Chapter 26
26
“Any minute now, they promise me,” Fin says, pushing his mobile in the pocket of his coat as he approaches me. “Though that’s probably the cab company’s ‘Just ’round the corner.’”
I’m perched on a cold hard curb by the petrol pumps, under guise of “guarding the luggage,” eating Haribo Sour Cherries, as BreakdownGate enters its ninetieth minute. I crumple the bag and stand up, wiping sugar from my hands, to try belatedly to look efficient and involved.
The “dismayed inspection of the vehicle” and the “lengthy technical conversations with people on the other end of a phone” phase has been run entirely by Fin. I initially sat in the car feeling useless, then stood around by our luggage feeling useless, then dawdled off to buy sweets.
I gathered it was worse than a tire blowout, and our Audi was in fact, to quote a passing mechanic who’d given us his off-duty opinion for free: “fucked.”
“Mini break was it? Hope it’s not an anniversary,” he added cheerfully, as Finlay and I stared blankly, there being no accept able social shorthand to describe what it actually is. We have formed an uneasy temporary alliance to hunt down a senile senior citizen .
The car has been towed away in disgrace.
“Ah, wait, could that be...?”
Another gleaming set of wheels, this one silver, sweeps onto the forecourt. Fin strides over and has a brief consultation with the driver. He accepts keys and a piece of paper and there’s lots of exclamatory head-shaking, palms-up gestures from the hire car man and what can you do shoulder shrugging from Fin, presumably discussing the fate of the last one.
I pick up Fin’s duffel bag with one hand and the handle on my suitcase with the other, and roll it noisily across the concrete, toward what I notice is a Mercedes-Benz.
“Is this... an S-Class?” I say, hairs prickling on the back of my neck.
“... I think so?” Fin says. “Why?”
I stare some more. I mean—it’s nothing, is it? It’s a daft coincidence. “No reason.”
“Never had you down as a petrol head,” Fin says, with a smile, taking my bag from me. “If it gets us to Edinburgh in one piece, that’ll do me.”
I’d obviously never mention Susie in reference to anything supernatural, but I climb in wondering how much mentioning of Susie is either tactful or astute, full stop. I have no idea what’s going on inside Finlay, what’s behind that attitude.
I can hear Susie in my head:
Less than you think. True of all men. It’s so very Eve to be scriptwriting them vivid inner lives.
“Another car to get used to,” Fin says, as we crawl onto the slip road. I push back against the head rest and Fin turns the radio on.
“Wheels feel good and solid,” I say.
“We’re getting a free ride out of them trying to kill us,” Fin says. “Just so you know. I’ll put the proceeds toward choc ices at the zoo.”
I guffaw. “Wait, you’re serious? We’re going to the zoo?”
“My father said in his note he was doing the tourist stuff first, so I guess so.”
“Right.” It’s hard to imagine how we’ll find one man in a sightseeing throng but perhaps it’ll be like Denholm Elliott standing out like a sore thumb in his panama hat in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
“Choc ices,” I say. “Britspeak.”
“Oh yeah. In American it’s Popsicle .”
I smile and we settle into a courteous quiet, with New Order’s “Regret” filling the space.
Observing Finlay’s alleged psychopathy up close is a disorientating business. I don’t sense menace, as such, but Finlay has a motive to keep me onside.
As we flit past beautiful mountains to Scotland, Fin says, apropos of nothing:
“I appreciate you doing this. I know it’s a lot to ask. Thank you.”
“Oh... it’s alright,” I say, caught off guard.
“I don’t want you to feel like we have to be adversaries, because we had a rocky start,” he says. “OK for me to put the traffic news on?” He reaches out and prods at the radio, and I nod.
I’m reassured, but I’m also spooked. What if this is a ploy? What if this is key to Finlay’s particular menace? He plays at being a nice, adjusted, kindly human being for a time, then when it suits him, rips the rug from beneath you? So when he does something whiplash-nasty, it makes you feel ridiculous for having trusted him? What if trying to get along well with Finlay Hart is like trying to walk backward in heels on a travelator, holding a martini? Like watering a plastic plant?
