‘Sorry,’ I say when clearly none of this is my fault.
If she wasn’t scowling quite so much, it would be fair to say that Tamara Randall is a stunning woman. She is tall, unusually so, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that she was, or had been, a model. Her wispy blonde hair is piled high on her head, showing off her long neck to good effect. Her skin is flawless and, bucking the usual trend, is as white as the driven snow. It only serves to make her soft grey eyes and full pink lips more striking. She’s wearing a baby-pink, cashmere-wrap ballet cardigan over a white T-shirt and white jeans. If I wore white jeans they would be, instantly, covered in mud, grass, tea. Tamara’s, needless to say, are pristine.
‘How do you know Randall?’ she asks grudgingly, otherwise we’d be standing here in hostile silence.
‘I don’t really know him,’ I offer when I find my voice. ‘I met him at a Hemel Hempstead Means Business event a few weeks ago. I organise Christmas.’
She forces a laugh at that. ‘All of it?’
I shrug. ‘Pretty much.’
‘How very dreadful for you.’
Then, thankfully, Carter reappears and our fledgling conversation stalls in mid-flight. In his hand he clutches two lime-green drinking straws and a pair of scissors.
‘You’re not really serious about this?’ Tamara asks.
‘Darling,’ he says with a sigh, ‘we have tried all other ways to sort this out, including extortionate solicitors. Let’s give this a go. Promise to abide by the decision?’
‘You could just ask the children where they want to go?’ I try a last-minute intervention. This is no way to decide how to divide up your children’s access rights.
They both look at me as if I’m mad.
‘The straws,’ they say simultaneously.
So Carter cuts them across diagonally with a rather theatrical flourish and holds them up to show Tamara. ‘Happy?’
She nods, reluctantly.
He hands them to me. ‘Mix them up behind your back and then we’ll draw.’
I do as I’m asked, even though I think this is way beyond my job remit and it’s a total bloody cheek of them to drag me into their tawdry domestic. When they’re as mixed up as I can make them, I hold out the straws, keeping the tops level whilst hiding their length in my palms.
‘You choose first,’ Carter says to his wife.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she says.
I couldn’t agree more. They’re adults, a grown woman and a grown man, clearly both successful and they’re resorting to this – lottery… to sort out their childcare arrangements.
Nevertheless, Tamara snatches a straw from my fingers and huffs at it. The straw looks quite short to me but, then, what do I know?
I open my palm and hold out the remaining straw. Even from here, I can tell that it’s considerably longer.
‘They’re mine,’ he says when he looks at it. In fairness to him, there’s no triumphant note in his voice. I’m not sure, if the boot had been on the other foot, that it would have been the same for her.
Tamara’s face is stony. ‘That’s settled then.’ She grabs her coat and handbag from the sofa. I can see tears welling in her eyes, but it’s clear that she’s not planning on crying while she’s still here.
I feel a lump in my own throat. Now Carter looks abashed too. ‘I’ll call you, Tamara,’ he says. ‘Tomorrow.’
His ex-wife flounces out without speaking. A few seconds later the front door bangs, echoing through the empty entrance hall.
Carter sinks onto the nearest sofa, head in hands. ‘That wasn’t very edifying, was it?’
‘No,’ I agree, and sit down opposite him.
‘I may have won this skirmish,’ he says. ‘But we’re in a war that hurts everyone.’
‘Especially the children.’
He nods and weariness mars his handsome face. ‘Especially the children.’
Chapter Nineteen
Carter orders more tea for us both. While we wait for it, he stares out of the window, surveying the amazing grounds, and I sit quietly, giving him the space he needs to compose himself.
When it arrives, he says to his housekeeper, ‘Sorry about all that, Hettie. I do apologise.’
‘Has Mrs Randall gone now, sir?’
‘Yes, yes. She’s picking up the children tonight. They’ll be back here at the weekend. It’s just me for supper.’
The housekeeper leaves and we’re alone. Carter pours the tea and hands me a cup, then settles back into the sofa with a sigh. Today he’s wearing a fitted black shirt and jeans. He looks more like an off-duty pop star than a businessman. It makes me catch my breath when I look at him. He really is very handsome and I’m not the sort of person whose head is turned by other men. For all the years we’ve been together, I’ve only had eyes for Jim. I don’t see the point in window shopping. I’m a one-man woman and that’s the way it’s going to stay, but Carter is an exception. His chiselled cheeks set my impressionable heart a-flutter and I can imagine that he and Tamara once made a beautiful couple.
At the moment, he simply looks jaded. ‘I don’t suppose that you feel like discussing your Christmas arrangements now?’ I say.
Carter shakes his head. ‘Tamara won’t stick by it,’ he says. ‘Whatever she’s said in this room. Straw or no straw.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘She ignores every single solicitor’s letter. I don’t know why he keeps on sending them. I had hoped that we’d be able to have an amicable divorce,’ he admits. ‘Perhaps I should have realised that, with Tamara, it was never going to happen. But even if the situation is volatile between us, we shouldn’t be using our children as weapons.’
