Love and Loathing (Entitled Love: The Novels #3)

ONE

For the first time in weeks, Evelyn Blackton didn’t quite regret coming home. The cloudless sky above London was almost as blue as Spain’s, and the sun-baked streets were almost as shatteringly hot—and she loved being warm. It was a duvet around the shoulders, a cup of tea in the hands, a steaming bath. Even a pair of arms and a chest to lean on. Comfort. All the things she most craved when sad or lonely.

Or maybe it was escaping Zig and Fi’s cramped little flat that put a lift in her heart as she walked down the searing London street. She’d forgotten when she gratefully accepted the offer of their couch how every window of their flat was blocked with a tangle of dying, dusty houseplants and every surface piled with shabby, half-read books and political newspapers covered in coffee rings. Even the familiar conversations were starting to feel suffocating. They’d been having the same ones since university.

“We’ve got to focus,” Zig had said last night. “It’s like we’re…we’re trying to knock down the whole castle, brick by brick, you know?”

“Stone,” Fi had interjected thoughtfully. “I think castles are built from stone?”

Zig had waved an impatient hand. “Whatever. We’re basically, like, attacking things on an atomic level. Trying to save the whole world one grain of sand at a time, and it’s just not possible, we’ve got to admit it.”

He had looked at Fi and Evie, Fi wrinkling her nose, Evie frowning.

“So what are you suggesting?” Evie had asked. “Surely we can’t just give up?”

“We’ve got to focus on the lynchpin!” Zig had exclaimed, sitting forwards, his eyes bright. “On the keystone! High profile targets! Take them down, and the whole arch crumbles, the whole wall starts to fall—”

“I’m not joining FTP,” Evie had interrupted his metaphorical flow. “Half the stuff For The Planet does is illegal.”

“You don’t have to join FTP,” Zig had said. Then, hesitantly, fiddling with the laptop that was permanently on his lap. “You could…make a donation.”

She had looked at him, more betrayed than she wanted to admit by his suggestion. “You know I refuse to touch my father’s money.”

“Yeah, of course, yeah,” he had waved it off, and the conversation had moved on.

At least the community garden was something tangible. She was almost there now, taking a detour on her way to the tube station—she was due at her brother’s place for dinner. She hadn’t seen the garden since February, when it had been mostly bare soil and hope. But after her months volunteering in Spain, she could only imagine what it might look like now, towards the end of summer. Peas and beans running wild, and the scent of fresh tomatoes. Pumpkins ripening on the vine ready for the kids from the council estate to harvest for Halloween. That old lady, what had she been called? Efia? She’d been determined to grow her own bird peppers in the polytunnel they’d erected, use them in that amazing sauce she made…

But Evie stopped, confused, looking round to check her bearings.

This was definitely the right street. There was the old phone box across from the gate. There was the corner of the tower block, its shadow falling across where she stood. But there was no community garden. Instead, there was boarding all along the front of the empty block where it should be. Six, seven feet high, completely blocking what was behind, plastered with a bright and cheerful construction company logo and the usual warning signs about site-safety. A gate, padlocked, was set into the middle, and dried, muddy wheel tracks crossed the pavement. Evie, throat tight with dread, peered through the small gap where the padlocked chain held the gate shut.

The garden was gone.

Nothing there but flattened, dried earth, scarred with tire tracks, a concrete mixer and digger parked in one corner. No greenery. No tea-room shed. No painted, raised beds. No tomatoes or pumpkins or Efia growing peppers…

Hand shaking, Evie got out her phone.

“Zig? Zig, I’m at the garden. What—?”

“Oh shit.”

She heard muffled voices. Zig talking to Fi: “—I know, but we agreed—”

“Zig,” Evie interrupted. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

He sighed heavily.

“We were waiting to tell you. When you’d cheered up a bit, you know? You came back from Spain so down about the sanctuary, we didn’t have the heart to tell you about this.”

“But what happened? I don’t…” She swallowed. Swiped angrily at a useless tear. “How did this happen?”

“The council sold the land.”

“But they promised!”

“I know, I know. And then budget constraints happened, and a new council leader, and fucking Bluedeen making an offer they couldn’t refuse. You know, Eve. The usual shit we’re up against the whole time.”

“Bluedeen are residential, aren’t they?” She eyed the familiar logo of the construction company. “They’re building homes here?”

“Executive flats,” Zig said glumly. “You know what that means. ‘A prestigious development of exclusive, luxury apartments.’ Unaffordable. Inaccessible. Especially now.”

“Now what?”

“They just got bought out by Actuaris. Domnall White is expanding into property development. Probably a tax dodge, the same way all those Russian oligarchs put their blood money into London townhouses they never live in.”

“Shit,” Evie breathed.

Domnall White and Actuaris were the worst of the worst. They used sweatshop factories to supply their high street fashion chains. They swindled their employees’ pension funds. They were constantly in the papers for one thing or another, and they always managed to get away with it.

“He’s buying up land everywhere,” Zig continued. “Greenbelt land, too. They just outbid the Green Trust for a woodland in Kent and—”

“OK, stop. I can’t… I need a moment, OK?”