If so, Susie wouldn’t have told me this.
I remember once when Becky Fucking Villa Holiday stung Susie for the whole cost of their luxury accommodation on a girls’ weekend in Bath. Susie paid up front for the place they rented, for convoluted reasons of convenience given by Becky. Susie had been surprised to receive a thank-you card from Becky afterward saying how wonderful it was for Susie to treat her for her thirtieth, especially as she was spent up due to her forthcoming Nile cruise. I read it and snorted.
“Translation: I have mixed in my birthday obligation with a hint of ‘I can’t afford to pay you anyway’ to create the maximum inhibition and discouragement to ask me for the money. Hi, I’m Becky Bramley, I have massive clanking balls of brass.”
Susie guffawed but stoutly defended her and insisted the agreement to go dutch must’ve slipped her mind. I was incredulous that arch cynic Susie could be so na?ve in the face of an obvious heist, and concluded she was soft on Becky. With hindsight, I can see it was more about Susie being unwilling to admit that anyone had got one over on her, than thinking the best of Becky. “Being taken in” wasn’t a thing that happened to Susie; it was totally off brand.
Was the intensity with Finlay not only that he was her brother, but that at some point, she’d been utterly blindsided by him?
I N WHAT FEELS like not much time at all, we’re into twilight Edinburgh, car crawling along more densely populated roads, past Georgian sandstone houses with white-framed windows. The GPS now issuing commands every thirty seconds, after its long nap on the motorway.
We inch down Princes Street and come to a halt in front of The Caledonian, a red sandstone Victorian fa?ade with Corinthian columns, white-gloved doormen, and gilt logo-ed awnings. A Union Jack and the Scottish flag hang at angles on poles, and there are neat box hedges and revolving doors.
I wait patiently for Fin to drive past it and on to the reasonably midpriced anonymous option we’re booked in at, while the GPS intones: “You have reached your destination.” Fin’s car door is opened for him by a liveried footman. As is mine.
“This is where we’re staying?” I say, having clambered out, as Fin hands the car keys over.
“Yes?” he says.
“It’s The Waldorf ,” I say, squinting at the signage. Everything is lit up, so the edifice glows honey-yellow against the blue-black sky.
“As in the salad, yes.”
“But... Wow. OK.”
“The Waldorf is where we went when we came up as kids. More my mum’s taste, to be fair, but I thought my dad might’ve homing pigeoned back here.”
“This is a fair step up from what I’m used to,” I say, looking back at the car, which is having luggage removed from it before being taken away to be parked, without our involvement.
“I can book you the guest house in East Lothian where the top TripAdvisor review said there were Minion toys on the bed and cryptic graffiti in blood on the shower wall, if you’d prefer?” Fin says.
I step into the revolving doors, laughing.
Oh God—I can withstand flash, but flash and witty is too much.
In the gleaming curved marble lobby with white napery, we have to wait behind tourists in loud shirts with Nikons, in Velcro-fastening sandals. Fin checks his watch.
“It’s pretty late to find a restaurant,” he says. ‘Shall we each get room service tonight and then head out to the sights tomorrow? Meet you down here at nine?”
“Sure.”
“Each” meaning “not together.” I suppose I could be offended at Fin’s lack of wanting to spend any more time with me, but a burger eaten on a bed, while I’m in what Americans call a “waffle robe,” is too appealing.
“Put anything you want on the tab while you’re here,” Fin says, then hesitates, his face coloring in a way I’ve not seen before. “I mean, I don’t want there to be any awkwardness or confusion over it. I asked you to come here. It’s my responsibility and therefore my bill. Obviously.”
“Thank you,” I say. Then, at a loss of what else to say, looking around, trying to ease the tension: “This place, though! I top out at the Radisson Blu for a spendy weekend.”
There’s possibly a creakingly obvious subtext of I didn’t know you were loaded!
Fin puts me on edge anyway, so I’m possibly not judging the line between playfully irreverent and rather crass very well.
