Deep Blue Sea (14 page)

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

‘I want to work,’ he said simply. ‘Work gets you through.’

She could only nod in agreement.

They sat down at his cramped dining table and Ross cleared the piles of magazines and papers to make a space. Dark had fallen while they were talking, so he switched on an old anglepoise lamp, reminding Rachel of the newsroom late at night when she had burnt the midnight oil for a story.

‘Let’s have a look,’ said Ross, bending over the statements.

Rachel pointed to an entry she had underlined in black ink. ‘This is one that jumped out at me. A payment to Flypedia, the travel booking company, on one of his credit card bills.’

‘Why is that unusual?’

Rachel had given this some thought. ‘Well, why was he booking flights himself? He travelled a lot, but there’s hardly any other payments to anything travel-related. Diana told me that Denver Group have a travel agency and everything went through that, not his personal account – besides which, the company has a private jet; why not just use that?’

‘Family holiday? Romantic mini-break for him and Diana?’

Rachel smiled. ‘Men never book holidays, Ross, it’s always the wife or girlfriend. Anyway, Diana told me they use a concierge service. Look: there’re dozens of payments to them.’

‘You’re right.’ He frowned. ‘This one does seem random. Maybe he had to book something himself quickly.’

‘Exactly – but it feels like an off-the-books payment, doesn’t it?’

‘Hack’s instinct – it doesn’t leave you, does it?’ smiled Ross.

Rachel swiped playfully at his arm, but she couldn’t help but feel excited; it was like slipping back into something comfortable, something natural. When she had first started in print journalism, she honestly couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else. From the very first second she had barged into that newsroom, she had just known this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Even though she had spent more than a year running errands, making coffee and getting shouted at, she had loved every second of it – listening to the news desk, watching a story unfold, seeing the team jump into action when a news item was streamed through from Reuters or a tip-off. News was her drug and she had forgotten how much she loved it.

‘If we could access his travel account, we could find out what this money is for,’ she said. ‘It’s a few thousand, so it’s probably flights. What we need to know is where to, and who for.’

She glanced up at Ross. They both knew what she was asking. He had been to prison for something very similar.

‘Invasion of privacy of a dead man,’ he mused. ‘Where does the law stand on that these days?’

‘His wife has asked me to do this,’ said Rachel hopefully.

‘Doesn’t make it right.’

‘Since when did you get all moral?’

‘Not a question of morals, Rach. It’s a question of what my probation officer will make of it.’

‘Sorry, Ross, if it’s going to put you in a difficult position . . .’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he laughed, opening his laptop. ‘I went to a prison packed with white-collar criminals – it was like going to the Open University for computer crime. Learnt an awful lot of new tricks. Used to have a team of hackers on speed-dial. Now I’m pretty sure I can do it myself.’

She grinned, beginning to feel a spot of headway.

‘In which case, I had better leave you to it.’

17

Diana turned the dial into the red, feeling the water get hotter and hotter as it ran down her back. She twisted it again, her skin prickling in the now-scalding water, staying under the jet for as long as she could stand. Then she spun the tap in the other direction, all the way into cold, letting the icy torrent hit her, forcing herself to stay there for a moment longer. Finally she switched the shower off and bolted for the towel rail, wrapping herself in a fluffy robe.

The shower trick was something Rachel had taught her, some Scandinavian theory of how hot then cold could reset the body when you were feeling sluggish. Of course, Rachel had used it to combat hangovers, but Diana supposed the principle was the same. She could certainly do with a jump-start these days. She had always been an early riser, up with the lark to tend to Charlie or go to a gym class, but since Julian’s death, she was finding it harder and harder to get up in the morning. Even on the days when she had spent all night awake, going over her thoughts and memories in the bed that was suddenly too big for her, it was easier to stay under the covers when daylight broke. Today it had been ten thirty before she could bring herself to crawl from beneath the duvet, and as the day stretched ahead of her like a dark, gaping hole, it was very tempting to creep back again.

She jumped at a thumping on the door.

‘Diana!’ Her mother put her head into the bathroom, her voice high-pitched with irritation. ‘Mrs Bills has been calling you for five minutes. You have a visitor. Adam Denver.’

Her body was still goose-bumped from the cold shower, but she felt a shimmer of warmth at the mention of his name.

‘Adam’s here now?’ she asked, feeling suddenly panicky. ‘Get rid of him. I’m practically naked.’

‘Well get dressed,’ her mother whispered back. ‘I can’t very well send him away now, can I?’

Diana hurriedly smoothed her hair back and wrapped her robe tighter, then stepped into the bedroom. She gasped when she saw Adam standing in the doorway.

‘Is this a bad time?’ he asked, looking embarrassed.

‘No, yes. No,’ she stuttered. ‘Of course not.’

‘Perhaps I should wait downstairs?’ he said.

‘We’ll grab some coffee,’ said Sylvia. She touched him on the arm, and Diana realised, with horror, that she was flirting with him.

‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, keeping a respectful distance at the door. He glanced at Sylvia, who took the message to leave the room.

They listened to her footsteps getting softer and softer down the stairs.

‘I’m sorry about running off yesterday,’ he said when she was out of earshot.

‘You had a meeting.’

‘I don’t want you to think I abandoned you . . .’

‘Don’t be silly. I hope you’ve not driven all this way to apologise for that.’

‘No, I’ve driven all the way here to see if you’d like to come for lunch.’

‘I should probably get dressed then.’ She smiled slowly.

‘Yeah – I’m not sure how well white towelling would go down on
Vogue
’s best-dressed list.’

She felt her cheeks colour.

‘Shoes. Wear running shoes.’

‘Where are we going? The athletics track?’

‘It’s a surprise. I’ll see you downstairs in ten minutes.’

Diana pulled on some jeans, a short-sleeved bottle-green cashmere top and a pair of trainers.

‘Where are you two heading off to?’ asked Sylvia with evident curiosity.

‘Apparently we’re going running.’

‘In
cashmere
?’ said her mother with surprise.

It was late morning and the sun was climbing in preparation for another warm day. Diana couldn’t remember an unbroken string of sunny days like it, and whilst she knew that the weather would never be able to shift her grief, the feeling of the sun on her face was a good one. Of strength and of hope.

‘How were the Qataris?’

‘We’ve got a deal.’

‘Then I’m glad we didn’t go clubbing.’

Adam’s car was parked on the drive. It was a beauty, one that Julian, with his own collection of vintage Ferraris, had himself coveted. A 1960s convertible Aston Martin. Diana considered it a James Bond car and always thought it suited its owner perfectly.

‘I thought you had this shipped to America.’

‘No, it’s been at my parents’.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, stroking the silver paintwork.

‘There’s no better way of getting from A to B than in this baby,’ he grinned.

‘So where’s B?’

‘I thought we’d drive to the coast. Figured some sea air might do us good.’

‘The sea is quite a long way from here, you know,’ she said, climbing into the passenger seat.

‘Well I haven’t got any plans for the rest of the day, unless you have.’

They took the back roads to the coast, threading through south Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and down into Dorset, through quaint, gorgeous countryside that Adam described as Hardy country. The roof of the car was down so that the sun warmed Diana’s shoulders, and the wind blew her hair out in a ribbon behind her head and rattled around their ears so that they did not need to talk.

Perhaps it was what they both needed – time out to clear their heads. It was good to get out of the house, somewhere far away, some place that Diana hadn’t been before, unconnected with memories of Julian. She was loath to admit it to herself, but she had not lived a very big life since she moved to Somerfold. The house was enormous, but her horizons had compressed to a very small and confined space. The renovations had taken up the first eighteen months of her time there, but when they were completed there had been very little to occupy her time, other than trips to a Pilates studio in Henley, a photography course in the village and the occasional visit to London to see friends who all seemed to have moved on with their lives since she had left Notting Hill. The irony that she had left London to live a more fulfilled life, only to have it replaced by a gilded cage, wasn’t lost on her.

After two hours, they stopped at a pub on the outskirts of Abbotsbury. Diana’s face cracked open with a smile as she saw the glittering sea in front of her.

‘The coast,’ she said with glee as she looked out over a long finger of shingle.

‘There’s nearer coastline to your house, but nothing as special as this,’ said Adam, opening the car door for her with impeccable manners.

‘Where are we?’

‘Chesil Beach,’ he said, guiding her into the beer garden. ‘I’m going inside to order. What do you fancy?’

‘You choose,’ she said, unable to tear her eyes away from the vista. It was quite perfect. To the left, the garden overlooked green fields striped with yellow shale which curved away from them over the rolling hill, dotted with farm buildings and meandering cattle; while in front of her the English Channel sparkled silver in the sun.

No wonder the place was so busy, she thought, her eyes scanning for a place to sit. It was past one o’clock on a summer Saturday, and the garden was already full. She spotted a wooden table away from the crowds and sat down as Adam brought out a jug of Pimm’s complete with chunks of fruit.

‘It’s like a giant swimming pool,’ she laughed, looking up and down the coastline.

‘It’s a lagoon.’

‘How do you know about this place?’

‘I went to boarding school a few miles down the road.’

‘I thought you went to Harrow.’

‘They expelled me,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The first of many.’

Diana only knew the broad strokes of Adam’s tearaway youth. It was not something the family liked to dwell on, not something that fitted in with their usual success and order, and as she sat with him at their rickety table overlooking the coast, ready to hear his story, she realised that the two of them had had very few heart-to-hearts, spent very little time alone, even though the brothers had been quite close.

‘How many schools did you leave?’ she asked, pouring Pimm’s into a glass.

‘Three.’ He grimaced.

The waitress came and put two club sandwiches on the table, and Adam waited until she had gone before he spoke again.

‘You know I always wanted to be like Julian. Strong, capable, accomplished. He was a few years older than me. Too old to be my friend, so he became my hero. I wanted to be like him so much, but when I realised I never could, I must have subconsciously decided to be everything he wasn’t. It was a philosophy that kind of got me into trouble.’

