to flinch. ‘I’m not like that!’
‘I know. I should have realised it from
that first meeting at the Wolseley, but I told myself that you’d eventually run true to type. That you could deal with being papped and tabbed because you were in it for the money and the glory. But you confounded me every time I spoke to you.’ He sighed. ‘For fuck’s sake, you even paid your own hotel bill! Then that first evening at my flat, I saw who you really were.’
Ellie remembered that evening too. She’d tried to be calm and reasonable but had ended up red-faced and indignant. She was sure she’d shouted at him and had generally been everything that she always tried not to be. ‘Like I keep saying, you met me when my circumstances redefined extenuating,’ she said.
‘That evening it was painfully obvious your life was coming apart at the seams and I bore most of the responsibility for that. You didn’t even whine that much,’ he said untruthfully with a soft little smile that Ellie wanted to return; wanted to more than anything.
‘I seem to remember whining quite a lot, actually,’ she reminded him.
He shrugged. ‘You could have whined more than you did. I got the measure of you that day and the more I got to know you, the more I liked you. And the more I liked you, the more I wanted to protect you.’ David shook his head and Ellie was hanging on his every word, until she remembered.
‘Was it protecting me when you didn’t tell me about Charlie!’ The betrayal hit her anew. ‘He’s my brother!’
‘I couldn’t tell you! You don’t even know the half of it. The things I could tell you …’ He swallowed hard as if he were pushing away the words. Words that would probably break her but she wanted to hear them anyway.
‘What things?’ She couldn’t help the hand that crept up to touch the taut line of his jaw. ‘Tell me!’
‘I can’t. I won’t. Not to protect him,’ David captured her hand, which was still on him, and held it tight, ‘to protect you.’
There were so many things that Ellie wanted from him but pity wasn’t one of them. ‘Because you feel sorry for me?’ She snatched her hand back. ‘Oh God, I’m your lame duck!’
David’s face creased in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You feel sorry for me! It’s so obvious now. It’s like Ari. She doesn’t tell me things that I have a right to know because she thinks I won’t be able to cope. You’re just the same. I’m a fully functional adult. I don’t need you to protect me. I can handle some hard truths and I can look after myself.’
‘Maybe Ari doesn’t tell you things that she thinks might hurt you because she loves you?’ David suggested softly. He hadn’t gone back to his chair but was squatting down in front of her. ‘Maybe I’m in love with you too.’
It was enough to make Ellie’s heart go pitter-patter had her heart not been weighted down with a heavy burden. She wanted to believe that love would conquer all and they’d kiss and the screen would fade to black, but you couldn’t let yourself fall in love with someone who only wanted part of you.
‘Last time I checked I was still Billy Kay’s daughter and you were still his lawyer.’ Ellie wished that she didn’t sound quite so bitter; it didn’t become her. ‘Tell me, what’s changed since we had this same conversation in Paris?’
David rested his hands on her knees and tried to stare her down. ‘We can do this,’ he said earnestly. ‘We just have to keep my job and my clients separate.’
‘It’s not going to work. I never want to see that man again, but he’s my father and I’m done with hiding that side of myself away.’ Ellie put her hands on David’s shoulder and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. ‘If you say you love me, if you want me in your life, then it has to be all of me. All or nothing.’
‘Nothing is ever that straightforward.’
‘It is if you let it be,’ Ellie insisted. ‘I’m not going to be your lame duck.’
‘Why do you keep going on about ducks?’ It was hard to be exasperated with someone when you were forehead to forehead, so they broke apart.
‘I deserve so much more than what you want to give me.’ Ellie stood up but David was now resting on his haunches as he gazed up at her. ‘We can’t have any kind of future because you’re caught up in a filthy business. Why can’t you see that this job, doing the dirty work for men like Billy Kay, is eating away at all the good in you? Stealing it bit by bit. I will try to save you because it’s what I do but I’ll end up destroying myself in the process.’
David bowed his head as if he was a penitent seeking redemption. ‘Then you don’t love all of me either, do you?’
Ellie kind of did. That was the problem and that was why she was heading for the door, while the fire was still in her belly and she had the guts to walk away.
She half expected David to come after her again. No, she wanted him to come after her and tell her that she was wrong. That he could change. That they were worth fighting for, but he didn’t and soon Ellie was standing outside the offices looking up at a dense grey sky that bulged with the threat of rain.
On the street it was humid, as if the whole city was stewing inside a pressure cooker. Ellie ducked into a Pret across the road for a sandwich and ate it in the back of a black cab as she tried to come up with a plan to save her job.
