Chapter One
Two months earlier
TED WESTCOTT SLIPS out of their king-size bed.
Jill is still asleep, the luxurious covers thrown off, lovely in a silk nightgown with lace trim.
He stands watching her for a moment. She lies on her back, one arm thrown over her head, her limbs long and pale, her breasts rising gently and pushing against the rose silk and cream lace.
She’s thirty-five years old and he thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever met.
He hesitates, remembering how he used to kiss her awake, then turns and walks across the thick carpet and out of their bedroom.
As always lately, he has too much on his mind.
He makes his way quietly down the handsome staircase to the main floor of their brownstone.
They dote on their home the way others dote on their children, with great pride and sparing no expense.
They love to show it off, the way others show off their progeny.
They can talk endlessly about the house, the way people talk endlessly about their kids.
Are he and Jill as boring as those people are?
Ted and Jill both find children very boring.
The staircase alone is a thing of great beauty – the wainscoting and railings are a rich, carved mahogany.
The runner on the stairs muffles Ted’s footsteps.
When he reaches the bottom, he rests his hand briefly, appreciatively, on the elaborately carved newel post, so smooth beneath his palm.
He turns to his right and heads down the long hall to the kitchen at the rear.
The kitchen spans the entire width of the house and looks out onto the professionally landscaped garden, blooming with colourful hollyhocks, hydrangeas and roses.
The porcelain floor tiles are cool beneath his bare feet on these hot July days.
In the winter, they’re heated. Early morning light filters in through the tall windows.
Just being in the kitchen they’d had remodelled so painstakingly three years ago would normally fill him with satisfaction.
But today it simply occurs to him that he’s glad they did it then, because they certainly couldn’t afford to do it now.
He reaches into the stainless-steel fridge, takes out the orange juice, and places it on the marble-topped island.
He starts the Italian coffee machine and selects a cortado.
Then, as the coffee machine whirs, he leaves the kitchen and walks back down the hall to the front door.
He lingers for a moment in the foyer between the two sets of mahogany entry doors, gazing through the glass panels of the arched double doors as if afraid of the world outside.
Then he unlocks and opens the heavy door.
Even this early, he can hear the familiar sounds of their historic Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood waking up – delivery trucks and the occasional dog barking.
He reaches down for the newspapers – The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal – and steps back inside, closing the door.
Once again, a soothing silence engulfs him. His home is his sanctuary.
This is Ted’s morning ritual. Coffee, newspapers, breakfast – and pleasant conversation with Jill when she gets up and joins him before they both go off to work.
He’s always been an early riser, but lately his depression, or anxiety, or some fiendish blend of both, has him rising earlier and earlier.
These days he’s tired and irritable, and striving not to show it.
He’s not enjoying life the way he should, the way he’s been accustomed to.
Well, how can he, when everything’s going to hell?
He tries to read the Times, but the headlines, bold and frightening as they are these days, fail to grab him.
He simply doesn’t care. He turns to the business section but finds he cannot concentrate.
He’s a man from a prominent family, who lives in an expensive brownstone in posh Brooklyn Heights and works at an investment firm in Manhattan, so everyone assumes he’s rich.
For a long time, that was essentially true.
But that’s because he inherited money from his father, and he’s run through it more quickly than anticipated.
Therein lies the problem. Things have been getting away from him rather badly.
So far, he has managed to keep it quiet.
He has been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.
Jill is aware that things are a little tight, but she has no idea how tight.
He’s mentioned it to her casually, but she hasn’t bothered to rein in her spending.
She must think it is a temporary problem.
He can’t bear to see her disappointed. He can’t bear to see her disappointed in him.
They have had a very pleasant life until now, their way smoothed by money and comfort.
He likes to think that they are made for each other, that theirs is a great love story, their marriage a complete success – so rare these days – but he’s not such a fool as to think that ease has had nothing to do with it.
Would they still be happy if the wolf was at the door?
Would she still love him? He pushes away his cold coffee, feeling sick in the pit of his stomach.
If his latest investment gamble doesn’t pay off, they are going to find out.
He can’t bear the thought of losing all this.
Of losing her. Who is he really, who would he be, without her, the love of his life, and without all the trappings of success?
He realizes he doesn’t have an answer. He was a child of privilege, he is a man of privilege; he has never really been anything else.
He has never been tested. Perhaps now he will find out what he’s made of.
The thought frightens him. What if there’s nothing there?
He senses Jill’s presence and looks up.
‘You’re up early,’ she says. She stands in the kitchen doorway, long, bare legs and short nightgown, her glossy dark hair framing her perfect face.
Is there a note of reproach in her voice?
Is she worried? About him? He observes her carefully.
She doesn’t like weakness, especially in men.
It makes her angry. He knows this about her.
She told him this early in their relationship; she said she couldn’t explain it, but any display of weakness in a grown man provokes rage in her rather than sympathy.
He’d wondered about this at the time but hadn’t fretted unduly.
He knew she’d had a weak, alcoholic father who’d lost all their money, and that would justify rage in anybody.
He can’t disappoint her. He can’t tell her the truth. Everything might still be all right.
She walks over to him and he rises from the kitchen table and pulls her into a kiss. They are still in love, still very much adoring of each other in bed, even though they have been married six years and he is five years older than her. Surely they can survive anything?
Jill sinks into her husband’s kiss and then pulls back and studies him.
Such an attractive man she married. Everything about him – his voice, the way he smiles, the way he moves.
The way he kisses her, the way he touches her.
She’s still in love. She feels lucky. More than that, she feels that she has made good decisions.
She congratulates herself on this almost every day.
She has an ideal life. She loves her job working four days a week at Clives, an art gallery on the Lower East Side.
They don’t need the money, but more is always nice.
And she’s ambitious – she’d like to have a gallery of her own one day.
She likes being surrounded by good art, she likes meeting interesting people, she likes the parties.
She loves working in Manhattan, and their gorgeous home in Brooklyn Heights – they have invested so much of themselves in it.
She brings people here to entertain; they tell her she is a natural and charming hostess.
It’s easy if you have caterers and an excellent cleaning lady.
She wouldn’t be up for it if it required cooking and cleaning all day.
She has her friends, her shopping, her gym, her cultural events – the theatre, the opera, the galleries.
She’s beautiful and rich and has a gorgeous husband, and they are unencumbered by children.
It’s all perfect. There is the faint spectre of aging, but she’s doing everything she can to keep it at bay with creams and routines.
The thing is not to fight it too hard, not to look like you’re trying.
However, several times lately she has felt Ted rise from the marital bed and steal away.
Why? He has been quiet lately, even a bit moody, which is not like him.
He’s a man who usually enjoys life to the fullest. It’s been going on for a few months now, but it’s been more noticeable recently.
Is he having a midlife crisis? He is forty years of age.
Something has been bothering him, and whatever it is, she wishes he would snap out of it.
Should she ask? Maybe she doesn’t want to know.
This change in him makes her uneasy. It can’t be another woman, she’s sure of that. It must be something else.
‘Everything okay?’ she asks lightly.
He smiles at her. ‘Everything is perfect,’ he assures her.
She smiles back. She doesn’t believe him.