Windfallen

  "Is she cross?" said Daisy, looking in horror at the browning bloodstains on his pale leather interior.

  "Not remotely. Baby's fine. Mrs. Bernard says she's going to take her home with her, as she's promised a meal with her husband tonight. And you won't be able to drive."

  "Mr. Bernard'll be pleased, then."

  "Look, it's an accident. People have them. Don't worry about it."

  He'd been like that all afternoon--mellow, reassuring, as if he had all the time and none of the cares of the world. It had been curiously intimate, having to lean on him, having him wrap her arm and sit beside her on the plastic chairs of the hospital corridor. He'd begun lowering and softening his voice to talk to her, as if she were sick as well as injured. She wondered, periodically, whether he was even the same person who had picked her up from Liverpool Street Station that morning.

  "Have I ruined your day?"

  He laughed at that and, his eyes on the road in front, slowly shook his head.

  Daisy, trying to ignore the throbbing in her arm, stopped talking.

  His mood hardened slightly when they reached the Red Rooms, partly because there was no one on the front desk when they walked in, a sackable offense, he said later, when she tentatively asked why it should be a problem. "Everyone who comes in here should be greeted like an old friend. I pay my staff to know the names, the faces. I don't pay them to be upstairs taking a late lunch."

  He'd held her good arm as she made her way up the many flights of wooden steps, past bars where people sat around under whirring fans, surreptitiously craning their necks at new arrivals who might turn out to be more notable than themselves, waving or exclaiming their too-hearty greetings in Jones's direction. Once she might have thought that a bit of rubbernecking was fun. But she'd been relieved when he said he'd arranged for them to have a table on a terrace outside his office, fearful at the thought that her bloodied clothes, her sling would be exposed to the sharp, assessing eyes of London's bar crowds.

  Because suddenly being back felt overwhelming. She felt intimidated by the thudding roar of Soho's traffic, its reverberating roadworks, its braying, shouting people. She felt hemmed in by the height of the buildings, had forgotten how to walk through a crowd, and found herself hesitating, ducking the wrong way. She felt a sudden, unanticipated ache for her child, a deep discomfort when she calculated the number of miles that now separated them. Worse, she kept seeing men who looked like Daniel and found her heart clenching, an uncomfortable, reflexive action.

  Jones had begged five minutes "to take care of some business." The girl who served Daisy a drink, an Amazonian beauty with a deep tan and long black hair scraped artistically back into a knot, had eyed her speculatively.

  "Fell through a door," explained Daisy, mustering a smile.

  "Oh," said the girl uninterestedly, and then she sauntered off, leaving Daisy feeling stupid for saying anything at all.

  "Jones, I'm really sorry, but I think I'd like to go home," she said when he finally reemerged onto the terrace. "Could you give me a lift to Liverpool Street?"

  He frowned, sitting slowly opposite her. "Not feeling good?"

  "Just a bit wobbly. Think I'd be better back at--" she stopped, realizing how she had referred to the hotel.

  "Have something to eat first. You've eaten nothing all day. Probably why you're feeling shaky." It was an instruction.

  She raised a half smile, holding her hand up to shield her eyes against the light. "Whatever."

  Without thinking, she had ordered a piece of steak and had to sit, uncomfortably, as he took her plate from her and sliced it into pieces that she could pick up one-handed.

  "I feel like an idiot," she said periodically.

  "Just eat something," he said. "You'll feel better." He had not eaten. Muttered something, a little embarrassed, about trying to shed a few pounds. "Spend my whole life entertaining, you see," he said, glancing down at his stomach. "Don't seem to burn it off like I once did."

  "It's your age," said Daisy, downing her second spritzer.

  "You're feeling better, then," he said, and sighed.