“Did Susie not give me shit for having money?” Finlay says, having read it as I predicted. I twinge a little.
In the quiet of the lobby, the murmur of voices echoing, his asking me this feels potentially significant. I’m the guardian of Susie’s estate now, intellectual if not literal.
“No,” I say, glad I can at least be honest. “She never mentioned that at all.”
“Wouldn’t have predicted she’d miss that opportunity, but perhaps, thinking about it, I should have.”
“Why?”
“Because she’ll have given me shit for absolutely everything else?” Fin’s manner is light-hearted but there’s a weight behind this that makes it feel threatening to me. Not to mention a history.
“No, I meant: why should you, having thought about it, predict it?”
His eyes narrow, quizzically. “I know the legend has it I’m horrible. ‘Has money’ is only going to be used if there’s an angle in the case for prosecution. As far as I’m aware, there wasn’t one. I’m not an arms dealer, I don’t buy corporate boxes at Ed Sheeran gigs.”
I laugh. Fin humor is delivered with a curt precision, and so straight-faced that I only realize it is humor a second or two after he finishes speaking.
I’m all of a sudden awash with curiosity about Fin’s side of their war, while simultaneously certain it’ll be a heavily biased fiction.
No one gets a reputation by accident , a favorite truism of Justin’s. (I seem to recall I once argued against this, from a general vague sense of injustice, and Justin retorted: “When you can show me the exception, I’ll start making exceptions.” I have yet to show him an exception.)
Fin steps forward to the reception desk and I fidget while he checks in, feeling very scruffy in the surroundings.
“Do you know if your dad’s staying here?” I say, under my breath, as Finlay hands me my key card in its paper sleeve, room number written on it.
“No, but there’s no point asking. I’ll get Data Protection, blah blah.”
“Hmm.” I rub my chin. “They won’t tell you if he is here, but I bet with some light wheedling they’ll tell you if he isn’t.”
“How do you mean?”
“Let me try,” I say. I move forward to the available person behind reception, who, probably helpfully, is a man around Fin’s father’s age.
“Hi, I wonder if you could help me. Myself and my brother”—I nod back at Fin, in earshot, looking perplexed—“are here to surprise my dad for his seventieth birthday. I don’t suppose you could call up to his room for us, and tell him there’s someone down here to see him? Please don’t say who we are though!” I flap my hands nerdily at the two of us, make a mouth-zipping gesture.
“What’s his name?” says the man, smiling indulgently.
“Iain Hart,” I say. “That’s Iain spelled I-A-I-N.”
The man taps a keyboard and looks at his screen. “I’m afraid we don’t have a guest at the moment under that name.”
“Oh! That’s fine, he’s maybe arriving later tonight then?” I turn and address Finlay who mutters: “Yes, must be.”
“Thank you anyway,” I say.
“I shouldn’t strictly do this”—the man leans toward me—“but if you give me your room number, I can let you know if anyone does arrive with that name. I wouldn’t be able to tell you his room number but I could contact him on your behalf, once he’s settled in?”
“Oh sure yes, definitely,” I say. “Thank you! I’m Evelyn Harris in Room 166 and this is Finlay Hart. Room...?”
“312,” Fin supplies.
“Got it.” The man beams, marking it down on a notepad. “Have a lovely stay.”
As we walk to the lifts, Finlay says: “That was genuinely impressive. I’m impressed.”
“I used to be a reporter at the local paper. The base machinations and grubby audacity never leave you.”
“Probably helps to have charm too,” Finlay says.
“Oh...” I startle a little at an unexpected compliment. He thinks I’m a presumptuous irritant, doesn’t he? “All part of the... routine.”
“If it’s an art, I’ve never mastered it,” he says, with a twitch of lips, as we step into the lift. He punches the first and third floor buttons respectively.
“Thing is,” Fin says, after a short silence, “I’m not criticizing your methods. To me this makes it even more impressive. But why would you turn up for your dad’s seventieth as a surprise, and then have a receptionist tell him you’re in the lobby? That’d ruin it, no? You do the big reveal when dinging a champagne glass with a fork, in some restaurant, surely?”
