Chapter 18
18
FRIDAY, 4 JULY, 2025 – HONG KONG
Moira
Moira called down to reception for the third time today. And yes, she was mortified at how pathetic that made her seem, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Hello, this is Miss Chiles in the penthouse.’ It made her even more mortified just saying ‘penthouse’. In her opinion, there were many traits that could embarrass a working-class Scottish woman, but the most toe-curling thing was being perceived to be acting boastful or smug. ‘Moira Chiles, you just take yourself down a peg or two,’ her mother would tell her when she was a kid, if she ever showed the slightest sign of getting too big for her boots.
She tried to calm her red face of shame, and ploughed on. ‘I just wondered if there have been any calls for me?’
At which point, just like the two previous times, the receptionist asked her to hold, then she heard the click of the buttons on a keyboard, before she came back on the line with a variation of, ‘No, you daft old deluded bag, a bloke you hooked up with over thirty years ago hasn’t been jamming up our phone lines looking for you.’
Okay, so what she actually said was, ‘No, Ms Chiles, we have no messages for you. Would you like us to put any callers straight through to your suite?’
The red face now came from a place of disappointment. ‘Yes, that would be lovely, thank you.’
It had been a day and a half since she’d called and left the message at Nate’s office, and he still hadn’t returned her call.
What did she expect? It was ridiculous to think Nate would have any reason to get back in touch with her, especially after how they’d ended, but she’d hoped that if nothing else, curiosity would have got the better of him. Apparently not.
However, now wasn’t the time to sit and mope about it, because Carina and Stevie would be knocking on that door any minute to go for dinner. Moira pushed her feet into her hotel slippers and padded over to the dressing table. She’d already applied her make-up, so she just had her hair to fix now. Checking it out in the mirror, she decided there was no hope for it, so she shoved the whole lot up in a deliberately messy high ponytail, leaving a couple of tendrils on either side at the front, which she curled with tongs into loose waves, then dabbed some extra concealer onto the latest bout of puffiness under her eyes.
Tonight, she decided, there would be no more tears, because they’d had enough to last a lifetime last night and no amount of lymphatic drainage was going to shift this if it got any worse. The previous evening they’d gone to Madame Fù for dinner, a gorgeous restaurant that sat on the top floor of a beautiful old 1880s colonial building that was the police headquarters, barracks and training ground back when the British were still governing.
They’d started out fine, chatting about life, and even for a while, about Ollie. After the second bottle of wine had been popped, Stevie had said, ‘I need to tell you – your son, Ollie. I’ve seen him in that Clansman series. I had no idea that we had any kind of connection to him or to you, but when I went home to visit my mum, she used to watch it religiously and now I guess I know why.’
Something about that touched Moira’s heart and another lump of regret and sadness had begun to form in her throat. She had retired from working on cruise liners and returned to Glasgow five months ago. Why hadn’t she just jumped on a plane or a ferry and taken herself over to see Lisa? Maybe even taken Ollie with her. It seemed so tragic now that two of her oldest friends had never met her son, and before now, she hadn’t met any of their children either. Why had it come to this to make them realise how much they’d missed?
Moira had told them all about him, but of course, most of that was already public knowledge. The fact that his famous Hollywood wife, Sienna Montgomery had been filmed cheating on him with her co-star. And that he’d then had a lovely romance with a Scottish soap actress called Casey Lowden, that had regrettably ended because Casey’s movie career had gone stratospheric in the last few months and, with their crazy shooting schedules, it had become impossible for them ever to be in the same place at the same time.
Stevie and Carina had been genuinely interested, and it had been a lovely diversion from all the heartache, one that continued when Moira asked Carina to tell them about her girls. One in Shanghai, one in Dubai, and they sounded like they were a credit to her. ‘I’d love to meet them one day,’ Stevie had said, then immediately followed that up with, ‘I mean, that is, if you’d like to keep in touch after this.’