  They talked about the mural and the faces that Hal had painstakingly and meticulously brought forth into the light. Lottie, Daisy told him, was still not happy about having it restored. But having recognized that she was not going to get her way, she'd started, albeit gracelessly, to identify some of the figures. One of them, Stephen Meeker, lived a few miles along the coast in a hut on the shingle. (They were not friends, but he had been very sweet to her when she'd come home with Camille.) The day previously she had shown Daisy which was Adeline, and Daisy had stood in front of her marveling at this woman staring at what looked like a doll, feeling the decades strip away, making scandalous the behavior that was now considered the norm. She had identified Frances, too. But Frances's face had been partially rubbed away. Daisy wondered whether they might try to find a picture of her somewhere, from some artists' archive perhaps, to restore her to the pictorial bosom of her friends. "It doesn't seem fair that she, of all people, should be absent from it," she said now to Jones.

  "Perhaps she wanted to be absent from it," he said.

  She wasn't entirely sure why, but she didn't tell him about the previous evening, how she'd glanced out the window to catch Lottie standing very still in front of the mural, lost in something unseen. Or how the old woman had slowly reached out her hand, as if to touch something on it and then, abruptly, as if she were scolding herself, how she had turned and walked stiffly away.

  He told her about his plans for the opening of the hotel, showed her several files with details and photographs of previous openings he'd held. (In nearly all, she noted, he was flanked by tall and glamorous women.) "I want to do something a bit different with this, something that reflects the house. But I can't think what," he said.

  "Will it be a celebrity bash?" said Daisy, feeling suddenly, curiously, invaded.

  "There'll be a few faces," he said. "But I don't really want your standard canape do. The whole point about the hotel is that it's meant to be different. It's meant to be a bit above all that, if you like," he said, looking embarrassed even as he said it.

  "I wonder if any of them are alive," said Daisy, staring at the folder.

  "Who?"

  "The people. On Frances's mural. I mean, we know Frances and Adeline aren't. But if it was painted in the fifties, there's a good chance that a lot of them are still alive."

  "So?"

  "So we find them. And get them together. At your hotel. For the opening. Don't you think that would be a fantastic publicity stunt? If these people were the enfants terribles of their age, as Lottie says, it would mean fantastic press. You've got the image there, of the mural . . . I think it would be great."

  "If they're still alive."

  "I'm hardly going to invite them otherwise. But it might mollify the locals a bit as well, a reference to their history."

  "I suppose it could work. I'll get Carol onto it."

  Daisy looked up from her drink.

  "Carol who?"

  "She's my party planner. Runs a PR company and organizes all my dos." He frowned at Daisy. "What's the problem?"

  Daisy stared at her glass and then took a good swig.

  "I suppose . . . I suppose I'd like to do it."

  "You?"

  "Well, it was my idea. And I did--we did find the mural. I feel sort of attached to it."

  "But how are you going to find the time?"

  "It's only a few phone calls. Look, Jones"--almost unconsciously, she reached a hand across the table--"I think this mural is really special. It might even be important. Don't you think it's the kind of thing that would be best kept a secret, for now at least? You'd get more coverage if it doesn't leak out in dribs and drabs. And you know what PR people are like--they can't keep their mouths shut. I mean, I'm sure your Carol is very good and all, but if we just kept the mural itself between us for now, just till the painting is finished . . . well, the impact would be greate
r when it finally came out."

  She had thought he had black eyes. But they were in fact a really, really dark blue.

  "If you think it's not too much extra work," he said. "By all means. Tell them I'll put them up, pay for their transport, whatever. But don't get your hopes up. Some of them may be too frail or sick--or senile."

  "They're not much older than Lottie."

  "Yessss."

  They smiled at each other then. An unguarded, complicit smile. And halfway through it Daisy realized she felt much better. So she stopped, because somehow she felt like she shouldn't.

  HE WAS GOING TO DRIVE HER BACK TO MERHAM. NO ARGUMENTS, he said. It would take him only an hour or two now that the rush hour was over, and besides, he wanted to see the mural.

  "But it'll be dark," said Daisy, who'd drunk so much that her arm had stopped hurting. "You won't see a lot."

  "So we'll turn all the lights on," he said, disappearing into his office. "Give me two minutes."