‘It’s an easy thing to do.’
‘They’re wonderful kids.’ He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out his wallet, takes out a photo of his children and hands it to me. ‘That’s Eve, she’s nine.’ The child has clearly inherited her mother’s beauty, though, hopefully, not her temperament. ‘Max is seven.’ He looks exactly like a miniature version of Carter, who glows with pride. ‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’ This is always a slightly painful question, which gives me a pang of longing. ‘Not yet.’ Not ever at this rate. I hand back the photographs. ‘They both look lovely.’
‘They’re lively, there’s no doubt of that. This past year has been terrible for them,’ he says sadly. ‘Tamara and I finally called it a day after last Christmas.’ There’s an ironic note to his hollow laugh. ‘We’ve been fighting over the detail ever since and it’s dragging on interminably. It’s not good for the children. They need to know where they stand.’ Carter looks at me over the rim of his teacup. ‘I want to give them both a big treat for Christmas. No expense spared. That’s where you come in.’
My eyes widen.
‘I’m terrible at Christmas,’ Carter confesses. ‘Tamara has always handled everything like that. I’ve never had to do it. I haven’t bought one single Christmas present for them. Ever. That’s a terrible admission, isn’t it?’
I nod in acknowledgement.
‘It’s not that they’ve gone short,’ he adds. ‘It’s just that someone else has always sorted it out. I confess that I need help, Cassie Christmas. I’m useless at this kind of thing. Whether I eventually have the children here or not on the day, they’ll be here at some point over the holiday and I want to make it magical for them. Absolutely magical.’
‘That sounds good to me.’
He smiles and it lights up his face. I can’t help but smile back at him.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
It seems like a good time to flick open my pad and pull my pen from my handbag. ‘Have you any ideas?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave it all to you. I want them to have everything that there is to have.’ He fixes his eyes on me. ‘I want to take them on a holiday. Just a few days or maybe a long weekend so that the school – and Tamara – don’t create too much of a fuss. Let’s mak
e it something to do with Christmas. Something out of the ordinary. Can you organise it for the first half of December? Let’s kick off the festive season in a big way.’ He pulls out a BlackBerry.
I hesitate. This sounds like a dream contract, one that I would die for. But it’s also much bigger than anything I envisaged handling. I’m worried that it’s way beyond my expertise. What do I know about the world that Carter moves in? I organised a few holidays for my previous boss, some lavish presents too, but I think that what Carter wants is several steps beyond that.
‘I feel that I should point out that I’ve only just started this business, Mr Randall. I wouldn’t want my lack of experience to let you down.’
‘I like you, Cassie Christmas, and I think that I’m a good judge of people. You’ll do your best for me and you won’t rip me off.’
‘Both of those things are true.’
‘Keep in touch with Georgina. She’s been my assistant for years. She knows what I like and what I don’t. I’m a fairly laid-back chap. I don’t think I’m difficult to please.’
I wonder how true that is. Do people who are laid-back and easygoing get to the sort of position that Carter Randall is in?
‘Are you happy to go ahead?’
I nod, still in a state of shock. ‘If you are.’
‘Let’s put a tentative date in now.’
‘I’ll need to know your budget too,’ I say.
Carter throws up his hands. ‘No budget,’ he tells me. ‘Spend what you need to. Just make sure that it’s utterly fabulous. I want the holiday to be the trip of a lifetime. Something they’ll never forget.’
I feel myself gulp. ‘Right.’
‘Let’s go to town on the house too.’ Carter is clearly on a roll now. ‘I want it to look amazing. Like a winter wonderland.’
Carter’s budget may have no limits but, unfortunately, my imagination does. What can I possibly organise for them that they haven’t done before? This is going to take some serious research. While he’s flicking through his BlackBerry, my mind is bouncing all over the place.
He gives me a possible date for the holiday trip, which I jot down. It isn’t far away. I’m going to have my work cut out setting up anything at this short notice, let alone anything totally exceptional. Yikes.
‘Just draw up some ideas for me to look at and we’ll meet again when you’re ready. Perhaps we could have lunch.’
‘I’d like that,’ I say. Though I actually feel completely intimidated by his presence, this house, such ostentatious wealth. ‘It will have to be in the next couple of days.’
‘That’ll be fine. The sooner we get it sorted out the better.’ He looks at me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry again that you had to witness that scene between Tamara and me but, in some ways, I’m glad that you were here. There could have been blood on the carpet otherwise. Mine.’
As I start to pack away my pad, he continues, ‘The more we get embroiled with solicitors the harder it is to do this civilly.’ He gives me a rueful glance. ‘We always had a volatile relationship. Tamara and I both run demanding businesses. I’d be in one half of the world and she’d be in the other. We’d got to the point where we rarely saw one another and, when we did, we found that we no longer liked each other very much. Eventually, she found someone who could give her more attention.’