‘Of course we would,’ Moira had jumped in truthfully. ‘Stevie, you only live half an hour away from me in Glasgow. I’ll expect you for dinner every Sunday,’ she said, only half joking.
‘And I’m currently homeless, so I’ll probably be in her spare room,’ Carina had added, and the fact that she could find a way to joke about the hellish time she was having was a tonic to them all.
‘Have you switched your phone back on yet?’ Moira had asked. ‘I keep waiting for Spencer to barrel through that door clutching a dozen roses and a ludicrously expensive apology gift.’
Carina was still in the defiance stage of post-adultery. ‘Only to check that the girls aren’t trying to get in touch – I don’t want them worrying. But I switch it straight off again and ignore everything else. I just don’t want to engage. For years I’ve been at everyone’s beck and call and sod it. I’m over it. Spencer can wait. In fact, the whole of the outside world can wait until I’m ready. I’ve told Ben if there’s an emergency to call me at the hotel, but other than that I’m still playing it ostrich-fashion, head in the sand. There’s something quite liberating about it.’
Moira guessed exactly how that must feel. ‘Like taking your bra off after a long hard day?’
‘Exactly like that,’ Carina had agreed, laughing.
The light-heartedness had been a blessed relief, but it hadn’t lasted because just when their after-dinner coffees were being served, Stevie had switched to more difficult territory. ‘Sorry – I know I’ve been relentless with the questions, but can I ask you both something else?’
Moira had a moment of fear. They’d told the lass so much about her mum, but there was even more that they’d left unsaid, because they didn’t want to reveal anything that would tarnish Lisa’s memory. There were some things, so many things, that should stay in the past.
‘Of course,’ Carina had answered her.
Stevie had taken a sip of her coffee. ‘I just wondered… what did my mum tell you about me? Did she talk about me? It’s just that… I always felt like I disappointed her. Or maybe just didn’t bring her much happiness. And I’ve got no one to ask whether that’s true.’
Moira’s heart had almost shattered into a million pieces. ‘What makes you think that, love?’
Stevie had shrugged. ‘She was always worried. Always sad. Always a bit… broken. There was no joy in her and I just never understood it, I suppose. And eventually it became too claustrophobic for me and that’s why I went to university in Glasgow. So I just wondered… did she ever say that? That I’d disappointed her?’
Moira had met Carina’s gaze and instinctively known that whatever she said, her friend would back her up.
‘You have to understand that we only ever communicated by letters popped into birthday and Christmas cards, until the last few years when we did a couple of those Zoom calls. And I know that must seem strange to your generation, because you’re much hotter on the communication stuff, but that was just the way it was with us.’
Moira tried to keep her expression neutral, tried to summon every ounce of strength and resolve, because she was about to lie to this poor woman’s face. ‘But honestly, pet, she only ever said how wonderful you were.’
‘She was so proud of you,’ Carina added, sealing her conspiracy after the fact.
The brutal, unfathomable truth was that Lisa Dixon had told them that she’d got married, that she’d had a daughter, but in the years that followed, she’d only ever mentioned Stevie in general terms. ‘We are all doing fine’. ‘All is well this end’. Always just brief, non-committal comments, and because the notes were just brief catch-ups in cards, that hadn’t seemed too strange. At the tail end of the nineties, she’d mentioned that she was no longer with her husband, but that it was for the best, and that her and Stevie were perfectly happy without him. That was it. Nothing more in depth or personal than that. She’d certainly never shared her pride over the lovely woman who was sitting across that table from them. Never told them that Stevie had moved to Glasgow. Never said what she did for a living or that she looked exactly like a young Lisa. Moira didn’t understand and she didn’t condone it. In hindsight, they should have asked more questions, made more of an effort to learn about each other’s worlds, but they were all just getting on with their lives and it hadn’t seemed odd at the time. All she and Carina could do was support Stevie. She didn’t know if they’d done the right thing embellishing Lisa’s pride or not, until a single tear had dropped from Stevie’s face onto her saucer.