  Daisy sat on the illuminated terrace, her cardigan around her shoulders, listening to the distant sounds of revelry and traffic below. She didn't feel so out of place now. She no longer felt awkward around Jones, as if she were constantly trying to prove something to him, to convince him that he was just not seeing the best side of her. And it was different here, seeing him in his own environment, moving easily through a sea of deferential, eager faces. Awful how power made people more attractive, she observed, at the same time fighting a covert sense of anticipation at the idea that the two of them would again be alone in the house together.

  She pulled her mobile phone from her bag to check on Ellie and swore softly when she saw that the battery was low. She hardly used it at Merham--it had probably been low for weeks.

  "You all finished, then?" The waitress began collecting the empty plates and glasses from her table.

  "Yes, thank you." It might have been the alcohol, or Jones's attentions, but Daisy felt less awed by her now.

  "Jones said to tell you he'll be another five minutes. Got caught on the phone."

  Daisy nodded understandingly, wondering if, when he was finished, she could borrow it to call Lottie.

  "Meal all right?"

  "Lovely, thanks." Daisy reached forward and pinched a final piece of chocolate torte from her pudding plate.

  "Jones looks better anyway. God, he was in a filthy mood this morning." The girl was stacking plates with the swift, expert touch of someone to whom it had become second nature. She popped used napkins in glasses and balanced them on top. "It's good that he found a distraction for today."

  "What? Why?"

  "His wife. His ex-wife, sorry. Got remarried today--midday, I think. He didn't know what to do with himself."

  The chocolate torte had somehow got stuck to the roof of Daisy's mouth.

  "Oh, sorry. You're not going out with him, are you?"

  Daisy forced herself to swallow. Smiled up at the girl's concerned face.

  "No. God, no. Just doing the decor on his new place."

  "The one at the seaside? Lovely. Can't wait to see that. Just as well anyway." The girl stooped low, glancing in the direction of the door. "We all love him to death, bless him, but he's a complete slag. I reckon he must have slept with at least half the girls in this place."

  JONES STOPPED TRYING TO MAKE CONVERSATION SOMEWHERE past Colchester. Asked Daisy if she was tired and, when she said yes, said he'd leave her to sleep if she liked. Daisy turned her face away from him and gazed out at the sodium-lit roads speeding past, wondering how she could accommodate so many conflicting emotions in one small, rather worn-out frame.

  She liked him. She'd probably known it from the moment he picked her up and infuriated her by failing to pay her any attention. She'd begun to admit it to herself when he was so uncharacteristically tender and solicitous when she cut her arm. He'd looked quite white when he saw how much she was bleeding, and the urgency with which he shouted at the yard staff and rushed her to the hospital had made her feel protected in a way that she hadn't since Daniel left.

  But it had hit her with the force of a sledgehammer when that waitress mentioned the remarriage. She'd felt jealous. Jealous of the ex-wife for having been married to him, jealous of anyone who could still get him that rattled.

  And then she'd mentioned the other girls.

  Daisy shuffled lower in her seat, feeling both angry and despondent. It was completely inappropriate. He was completely inappropriate. It was pointless getting hung up on someone who was, as the waitress had so eloquently put it, a complete slag. Daisy looked at him surreptitiously. She knew the type: "car-crash men," Julia called them. "Strangely compelling, but you really don't want to get involved. Just drive past and thank God you're not stuck in the middle." Even if Daisy had wanted to get involved, which she obviously didn't, Jones would be wrong, even for a Rebound. His lifestyle, his history--it all pointed to Serial Infidelity and Avoidance of Commitment.

  Daisy shuddered, as if afraid that he could hear her thoughts. Because all this predicated on the idea that he even liked her, which, frankly, she was not sure he did. He liked her company, yes, and her ideas. But there was a whole genetic scale between her and that waitress, the slim-thighed, even-tanned girls that populated his world.

  "You warm enough? My jacket's in the back if you want it."

  "I'm fine," said Daisy curtly, not looking at him. She'd begun to wish, despite the late hour and the renewed throbbing in her arm, that she had caught the train. I can't do this, she thought, suddenly biting her lip. I can't allow myself to feel anything. It's too painful and too complicated. She had started to heal--until she'd spent time with Jones. Now she felt all opened up again.