She’d have all the time in the world to think about David and all the ‘couldas shouldas wouldas’ but only about ninety minutes tops to placate an angry boss, so she concentrated on stoking the fire in her belly so it didn’t splutter and fizzle out. Twenty minutes later she was marching up to the door of the gallery and pushing it open with such force that it crashed back on its hinges and made Inge, sitting behind the reception desk, jump in her chair.
‘You frightened the life out of me!’ she snapped in a very un-Inge-like way, rearranging the papers on the desk that had got muddled up during her panic attack. She looked up. ‘Oh! Is it really you?’
‘Of course it’s me! Who else would it be?’ Ellie asked. She sounded cross too, but that didn’t last long because Inge was almost vaulting over the reception desk so she could fling her arms around her.
‘God, I’ve missed you so much! Promise that you’ll never go away for so long again.’
‘I wasn’t gone that long.’
‘Two weeks!’ Inge rested her head on Ellie’s shoulder. ‘It’s been awful.’
That made Ellie almost smile. ‘Did you actually have to put in some hard graft?’
‘So much hard graft!’ cried a voice and then Piers was hugging her from behind. ‘Don’t ever leave us again. Vaughn has been horrible. Like pre-Grace horrible.’
‘He fired Muffin for sending a painting to Burkina Faso when it was meant to go to Buenos Aires,’ Inge explained, which to be fair did sound like a sackable offence. ‘He called her terrible names and he threw that little miniature Damien Hirst skull that he uses as a paperweight at her head.’
‘Really?’ Ellie gently disengaged herself from the group hug. ‘Is he very angry with me too?’
‘The angriest,’ Inge assured her. ‘Piers and I were watching On The Sofa on the computer and we were so engrossed …’
‘You were amazing,’ Piers breathed. ‘Not at first. You kept opening and closing your mouth like a blowfish, but then you were amazing and your hair looked very shiny. Though you really can’t pull off an “Am I right?” You’re not sassy enough.’
‘Thank you for that constructive criticism,’ Ellie said, and the fire was fizzling out because Inge and Piers were so pleased to see her and she hadn’t realised how much she missed them or the gallery. Which reminded her: ‘So, Emerging Scandinavian Artists, was it a sellout? How many orders for the Perspex bicycles?’
‘Lots,’ Inge said helpfully. ‘Lots and lots. So, anyway, when you were on On The Sofa, did it look as if Jeff Jenkins was well endowed?’
‘Yes, did it? I heard he’s packing a monster in his chinos.’
‘Piers! That’s disgusting,’ Ellie said and then she giggled, which meant that her blood was no longer up and Vaughn would make mincemeat of her, call her terrible names too, and
not only follow through on her sacking but refuse to give her a reference. It would be a major victory if he didn’t throw any art at her. ‘Is Vaughn … y’know …?’
‘He came up behind us when we were watching and you know how he gets that weird tic in his cheek when he’s stressed?’
Ellie nodded. She knew it only too well.
Inge folded her arms. ‘It was going like a jackhammer.’
‘He swore,’ Piers added with relish. He always enjoyed the novelty of not being the person who Vaughn was swearing at. ‘Said he was adding a new clause to our contracts that we were never to speak to any media outlets without his written permission but it didn’t apply in your case ‘cause you were already sacked.’
‘He said you needn’t bother working out the rest of your notice.’ Inge shrugged apologetically. ‘But you are coming back, aren’t you? Because with you and Muffin both gone, I’ve been really stretched. It’s been hellish.’
Inge didn’t look as if she’d been stretched. She looked as languid and swan-like as ever, but Ellie wasn’t in a position to allay her fears. Not when her own fears were far greater. ‘Is he in?’ she asked heavily.
‘Yes. It’s his last day in the office before he takes the rest of August off. He was meant to leave at lunchtime but he’s been waiting for you,’ Piers informed her. He gave Ellie a pitying look. ‘Grace even popped over a couple of hours ago to find out what was keeping him.’
‘Oh God.’ This was the worst day of her life. This would be the one she remembered when time and distance made all the other worst days recede. ‘I’d better get this over and done with then.’
‘Don’t leave us,’ Inge said forlornly as Ellie started the trudge up the stairs to Vaughn’s office. She was tempted to skulk in her office, and check that no one, like Piers for instance, had messed it up in her absence, but every second she dawdled was another second for Vaughn’s temper to escalate ever higher.
‘Come in.’ Vaughn’s summons was as sharp as her rat-a-tat-tat on his office door.