‘You’re very alike. I always thought that.’

‘I don’t think anyone else has ever shared that opinion.’

‘You’re more alike than you realise. Kind of different sides of the same coin.’

‘My parents don’t agree with you.’

She knew what it was like for a parent to have a favoured child. In their family it had been her, a state of affairs she had struggled to understand, struggled to accept; until the scandal, she had always felt a deep sense of guilt about it.

Not wanting to think about that, she tipped her head back and let the sun shine on her face.

‘This place is amazing. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before.’

‘Never?’ he said disbelievingly.

‘I’ve been missing out.’

He gave a soft snort. ‘You know, since Jules died, I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things I haven’t done, all the things I want to do. Is that selfish?’

‘No. It’s only natural to think about your own mortality.’

He looked deep in thought.

‘So what’s on your bucket list?’ she asked, picking at some lettuce. ‘What are the things you’ve always wanted to do? Compared to most men, you’ve probably done a lot. Driven a Bond car. Slept with a
Sports Illustrated
cover girl . . .’

He didn’t deny it.

‘There’s loads of stuff I’ve not done. I know I’ve got money, and that’s great, but I just haven’t got my arse into gear to do things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Take a motorbike across Asia.’

‘Then do it.’

‘Fly to the edge of space. Maybe in one of those F-14s or Russian MiG jets. Pretend I’m Maverick in
Top Gun
.’

‘Surely you know Tom Cruise. He might be able to sort you out.’

‘I want to see a volcano erupt, camp in the Arctic – you know, man versus nature. I want to free-dive.’

She opened her mouth to tell him that this was one of Rachel’s great loves, but stopped short of revealing it. It had often occurred to her that Adam and her sister would be a good match, and she had thought about subtly setting them up. But every time, she had found some excuse not to. True enough, in those early days she wasn’t even sure that she liked Adam. He was self-confident in a way that made her feel inadequate, with a reputation as a commitment-phobe, and her sister did not deserve a man like that. Or secretly, deep down, did she not
want
her sister to have a man like that? A man even more handsome and charismatic than her own husband. Was that an unspoken truth between sisters? That you wanted them to have the best of everything so long as it wasn’t better than yours.

‘And I want to get married. Have a family,’ added Adam, polishing off his sandwich in just a handful of bites.

That one nearly knocked her off her seat.

‘
You’re
broody?’

‘It’s pure ego,’ he teased. ‘It’s just what the world needs – Adam Denver mini-mes running around brightening the place up. What about you?’ he added more softly.

She shrugged and smiled, wondering why she had never played this game before. After all, she and Julian had had the money to do whatever they fancied.

‘See Ayres Rock at sunrise. Get a degree. Go to a lap-dancing club.’

He almost spluttered on his Pepsi. ‘You’re a dark horse . . .’

‘Rachel lived in Soho for a while. She always used to make it sound so exciting. She knew all these crazy people. Sometimes I think I need a walk on the wild side.’

‘You might find it’s overrated.’

She felt exhilarated by the conversation. For just a few moments life was full of possibilities once again, and there seemed an urgency about it.

‘Is that it?’ he asked after a few moments.

There was one thing she wondered if she would ever do, but she didn’t dare voice it aloud.

She wondered if she would ever recover from the death of her husband, if she would ever meet anyone new.

‘That’s it,’ she said, wiping the corner of her mouth with a napkin.

They talked for another twenty minutes about Adam’s latest hotel purchase from the Qataris – a string of grand dame hotels in some of the world’s top cities – and as he spoke, Diana wondered why the Denvers had been so quick to dismiss him as the family clown.

‘We should go,’ said Adam when they had both finished their food. They got back into the car and drove along the coast through the village of Charmouth, taking a turn up a steep hill shaded on both sides by oak and poplar trees. It was a glorious day to be out in the country and a perfect day to forget your troubles and just be, thought Diana. Not worrying about yesterday or tomorrow, no inquest or investigation, just driving through beautiful scenery with someone she liked.

As she glanced across at him, watching him concentrating, observing his hands on the wheel, the same strong hands and lightly tanned forearms as Julian, she realised that the day was beginning to feel more like a date. The thought was unwelcome. It felt traitorous and wrong. And yet if she squinted, if she allowed herself to get swept away by the moment, it was like going back in time.

Back to her first date with Julian, an occasion that still brought a smile to her face. She had insisted on meeting him in Highgate Village. At the time she had been living with Charlie in a small flat in nearby Tufnell Park and had been too embarrassed for him to pick her up from where she lived. More particularly, she didn’t want him to come inside and see the books and toys belonging to her six-year-old son. She had never denied Charlie’s existence at work, but had felt it better to keep the fact that she had a child low-key. She loved her temporary admin job at the Denver Group and she didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise it. Besides, she was realistic enough to know that being a single mum did not help your dating prospects, no matter how attractive men found you.