Chapter Fifty-Two
Fifty-two
The Aquarius was a bar tucked down a narrow side street in Chora. Skye arrived early, a little before one thirty, and chose one of the outside tables. She wanted to see him coming.
The past few hours had rushed by in a blur. There had been a lot to do. A lot to say.
Skye uncrossed her legs, pressed her hands on her knees to stop them from jiggling, took a napkin from the dispenser and tore it into strips. She had changed into a white dress and sandals, applied makeup, and brushed her unruly hair.
Looking the part was important.
Martyn arrived fifteen minutes late, shuffling awkwardly on his crutches. As he neared, Skye stood, greeting him with a chaste kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I thought we should talk, just the two of us.”
“So you said in your message.” Martyn stifled a yawn. He was in a black polo shirt and trousers, the bottom of one leg rolled up over the cast. A waitress appeared, and he ordered a beer, eyebrows lifting when Skye opted for a cocktail.
“Bit early, isn’t it?”
She shrugged.
“How did you sleep?”
Martyn pulled a face.
“Not well, though the painkillers did the trick. I don’t even know if they’ll permit me to fly with this bloody thing on my foot.”
“You should check in with the doctor before you go,” she said. “That’s unless you decide to stay awhile.”
His gaze swept over her, flat and unimpressed.
“Why would I do that? You’ve made it pretty clear that you aren’t interested.”
“I know,” she said, putting her elbows on the table, “but I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’ve been too hasty.”
Martyn narrowed his eyes.
“Is that so?”
Their drinks arrived. Skye’s cocktail glowing a lurid blue, Martyn’s local pilsner sporting a goat’s face on the label, the word Katsika stamped beside it.
“It was wrong of me to just disappear on you,” she said, removing the pineapple garnish from her glass and taking a bite. “You must’ve been worried.”
“Of course I was,” he said, picking at a scab on his knuckle. “I went all the way to Australia in search of you.”
“I heard.”
“You made me look like a fool,” he said, turning to her. “A cuckold.”
Skye did not trust herself to reply. A couple strolled past in matching Hawaiian shirts, the tropical print clashing with the soft white of the buildings.
“Why this sudden change of heart?” Martyn demanded. “Yesterday, you couldn’t wait to be rid of me, and now you’re, what, sorry?”
She would choke before she uttered that word in his presence.
“We’re married,” she said instead. “We made vows. I guess this is me trying to honor them.”
She thought about those promises “to love and to obey.” Skye no more wanted to obey Martyn than climb into a basket with a cobra.
“What are you saying?” he barked. “That you want us to try again?”
“First, we need to reach a truce,” she said carefully. “We can’t try again if things are going to be like they were before. You’d need to agree to anger management counseling or some sessions with a psychotherapist. Preferably both.”
“I see.” Martyn took a long draw of his beer.
“We’d also have to start being honest with each other.” Skye’s foot began to tap underneath the table. “About everything.”
Martyn leaned closer, his head tilting to one side.
“The thing is,” she said. “I started lying to you because I was scared of how you’d react.”
A yawn broke through and he let it. Skye ground her teeth.
“I had a reason to lie,” she continued. “A valid reason. But why did you?”
Martyn ran a hand over his stubble.
“Why did I what?” he asked in a bored-sounding voice.
“Lie,” Skye pressed, her own tone neutral. “The whole thing with Beatrice, your imaginary sister.”
When he didn’t immediately reply, a twinge of unease passed through her. Had she pushed him too far? But then Martyn’s shoulders drooped, and he hung his head.
“I don’t know why I made her up,” he said, not looking at her. “I didn’t plan to, I just…I could sense that you weren’t all that interested in me, and I suppose I thought it would give us something in common. A foundation we could build on.”
The galling thing, of course, was that it had.
“Well, I had made grief my entire personality,” Skye said, and it felt strangely good to admit it.
She hadn’t judged herself for it then, and she didn’t now.
But naming it helped. She’d wallowed, let the sadness rise around her like water, and done nothing but float until it finally began to recede.
A faint smirk tugged at Martyn’s mouth. Whatever softness she’d glimpsed in him moments earlier was gone, replaced by something harder, more acerbic.
“You tricked me with that story about Beatrice,” she went on. “I thought your anger and aggression came from loss, but if that’s not the case, then where does it come from?”
“Maybe you bring it out in me,” he suggested.
The beer bottle was empty. Martyn picked at the label, dropping slivers of the goat’s face onto the tabletop.
“I think,” she said, sliding her still-full glass closer to him, “it might be a simple case of guilt.”
Martyn scoffed, though he did not get time to reply. A woman was striding purposefully toward their table, a man a few paces behind her.
“Martyn Lockhart,” Victoria exclaimed with a swish of her ponytail. She had put on an expensive-looking kaftan and designer sunglasses, while Adam had swapped his shorts and flip-flops for chinos and boat shoes. Neither paid Skye the slightest bit of attention.
“Do I know you?” Martyn asked in the oiled tone of a man well accustomed to turning on the charm.
“You were our pilot,” Victoria gushed. “Took us from the city out to the Hamptons. Must have been the summer of 2019, before the world went damn crazy. I knew I recognized you.”
“Of course,” he lied seamlessly, grinning from one ear to the other. “I remember your faces, of course.”
“And I remember yours,” Victoria simpered. “I said to my husband at the time, ‘What is it about pilots that make them so darn attractive?’ ”
“She did say that,” Adam agreed heartily. “If I wasn’t so rich, Marty old boy, I’d have been extremely envious.”
He had adopted a clipped aristocratic diction for the role and was clearly enjoying himself.
Martyn’s fixed smile failed to hide his wince.
Victoria put her bag on the table and made a show of fanning her face with her hands.
“That was the same summer we lost your late mum’s pearls—do you remember?
” she said to Adam, who nodded gravely. “It was the oddest thing. We put them in with our luggage, and then when we got back to Park Avenue, they were gone, vanished from the box. I always assumed someone at the depot had stolen them.”
Skye had found the story by scrolling through the replies below the original review. She knew Martyn had been based in New York during the time period mentioned. Every detail was the same except for one: that couple had not been Victoria and Adam.
Martyn stared up at them both, bug-eyed and pale. He looked as if he might be sick.
“What a shame you misplaced them,” he said. “Anyway, great to bump into you both. I should—” He gestured toward Skye, and Victoria slapped a hand to her forehead.
“Of course,” she said. “So sorry to have interrupted your day.”
She picked up her bag, and its strap—which Skye had surreptitiously looped over her cocktail glass—snagged, sending it flying into Martyn’s lap.
“Fucking hell!” he exploded, leaping to his feet as quickly as the cast on his foot would allow. The front of his shirt was soaked, and dribbles of blue ran down his trousers.
“Your phone!” Skye gasped, snatching the handset up from the table. “I’ll go and put it in rice,” she said, heading for the door of the bar before Martyn could react. She heard Victoria’s saccharine cry of “Oh no, I hope it doesn’t stain” and suppressed a laugh.
In the cramped, tiled space of the ladies’ bathroom, Skye shut and locked the cubicle door.
The phone was dry, unscathed, as she had planned.
Her heart pounded as she tapped in Martyn’s pin—the same one he’d used when they first met—a rush of relief flooding through her as the home screen flashed up.
Her fingers moved fast, almost of their own accord, clicking into his emails with a surge of anticipation.
There, in a folder marked WORK, she found exactly what she’d been looking for.