‘Oh.’
‘But you don’t need to know all this. I’m sorry to burden you with my troubles.’
‘That’s OK,’ I say, honestly. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘You could stay for a sandwich now, if you like,’ he suggests. ‘Hettie will whip us up something. I’m feeling quite peckish. Strangely, my appetite always comes back when Tamara leaves.’
While he chuckles at his own joke, I make a pretence of checking my watch. ‘I have to go.’
‘Christmas is coming,’ he teases.
‘I have a lot of presents to wrap, cards to write.’
‘Then I’ll let you go.’ He stands up and shakes my hand. His skin is warm, smooth. He closes his other hand over the top of my fingers and holds it there as he smiles into my eyes. A heat passes between us that makes me hot all over. ‘Have a lovely evening, Cassie Christmas. I’ll look forward to hearing from you soon.’
‘Very soon,’ I agree.
I retrieve my scalded hand and race out of Randall Court as fast as I can, my mind whirring.
Chapter Twenty
Jim was sitting in a meeting that had been called by Dave Hornshaw, the governor of the unit. ‘It’s a new initiative,’ he intoned.
No one actually groaned out loud, but Jim could sense the team’s reaction in the air. There were a lot of ‘new initiatives’ foisted on them by the government. Each lasted a few weeks before being quietly abandoned, only to be replaced by even more ‘new initiatives’. Most of the officers would tune out at this point, but Jim forced himself to listen.
‘This, potentially, is a good one,’ Dave assured them. ‘If we can make it work. It’s being put in place to help rehabilitate lads who are about to be released. Three months before they’re due to leave us, if there’s a job for them, they can start to go out on unsupervised placements.’
It sounded like pie in the sky. It was hard enough for ex-offenders to get work, let alone those who were still on the inside. Who in their right mind would want to offer them jobs?
‘We’re working hard with social services,’ the governor continued. ‘I’ll keep you posted over the next few weeks and let you know when it’s fully in place.’
A few stifled yawns and then everyone shuffled off back to their wings. Jim headed to Starling. It was quiet today. It was past lunchtime and no one had yet kicked off. A miracle. Perhaps it was because chicken curry was on the menu, always a favourite. A bunch of lads played pool, nicely, with no argy-bargy for once. Clearly no one’s honour had been disrespected over some imagined slight. Jim was thankful for that. He wasn’t in the mood for a full-on brawl. Sometimes he wondered if he got paid enough to intervene in a fist fight virtually every day.
Other lads hung around in huddles along the corridors, probably plotting their future life in crime, exchanging tips in burglary or dealing. In front of the communal television, Smudge and Rozzer sat together, both with their hands down the front of their trousers in standard prison style while staring blankly at the screen. One of the mental-health nurses had told him that hugging their gentleman’s tackle was something to do with the lads feeling vulnerable, a basic instinct. Jim wondered if it was simply a bad habit that they picked up because everyone else in here did it. All he knew was that it made them look stupid and he wished they’d stop.
Some unedifying creature with black roots was screeching on The Jeremy Kyle Show. If he was governor at Bovingdale, he’d make sure that the inmates were able to watch only stuff like Frozen Planet and Stargazing Live. Programmes that would educate them rather than wind them up. It was hoped that a diet of cartoons and reality shows would keep the lads placated, though it rarely worked.
Jim pulled up a chair next to them and sat astride it. ‘All right, lads?’
Smudge and Rozzer nodded at him.
‘Everything cool?’ He was still worried about Smudge after the events of last week even though the lad was back in counselling. The lad still had faint bruises round his eyes from nutting the wall, but thankfully his nose hadn’t broken. ‘Anything happened about your release yet?’
‘No.’
‘Haven’t you spoken to the Fresh Start team yet? Or social services or any of the charities?’
They both shook their heads. Time was marching on. By now something should be in place for them. But as so often happened in these straitened times, services were stretched to breaking point. Which meant, invariably, that on their release date the gate would be opened and they’d be turfed out into the cold with nothing but a few pounds from their discharge grant, a travel warrant to get them home, what clothes they were standing up in and all on their bloody tod. Was that any way to help prison
ers avoid reoffending?
‘They will speak to you,’ Jim assured them. ‘You’ll be entitled to benefits as soon as you get out. There are organisations that can help you to get work and a roof over your head. I went into a place today that might suit. They have two-bedroom flats in Hemel Hempstead for ex-offenders. I’ve asked them to put you on their list.’
‘You did that? For us?’ Both of the lads brightened up at that.
Jim shrugged, slightly embarrassed. ‘You are going to be staying in this area?’ he asked. Neither of them had mentioned plans to move away, but it was a conversation they hadn’t had.