“Aha, any card sharp could answer this. Cons don’t work because they’re clever, they work because they’re fast.”
The lift doors slide open at my floor.
“You’re full of surprises, Evelyn Harris,” Fin says, as I step out, and I wonder what the other ones were.
M Y ROOM IS the size of a London flat, a tundra of cornflower-colored carpet and milky coffee-colored expensively hewn fabrics, a bed the size of Italy with starchy, crease-free, snow-white pillows in upright rows. When I twitch the curtains, I have a plum view of the illuminated castle. It’s Instagram brag crack cocaine, except I’m not minded to advertise this online and be asked why I’m here.
I try not to be so vulgar as to dwell on the cost, but I have a sense that consecutive nights here, multiplied by two, must be six months of my mortgage payments.
I must remember to text Ed. But... on reflection, what right does Ed have to make me feel, albeit subtly, with the cover of good intentions, as if he has some sort of ownership of me? He’s engaged to his long-term horror and he slept with my late best friend.
Late best friend . I stare at the remote controls lined up on the walnut side table and, for once, I’m shocked at these words, not because they are surprising to me, but because they aren’t.
Susie’s deadness has crossed an invisible line, passed into an unexceptional fact I can rehearse as part of my mental furniture, as much prosaic scenery as the mini fridge and the safe for valuables over there.
I know this is only true right now, in this particular moment. It’ll astound me again, at another time in the near future. But gradually that will happen less and less, and this will happen more and more, until it’s simply always ordinary.
One day, I might be looking at photographs with my currently unlikely kids, and they’ll say, “Who’s that?” and I’ll say, “Oh, that’s my dear friend Susie, she got hit by a car and died really young.” They’ll peer with renewed interest due to this macabre backstory, and then, because she was never Auntie Susie and they never met her, turn the page in the album. I feel an indignation that’s almost anger at this prospect. It’s a lie, that obituary. Susie is not a sad short story. Susie is not a tragedy. She was a long lively story, cut unnaturally short.
With some secret chapters I hadn’t seen. Footage left on the cutting-room floor.
I unzip my suitcase and yank my toiletries bag from it and have a shower that’s long and scalding enough to make up for the lack of one earlier. I raid the complimentary toiletries and dry my hair section by section on a big round brush in front of a vast mirror, rolling my wrist as if I’m in a salon. I’ve not thought about my appearance for months. All of a sudden, I want to look nice. I think it’s the surroundings, and being here for my fake father’s fake seventieth with my fake brother. I wish I were living her life, the goofy, loaded, carefree liar.
A knock at the door and my dinner arrives, thrillingly under a silver tureen.
As I dip the last French fry in the dainty ramekin of ketchup, my phone lights up with a message from Ed... Oh God it’s half nine!
Hi! Remember me? Remember that thing we talked about?
I wipe my greasy hands hurriedly on the thick linen napkin.
Argh sorry sorry it’s been crazy—the car broke down and we’ve got to the hotel late, but the good news is, it’s The Waldorf
Wow sounds like my worries were misplaced! One big suite is it? Michael Bublé on the Bose and roofie fizzing like an Alka Seltzer in the Laurent Perrier
I should’ve known he’d equate the outlay with a Finlay Hart scheme to lay me. He’s met Finlay, how can he seriously think “desire” features?
Uhm no, separate rooms. Sorry I forgot to say hi, I’ll remember tomorrow
Mind that you do. N’night, Harris x
My phone blinks with light again.
PS: I’m sure you know this, but. If you need me to come and get you as a matter of urgency at any point—call me. I will be straight there, no questions asked. Do not let pride stand in the way of help. X
Of course, thank you. (you would ask questions though) x
OK yes I would X
By the light of a lamp, I lie on the bed and gaze up at the ivory ceiling’s cornicing, pristine and unblemished, like a roll of marzipan icing.
Ed is jealous. I repeat that evident truth to myself. I’d sensed it during his previous tirade, but not so clearly registered it until now. I try to work out what to do with it.