  "Mint?" said Jones, and, as she shook her head, he finally left her alone.

  THEY ARRIVED BACK AT ARCADIA AT A QUARTER TO TEN, the car crunching loudly onto the gravel and leaving a louder silence when it stopped. There was a clear sky, and Daisy looked out the window, breathing in the clean salt air, hearing the distant rush and roar of the sea below.

  She felt rather than saw Jones look at her for a moment. Then, evidently deciding to say nothing, he climbed out the driver's door.

  Daisy fumbled across herself trying to open the passenger side, her physical incompetence bringing her dangerously close to tears. She bit her lip, determined not to cry in front of him again. That would just about top her day.

  Some of the lights Mrs. Bernard had left on, to make the house seem less unwelcoming, sent pools of yellow onto the gravel. Daisy gazed up at the windows, feeling acutely the fact that she was about to spend yet another night on her own.

  "You okay?" said Jones, appearing beside her. His cheerfulness of the earlier evening had been displaced by something more contemplative. He looked, she thought, as if he was perennially on the verge of saying something grave.

  "Fine," said Daisy, swinging her legs out as she held her arm protectively close to her chest. "I can manage."

  "When's Mrs. Bernard bringing the baby?"

  "First thing tomorrow."

  "Want me to go and get her for you? It'll take five minutes."

  "No. You get back. You're probably needed in London."

  He looked at her hard then, so that she blushed at her own tone, grateful that, in the badly lit driveway, he could probably not see it.

  "Thanks anyway," she said, forcing a smile. "Sorry. Sorry about everything."

  "It was a pleasure. Really."

  He was standing in front of her, too big a presence to move past. She wished he would just go away. But he seemed equally reluctant to move.

  "I've upset you," he said eventually.

  "No," said Daisy, too quickly. "Not at all."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm just tired. The arm's hurting a bit."

  "You okay by yourself?"

  "Oh, yes."

  They stood a few feet from each other, Jones tossing his car keys uncomfortably from one hand to the other. Why don't you just go? Daisy wanted to scream. r />
  "Oh," he said suddenly. "You left something in the boot."

  "What?"

  "Here." He moved around the car and, with a blip of his remote device, opened the back of the car.

  Daisy walked after him, her cardigan thrown over her shoulders, feeling increasingly tired and irritated. Her sling was beginning to rub on the back of her neck, and she reached her good hand around to try to adjust the knot. When she finished, Jones was still looking into the boot. She followed his gaze downward. There, on a large gray blanket, lay the stained-glass window, its image just visible in the shadow cast by the trunk lid.

  Daisy stood for a moment, then glanced up at him.

  "I saw you looking at it."

  Jones was the one who appeared embarrassed now. He shifted on his feet. "So I bought it for you. I thought . . . I thought it looked a bit like your little girl."

  Daisy heard the sound of the breeze in the Scotch pines and the dull whispering of the grass on the dunes. They were almost drowned out by the ringing in her ears.

  "It's a thank-you," he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes. "For what you've done. The house and everything."

  Then he lifted his head and looked at her properly. And Daisy, her bag held loosely in her good hand, stopped listening. She saw two dark, melancholy eyes and a face whose coarseness was offset by the sweetness of its expression.

  "I love it," she said quietly. And, her eyes still upon his, she moved a step closer to him, her bandaged arm lifting almost involuntarily toward his, her breath tight in her chest.

  Then she stopped as the front door swung open, sending an arc of light splaying across the drive onto them.

  Daisy turned toward it, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the silhouette that stood in the doorway, the silhouette that shouldn't have been, and didn't seem to be, Lottie Bernard's. She shut her eyes and opened them again.

  "Hello, Daise," said Daniel.

  PART FOUR

  SEVENTEEN

  "She's really gone and done it this time."

  Lottie was building Ellie a tower of bricks, gazing out at the two figures on the terrace. She turned to face Aidan, taking the weight off her knees as she moved. "Who has?" She'd forgotten how much time was spent getting down onto the floor and up again with small children. She hadn't remembered everything aching this much with Camille. Or even Katie.