Angelina hastened to say, “Hadiyyah, that’s not true.”
“But she’s meant to choose rounded and she’s chosen— ”
“Darling, she’s only failed to use the scarf as it’s meant to be used. One can still create the effect by rounding the scarf. One doesn’t want to be limited by believing that only a single kind of neckline… Here, Barbara, let me show you.”
“But, Mummy, the colour— ”
“— is perfect and I’m pleased you see that,” Angelina said firmly. She removed the scarf from around Barbara’s neck and with a few deft and maddening moves, she rearranged it. This put her closer to Barbara than she’d been before, and Barbara caught the scent of her: She was fragrant like a tropical flower. She also had the most flawless skin Barbara had ever seen. “There,” Angelina said. “Look in the mirror now, Barbara. Tell me what you think. It’s very easy to do. I’ll show you.”
Barbara went back into the bedroom within sight of those pills, which, this time, she refused to look at. She wanted to dislike Angelina— a woman who’d left her daughter and her daughter’s father to have a lengthy fling for which she’d actually been forgiven?— but she found that she couldn’t. This went some distance, she supposed, in explaining how and why Azhar had apparently forgiven her.
She saw her reflection and she had to admit it: The bloody woman knew how to tie a scarf. And now it was tied, properly, Barbara could see that it wasn’t actually the appropriate concomitant garment to the blouse. Damn it all, she thought. When would she learn?
She was about to emerge and ask Angelina if she and Hadiyyah would accompany her on her next adventure in Camden High Street since she hadn’t a great deal of money to waste on making the wrong sartorial decisions. But she heard the flat door open and the sounds of Taymullah Azhar arriving home. The last place she wanted to be found was in the bedroom he shared with the mother of his child, so she hastily untied the scarf, removed the blouse, shoved them back into the bag, and donned the pullover she’d worn to work that day.
When she rejoined them, Azhar was admiring the new paint on the walls, with Hadiyyah clinging onto his hand and Angelina linked to his arm. He turned, and his surprised face told Barbara that neither Hadiyyah nor her mother had mentioned her presence.
He said, “Barbara! Hullo. And what do you think of their handiwork?”
“I’m hiring them to do my digs next,” Barbara said, “although I’m demanding purple and orange for my colours. Think that’ll do me right, Hadiyyah?”
“No no no!” Hadiyyah cried.
Her parents laughed. Barbara smiled. Aren’t we all a happy family? she thought. Time to exit stage right. She said, “Leave you to your dinner,” and to Angelina specifically, “Thanks for the help with the scarf. I could see the difference. If I can get you to dress me every morning, I’ll be set for life.”
“Anytime,” Angelina said. “Truly.”
And the damn thing was, she meant it, Barbara thought. Maddening woman. If she’d merely cooperate and be a sodding cow, things would be so much easier.
She nodded a good night to them all and let herself out. She was surprised when Azhar followed her, but she understood when he lit a cigarette, something he would not do indoors now that nonsmoking Angelina had returned.
He said, “Congratulations, Barbara.”
She stopped, turned, and said, “For what?”
“Your teeth. I see they’ve been repaired, and they look very good. I expect people have been telling you that all day, so let me count myself among them.”
“Oh. Right. Ta. The guv— she’s ordered the entire thing. Well, not ordered exactly, ’cause she can’t do that in a personal matter like appearance. So let’s say she suggested it strenuously. She wants the hair fixed next. I don’t know where we go from there but I’ve a feeling it’ll involve liposuction and serious cosmetic surgery. When she’s finished with me, I expect I’ll be beating men off with a broom.”
“You’re making light of it and you shouldn’t,” Azhar told her. “No doubt Angelina and Hadiyyah have already told you— ”
“They haven’t actually,” Barbara cut in. “But thank you for the compliment, Azhar.”
So there was irony in a soap dish, she thought: a compliment from the very last man on earth who should have noticed her teeth and the very last man from whom she should have wanted notice in the first place. Well, it didn’t mean anything either way, she told herself.
On that set of lies, she walked on to her bungalow, bidding Taymullah Azhar good night.
30 OCTOBER
BELGRAVIA
LONDON
Forewarned being forearmed, Lynley had spent the next two days following his meeting with Hillier and Bernard Fairclough doing what research he was able to do on the man, his family, and his situation. He didn’t wish to walk into this covert investigation blind and as things turned out, there was a fair amount of information available on Fairclough, who had not been born Bernard Fairclough at all but rather Bernie Dexter of Barrow-in-Furness. His initial appearance on earth took place at home, in a two-up and two-down terrace house in Blake Street. This turned out to be a short distance from the railway tracks upon the figurative wrong side of which the Dexter domicile lay.
How he’d morphed from Bernie Dexter into Bernard Fairclough, first Baron of Ireleth, was the kind of tale with by which Sunday newspaper magazines justify their existences. As Bernie Dexter at fifteen years of age, he’d finished with what schooling he was ever to have and had gone to work for Fairclough Industries in a lowly position defined by the mindless job of packing chrome bathroom fixtures into shipping containers for eight hours each day. Although it was a job guaranteed to bleed soul, hope, and ambition from an ordinary worker, Bernie Dexter of Blake Street had been no ordinary worker. Cheeky from the first was how his wife described him in a post-knighthood interview, and she ought to have known for she had been born Valerie Fairclough, the great-granddaughter of the firm’s founder. She’d met the fifteen-year-old when she herself was eighteen and he was performing in the company’s Christmas panto. She was there for duty’s sake; he was there for fun’s sake. They encountered each other in a receiving line: the Fairclough owners doing a yearly bit of noblesse oblige and their employees— among whom was Bernie— moving along the line with an appropriate amount of forelock tugging, downcast eyes, and aye, sir, thank you, sir in best Dickensian manner as Christmas bonuses were handed out. This applied to all except Bernie Dexter, who told Valerie Fairclough straightaway and with a wink that he intended to marry her. “A real beauty, you are,” he said, “so I reckon I’ll set you up for life.” He declared this last with utter confidence, as if Valerie Fairclough were somehow not set up for life already.
He’d gone on to keep his word, however, for he had no qualms at all about approaching Valerie’s father, telling him, “I could make this firm into something better, you know, you give me half a chance.” And so he had done. Not all at once, of course, but over time, and during that time he also managed to impress Valerie with the persistence of his devotion to her. He also managed to impregnate the young woman when she was twenty-five, which resulted in an elopement. In short order, then, he took her family name as his own, improved the efficiency of Fairclough Industries, modernised its products, one of which was— of all things— an entire line of state-of-the-art lavatories, from which he amassed an impressive fortune.
His son Nicholas had always been the fly in the ointment of Bernie’s otherwise ideal life. Lynley found volumes of information on the bloke. For when Nicholas Fairclough went periodically bad, he did it in a very public manner. Public drunkenness, brawls, break-ins, football hooliganism, drunk driving, car theft, arson, indecent exposure while under the influence… The man had a past that read like that of the prodigal son on steroids. He’d played out his dissolution before God and everyone and in particular before the eyes of the local press in Cumbria, and the stories generated from his behaviour caught the eyes of the national tabloids always on the prowl for sensation to feature on their cover pages, especially when the sensation is generated by the scion of someone notable.