‘It’s not that straightforward, Faye.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She rang me because it’s probably my fault.’
‘What’s your fault?’ Faye said indignantly. ‘They had a row. What’s that got to do with—’ Faye stopped abruptly.
Her wide eyes gave away exactly what she was thinking, and Jake found it genuinely amusing. Despite the circumstances, he laughed out loud. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Lydia and me,if that’s what you’re thinking. We are not having an affair or anything like that.’
Jake thought that if Faye met Lydia, she’d understand. Lydia, a six-foot, sultry stunner, privately educated on the East Coast of America and a Harvard law graduate, was a formidable corporate lawyer. On paper, she was a good match for Marcus, who was an Eton-educated Oxbridge graduate corporate executive and heir to a business empire.
Jake had nothing against educated, career-orientated women. But what he had against Lydia was her condescending attitude towards anybody who didn’t reach her dizzying heights of perfection, and, in Jake’s personal experience, towards some who had; if you didn’t come from theright stock– meaning money – it didn’t matter what you achieved; you were still nobody.
She was a snob through and through.
Her one redeeming quality, as far as Jake was concerned, was her relationship with Marcus. It was obvious to anybody that she loved the guy, and it was obvious to Jake that Marcus didn’t deserve it – he treated her like a doormat. His habit of disappearing was causing her immense embarrassment, not to mention emotional pain – and was causing Jake a huge headache. He didn’t know why Lydia didn’t just end it.
They pulled up in front of Jake’s house.
Faye switched the engine off and turned to Jake. ‘So, why did she callyou?’
It was the same reason she called last time and the time before that; Lydia might love Marcus, but her love of the high society circles she moved in came an extremely close second. She was ambitious. Jake had a feeling Lydia didn’t want anything tarnishing the ‘golden couple’ image she was carefully cultivating. She didn’t want tawdry pictures of her wrecked fiancé, collapsed in some putrid doorway, splashed oversome sleazy tabloid blowing away those perfectly orchestrated pictures inHello!magazine. She didn’t want the police arresting Marcus with some prostitute hanging on his arm. Above all, she didn’t want to know any details. That was where Jake came in.
How many times had it happened in the past month? Jake had lost count, and this worried him. And there was something else. On the phone, Lydia – who was normally Ms Ice – had lost her cool completely. She was actually pleading with him to patch it up with Marcus, as though it was all his fault. She’d said,Can’t you just talk to him? Just one kind word?Jake had never seen this side of Lydia – the ice maiden thawed – which in any other context would have delighted him no end. But her small voice on the other end of the line, and her words,He misses you, had thrown Jake completely.
Had Lydia been trying to tell him this all along by ringing him up and asking him to find Marcus in the hope that Jake would see what he had caused and forgive him? Had she finally lost patience today and spelled it out: that Marcus’s increasingly erratic behaviour was his fault? Had he hurt him that much? But then, thought Jake, the truth does hurt.
‘What is it?’ Jake felt Faye’s hand on his arm.
‘Have you ever said something …’ Jake searched for the right words and decided to change tack. ‘If someone can’t handle the truth, do you tell them anyway or do you let them continue believing they are the one in the right?’
Jake wasn’t sure if that made any sense.
Faye stared at Jake a long moment.
‘This is me you’re talking to, remember? You know exactly what I’m going to say.’
Jake nodded. ‘The truth.’
Chapter 7
Taking out the house keys, Jake turned them over in his hand and walked up the front path. He reached the front door and heard the clunk of a car door behind him. He turned briefly to see Faye standing beside the car. Guessing she was anxious to get back to school, he called out, ‘You don’t have to wait.’ He had told her he’d report the stolen bike later. That wasn’t his priority right now – finding Marcus was.
‘It’s fine. I’ll hang around just to make sure you’ve got your car keys.’ Faye pointed at the car that was sitting outside his house.
Jake entered the house. The car keys were in the kitchen drawer, next to the sink.
Jake found the keys, shut the drawer and looked up. ‘That’s odd,’ he said, looking out of the kitchen window into the garden. The kitchen had patio doors that looked over the walled garden at the back of the house. It wasn’t very large – just a small patio, a grassed area and some borders – but he did appreciate the outside space. Over the past month, once the weather had finally turned summery, he had taken to throwing the patio doors open and wandering outside to sit on the patio.
Despite the bright morning, the patio was floodlit by the security light. Jake imagined that a cat must have set it offthe night before, but it should have timed out after a sufficient interval. Jake walked out of the kitchen, making a mental note to fix the light.
He opened the front door. Faye must have been watching for him. Jake held up his car keys, dangling them in front of his face.
It started to rain.
Jake ducked back into the hall and reached for a coat; past experience told him he’d be out searching for Marcus for hours, probably finding him in some bar or pub, passed out.
Quickly throwing it over his shoulders, Jake stopped. Something had caught his attention; he could have sworn there was water on the dining room floor, visible through the open doorway.
