‘Yeah. It is a cool view.’
I sit on the chair next to her bed. On the little bedside cabinet there is a riot of brightly coloured greetings cards.
‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’ I ask.
‘Um, no.’ Her smile falters and she turns away, as though shutters have come down across her soul. It has been nearly three months, but Katie is not yet ready to discuss the cellar, or what happened to her, to the frustration of her support team. I can hardly blame her, really.
But when she is ready, I’ll be here.
‘I was going to say happy birthday.’
‘What? Oh, yeah!’ Her relief is palpable. ‘But you’re a day late.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry. The meeting with the lawyers was yesterday.’
‘You met the lawyers?’ Her eyes widen. ‘I thought…’
‘No, not that meeting with my lawyers. I meant my divorce.’
Her dark eyes are wary. She does not know what to say about my divorce. Despite all she has been through, she is still essentially a child.
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I’m over it.’
The meeting had taken place in London, which is where Stephen, my solicitor and newfound indispensable person, works from a smart office near Gray’s Inn. It was already late afternoon by the time I arrived, my guts heaving, my stomach in my mouth, and I was conducted into the ultra-modern meeting room and shown into a high-backed chair.
Eddy was already there. His presence was a physical shock, and I felt myself grow numb and light-headed.
Stephen’s assistant, Tanya, then moved to the sideboard. Behind her, London was visible in a milky dusk, framed by floor to ceiling windows. St Paul’s poked up tinily, like a novelty sugar bowl, and I almost wanted to lift up the lid and peek inside.
‘Would anyone like tea? Coffee?’ she asked in a small fluting voice, like a bird.
I shook my head. So did Eddy.
‘Not for me,’ he said.
Eddy looked the same, and yet also not – he was, as always, fastidiously neat, but his exquisitely cut white shirt and small lapelled black jacket made him seem like someone playing a part, perhaps that of a gangster or Bond villain, and his glittering cufflinks appeared vulgar, particularly in the context of our meeting and what it was about. It was as though he had lost the power to fill his own clothes. He was a generic version of himself, constructed of discount materials.
Or perhaps it was I that had changed, and I saw him with different eyes.
Who knows.
‘Penelope, you’ve had a chance to discuss the agreement with your client?’ asked Stephen.
Eddy’s solicitor was a woman, an ash-blonde tigress with a steely gaze, clad in a titanium-grey dress-suit and terrifying black patent high heels. I guessed instantly that this was the person who had advised him to get back with me so he could mortgage my house and use the proceeds to fight for his share of Sensitall’s innards.
This consideration really warmed me towards her, as you might imagine.
‘I have,’ she replied firmly.
‘Any questions?’
‘No, we’re fine.’ She glanced at Eddy, who was pretending to be engrossed in the highly polished table top.
Stephen flipped open a folder and took out copies of the documents.
‘Right then. Let’s get on with it.’
This agreement was a lot less scary to me than it could have been, for one simple reason: Eddy had been paid £30,000 for revelations about me that had appeared in a national tabloid. In a bleakly hilarious twist, there was a question as to whether I was entitled to some of this money as part of our shared assets.
The sheer betrayal of it all still took my breath away. He told some grubby reporter everything I had confided to him in the secrecy of our bed, that I confessed while we walked, hand in hand, along Grantchester Grind or through the Fens themselves; all of those deep and hidden things, which it turns out were all lies anyway, tales spun by the Red Queen out of desperation and terror, and always flight, flight, flight. Stories about the drug use, the breakdowns, the distant clashing rocks of my imaginary past.
Neither of us, however, is interested in fighting about this now. I, at least, have other priorities. As a consequence, I will keep my house, Eddy will keep his flat, and we will have no further dealings with one another.
Stephen pushed the sheaf of paper towards him. ‘Mr Lewis? You first.’
Eddy signed the documents quickly, contemptuously, as though this was all beneath him, and then shoved them over the desk to me.
There was a big cross drawn next to Margot Lewis, marking where I should sign my name. My pen paused over it, as though startled. After all, who is Margot Lewis? Can she legally sign documents? Does she even exist in any meaningful way?
In for a penny, in for a pound. My pen scratched decisively across the paper.
And just like that, we were done.
I lingered with Stephen on the steps of his offices while he fussed with his cashmere scarf.
‘Well, that was awful,’ I observed.
‘Yes, but better to have it over and done with.’ He fastened his coat against the cold breeze. Somewhere out there the City of London was knee-deep in rush hour, but here, in the medieval parkland of the Middle Temple, all was strangely quiet, serene. ‘I don’t think you’ve been holding out for a reconciliation.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Can I walk you to the station?’
‘Thanks, that’s very kind, but no. I’m meeting someone in the Delaunay.’
‘At least let me flag you a cab from the road,’ he said.
‘No really, it’s fine. I’d rather walk. And I haven’t spotted any reporters – though I haven’t properly beaten the shrubbery around here yet, so maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.’ I barked out a laugh, but he wasn’t fooled and he gave me a stern glance.
‘It’s nothing to joke about. This is going to get worse before it gets better, Mrs Lewis,’ he said, in his fussy no-nonsense lawyer voice. ‘There’s Christopher Meeks to consider. The arrest is just a taster. The trial will be a trial.’
He walked me up to High Holborn and left me with a cordial goodbye near Chancery Lane before being swallowed up by the swirling crowds descending into the Underground. I pulled my coat tighter around myself and ducked out of the human current, sliding in next to the kiosk dispensing the Evening Standard just until I could orient myself. The air smelled of fuel exhaust and hops. It was already nearly dark and the railings for the Tube entrance were cold at my back as I pulled out my phone, about to tap out a message.
Something made me glance up – a familiar voice.
Eddy was a mere few yards away, talking urgently into his phone, his forehead furrowed. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he was saying, his hand straying up to his collar to tug it as he often did when nervous. ‘I never promised…’
He turned, saw me. His mouth thinned. I could see him thinking – should I turn my back to her? Pretend I haven’t seen her?
In the end, to my surprise, he did neither of those things.
‘Look, I’ll ring you back, all right?’ He swiped the phone off, dropped it into his pocket and strolled over, with a little studied nonchalance, as though it meant nothing.
‘Fancy meeting you here.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I had business in town.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, clucking his tongue. ‘Me too.’
He came and stood next to me, and we both stared out at the tide of commuters flowing past, while we rested in the little harbour provided by the kiosk.
We could have been spies, meeting to pass on information.
‘You know,’ he said after a few moments, and his jaw was tight, ‘half of the stuff they printed in that newspaper didn’t come from me. I don’t know where they got that from.’