She sensed Zig nod, knew how he’d look, his thin blond hair almost to his eyes, nail scratching his reddish beard as he paused for a moment before saying, “It’s why he’s on FTP’s radar now. He’s their prime target.”

She shook her head, but if Zig could sense her reluctance down the line, he ignored it.

“It’s like I was saying last night, Eve. We have to join FTP. It’s no good setting up community gardens or saving a dog or two in Spain when it all gets steamrollered by these guys with the fat cheque books. We need to stop them . If we fight them, bring them down, make it clear that we’re not going to put up with it anymore… FTP has this plan—”

“No. They’re extremists. They give protesters a bad name.”

“Maybe that’s what it takes. If we’re really committed to the cause. What about the suffragettes? Are you condemning them for the things they did? For The Planet are the same. They take risks, yeah, but we’ve been trying it our way—the kind, polite way—for years. And where have we got? Gardens bulldozed and trees cut down and libraries shut. And it’s only getting worse. You know it.”

Evie had a headache by the time she got to her brother Roscoe’s place in central London. It was a relief to turn off the busy side streets and enter the peaceful mews where his maisonette was located. She walked slowly, dredging up the energy to be bright and sociable, wanting to linger in the soft pink light of the languidly setting sun.

Thoughts preoccupied, she only properly became aware of the man walking some distance in front of her when he slowed and stopped at the very door she was headed for. He pressed the buzzer, glanced up at the house, then turned, noticing her as she stopped a few steps from him. He raised an enquiring eyebrow, nodding at the blue painted door.

“Dinner at Roscoe’s?”

He was older than she was, mid-thirties. Tall and handsome in a wholly masculine way, like those 1940s screen stars. Dark hair and straight dark brows and straight nose and straight lips. Nothing pretty about him at all. Almost severe.

Not her type, she dismissed him automatically, the way one did when single. She liked guys with wavy, curly hair and save-the-world stars in their wood-green eyes. The only thing this man would save were reservations in exclusive restaurants. From his suit to his shoes, he was clearly another of Roscoe’s financial city boy friends.

He was smiling—a very self-assured sort of smile. Smug, she thought. Arrogant.

“Or perhaps you’re not here for Roscoe at all,” he continued. “Except for the fact you look exactly like his older brother Hugo.”

She flushed, because she did look like Hugo, damn him. They were both tall and angular with very dark hair and very blue eyes.

“The female version, of course,” he assured her, still smiling, though the amused gleam in his dark brown eyes felt like he was laughing at her. Or rather, laughing at the whole world, as though he thought he might just be the first person in all of humanity to realise life, and everyone living it, was utterly absurd.

“Aubrey Ford,” he said, holding out his hand. “I work at your father’s company. It’s how I know Roscoe.”

Evie shook his hand, which was large and strong, despite a lifetime of doing nothing but sitting at a desk making rich men richer. His admission of where he worked sunk her opinion of him even lower. Definitely not her type.

“Evelyn Blackton,” she said.

They were saved from further small talk by the rattle of the lock and Roscoe greeting them, grinning and happy. Aubrey stepped inside past him, then her brother, the big oaf, enveloped her in one of his suffocating hugs, from which she emerged embarrassed but already feeling better.

Aubrey had paused on the bottom step, watching. Roscoe quickly made the same introductions they had just made then waved them both ahead, following them up the stairs. “Poppy’s cooked something amazing,” he said. “And it’s all vegan, Eve, so don’t worry.”

Distantly, up the stairs ahead of her, she thought she heard Aubrey groan.

Of course he’s that type, she thought irritably. At some point tonight he would probably start mansplaining the purpose of human canine teeth. She swallowed what she’d been about to say to Roscoe about the garden, not wanting to get into it now, with an audience. Or think about it at all, if she was honest. Maybe it was better to try and just enjoy being here, with Roscoe and his lovely new girlfriend, whom she’d already met twice since coming back to London. Good food and good company would be enough. If this Aubrey man didn’t ruin it.

Speaking of which… Inside Roscoe’s flat, she toed off her shoes and eyed his friend who had already gone through to the living room to talk to Poppy.

“I thought it was just us three,” she whispered to Roscoe.

Roscoe looked guilty. “Sorry. It was. But then Aubrey called saying he wanted to see me, and I sort of forgot I’d double booked the evening before I said yes. But you’ll like him, I promise.”

“He works for Dad. ”

Roscoe’s smile was wry. “So did I. And you like me.”

“But you had no choice! He’s there willingly. What does that tell us?”

Roscoe let out a sigh, glancing down the hall to where Aubrey and Poppy were laughing together. “It’s just a job, Eve. There’s a thousand companies like it. Many of them worse.”

“Mm. Like Actuaris.”

She’d been about to go and join the others in the living room when she caught sight of the grimacing look Roscoe flashed her. “What?” she asked warily.

“Just…um…about Actuaris. Maybe don’t go on one of your normal rants about Domnall White being Satan’s evil twin tonight.”

“Why?” she said, ignoring her irritation at the ‘rant’ accusation. They were impassioned statements . Not rants.

“Because Aubrey works with him,” said Roscoe. “Domnall White is his biggest client.”