‘That’s amazing to hear. I’ve never had anyone to ask how she felt. She was such a closed book, I guess. I suppose it’s one of those things that always get talked about at funerals. You know, how much the person loved their husband, or wife, or kids… But we didn’t get that chance.’
For a moment Moira had wondered if she’d missed something, but if she had, she could see by Carina’s expression that she was just as confused. ‘Why? Did none of her friends want to speak at the service?’
At that, it was Stevie’s brow that had furrowed in confusion. ‘No, sorry. I thought I’d told you about that. My mum left a letter of wishes, and one of them was a direct cremation. There was no official funeral service. No memorial. I guess she wanted to keep things private. The same way she lived her life.’
Now, sitting at her dressing table, Moira realised she was fighting a losing battle against the puffy eyes because the tears were back again, just as they’d fallen in every solitary moment today when she thought about Lisa, alone, no one there to commemorate her, to say goodbye, to tell her she was loved.
The doorbell through in the other room saved her, and she jumped up, desperate for any distraction from her thoughts. Halfway there, it struck her that it might be… just might be…
She threw open the door. ‘You were thinking there that I might be Nate,’ Carina declared with spooky accuracy.
Moira went right on to the back foot.
‘I never thought any such thing,’ she said haughtily, fully aware that they both knew the truth. Posh Pal’s ability to read her mind had always been uncanny.
‘Come on in. I just need to put my shoes on and then I’m good.’
Carina closed the door behind her. ‘Moira, you know we need to talk about last night… about what we told Stevie…’
Moira nodded. ‘I know, but not now. She’ll be here any minute. Are you sure you’re still okay with our plans for tonight?’
The game plan for tonight had been formulated earlier in the day, after they’d taken the iconic funicular Peak Tram up to the highest point on the island. They’d had lunch at the restaurant there, the views stunning, the food good, the service from their lovely Filipino waitress friendly and chipper. They all seemed to be on the same unwritten page, because they stuck to neutral, general topics of conversation like Stevie’s job, Carina’s travels, Moira’s most outlandish stories from her cruises.
They were on their third glass of wine, when Moira broached the all-important subject.
‘So what are we doing tonight, ladies? As always, you’re both welcome to bail out and have a quiet night and we could regroup tomorrow.’
Stevie had come in first with her answer. ‘If it’s okay with you both, I’d like to meet up for dinner. I’ll have plenty of opportunities for quiet nights in when I get home.’
Carina had held her hands up. ‘I feel the same. And if I sit in my room, it’ll just give me too much time to think. I’m enjoying living in this bubble of denial.’
Moira had nodded triumphantly. ‘Excellent, because I’ve got an idea. My feet are killing me so I’m not up for traipsing far, so how about we just go downstairs to the bar in the hotel and check out where we used to work. To be honest, I’ve been dreading it, because I didn’t think I could bear the memories, but I found out today that it’s been turned into a karaoke bar, so I feel a bit better now because it’ll be completely different from the place that we knew. And if it’s not up to much, I can always get up and do a mean rendition of the “Shoop Shoop Song”. It’s my karaoke classic.’
Stevie had agreed immediately and with surprisingly little resistance, Carina got on board too.
Now, though, she seemed to be having a change of heart.
‘I just keep thinking that my whole life changed down there. If I hadn’t met Spencer that night…’
Her words drifted off. Moira, shoes now on her feet, threaded her hand through her friend’s arm.
‘Honey, it’s going to be fine. We’re going to go down there, have a nice dinner, a couple of drinks, a laugh at the folk on the karaoke and then we’ll be in bed for 10p.m. What could go wrong?’
‘Your ex-boyfriend could show up and open a whole other big fat can of worms.’
‘Don’t be daft. There’s no way he’d know we were there. And even if he did – I’m 100 per cent sure he wouldn’t arrive uninvited.’
Her head was absolutely certain that was the case.
But there was a tiny bit of her heart that hoped she was wrong.