The phone went dead, and almost immediately rang again. It was Katherine. ‘Panic over. He’s home,’ she said.
‘Thank God for that. Do you want me to come over and talk to him?’
‘Could you check out clinics and things? We should think about sending him somewhere where they know how to handle these things.’
‘Right, I’ll get on to it and be with you tomorrow.’
The long gravel drive crunched beneath the tyres as William’s car approached the large old manor house in Buckinghamshire. It had five acres of garden, a large paddock and a swimming-pool. As he drew up outside the front porch, two Labradors with muddy paws growled and padded off. William had never liked dogs.
His ex-wife was even paler than he remembered and age had not been kind to her. Her hair was tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck, and wisps of hair hung around her face. She was wearing a pink twinset, a tweed skirt and Gucci loafers. His emerald and diamond engagement ring was still on the third finger of her left hand.
‘He’s in the bath. He was filthy,’ Katherine said, pouring herself a large sherry and offering the bottle to William. He shook his head, and wondered why she was drinking so early in the day. ‘I can’t get any sense out of him.’ She paused. ‘You look odd. What on earth have you been doing to yourself? It’s your hair, you look awful. The Bellinghams have been on the phone,’ she went on. ‘They understand what I’m going through. Oliver was on some drug or other when he committed suicide. Lord B was saying that Ollie went to a rehab place in Cornwall. I asked him to talk to Charlie, give him all the grisly details, try to scare him into straightening out.’
‘I’ll pay,’ he said, with a resigned sigh.
‘Of course you will.’ She got up to refill her glass. ‘It’s already in the headlines. Have you seen it? “Terrible Tycoon’s son in drugs raid.” The press have been phoning here. Have they contacted you?’
‘No,’ he said warily.
‘He’s got to go before a magistrate. He was selling the stuff. No doubt the press will be in court.’
‘Probably,’ he said quietly. Then he asked, ‘Why did you talk to the papers, give them that load of bullshit about me?’
‘You deserved everything they threw at you!’ She turned on him, her thin lips set in a tight line. ‘I had them hanging round the house for days and it was the only way I could get rid of them. If you think I liked having my name, my children’s name, dragged through the gutter press then you’re very much mistaken.’ She was on a roll. ‘And if you think that this problem with Charlie isn’t anything to do with your shenanigans, then you’re wrong. It all stems from you and that wretched Maynard. Is it any wonder he’s gone off the rails?’ William didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I have never been so humiliated. I couldn’t even walk into the village. And it looks like you haven’t learned your lesson. You look like mutton dressed as lamb. That haircut!’
He felt his temper rising, but kept his mouth shut. ‘You were a laughing stock and we all had to pay for your antics. Then flaunting yourself with that lesbian! You have no idea what harm you caused my family.’
‘Katherine, you were paid handsomely for your contribution to my downfall. Lucky for you, I didn’t go right down. The business stayed firm so I was still around to pay your bills.’
‘Oh, yes!’ she screamed. ‘Money! That’s all you ever thought about. Money and sex.’
At that moment Charlie appeared, a half-smile on his lips. ‘Ah, happy families. I’d forgotten how it used to be!’
William watched the thin, pale-faced boy saunter into the room and sit on the arm of the settee, his skinny legs protruding from a towelling bathrobe. ‘Katherine, I’d like to talk to Charlie alone.’
She flounced out, slamming the door behind her.
Charlie dug into his pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, his hands shaking.
‘So you’ve cocked up,’ William said quietly. ‘You were caught selling drugs, you are to go before a magistrate and you could end up in prison.’
‘Doubt it. It was only a few tabs and I’m a first offender, under age and all that. They’ll let me off with a fine and a few months’ probation.’
His upper-class drawl grated on William. ‘What are you on?’
‘What am I on?’ Cigarette smoke drifted from his lips. ‘What are you offering?’
‘I’m your father. Show some respect, Charlie.’
‘That’s terrific coming from you, Pa. Any woofters slashed their wrists over you recently?’
William took a deep breath and held on to his temper. ‘I’ll pay for you to go to a rehab centre. If you don’t agree, then you get no money and neither will your mother nor your sister. I’ll force them to take me to court and I’ll drag the lot of you through the press.’
‘I don’t give a shit about your money.’
‘You’re throwing your life away if you give in to drugs. It’s stupid, and you are not stupid.’
Charlie patted his pocket for another cigarette.
‘So will you go to a clinic?’
‘Yep.’
For a brief moment William wanted to hug his son, but he couldn’t make the move. Charlie lit the cigarette with nicotine-stained fingers. He was close to tears but trying hard not to show it. As William moved to the door he said, ‘You were never around when we needed you, or when I needed you. But in some ways I understood it was Mother’s doing. She loathes you. Even at Christmas she hated it when you sent us presents. Sometimes she wouldn’t let us open them.’
William hadn’t expected this and he wasn’t sure how to handle it.
‘Oliver died. Did you know him?’ Charlie said suddenly. And started to cry. ‘He was my best friend.’ He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand.
‘He was older than you, though, wasn’t he?’ William asked.
‘Yeah, but we sort of hit it off. In fact I got a letter from him after I was told he’d killed himself. It didn’t make any sense to me. I mean, he was arranging for us to go sailing together when he got back from the Caribbean and he had this girlfriend he was really keen on. I asked the Bellinghams about him at the memorial service, but they said it wasn’t the right place. Then when I went round to their place they didn’t want to talk about him. It’s like he never existed.’ He was looking down at his lap. ‘Do you know someone called Justin?’
‘Justin?’
‘Yes, Ollie said he’d met this fantastic guy out there, Justin Chalmers. In his letter he mentioned him, said I’d get on with him too.’
‘Yes, I know Justin very well.’
William sat down on the arm of the settee still wanting to put his arm around his forlorn son, but it hung limply at his side.
‘Ollie was really good about getting the other bastards off me when all that filth came out in the press. I had a really bad time. It just went on and on, especially with that chap Maynard being a pervert.’
‘Charlie, most of it was lies, you know.’
‘Then why didn’t you do something about it? Why didn’t you sue them?’
‘Whatever I did seemed to make it worse, so I buried my head in the sand. Reckoned if I kept quiet it would all go away, people would forget.’
‘They nicknamed you Willy Wanker at school. They used to pin up pictures of you and write things on them. I hated it — and I hated you more than you could believe. I used to pray you’d die, pray you weren’t my father.’
William stood up. ‘Charlie, I’ll make a deal with you. You really focus on getting straight, then come out to the Caribbean. Come and see the island. Get to know me. I have never stopped loving you — and you’re right, I should have kicked ass about those press articles. But at the time, I just didn’t have the...’ He tailed off. He was silent for a while, then said, ‘Sometimes, Charlie, we don’t always do the right thing. But I want your respect more than anything else in the world. I want you to be proud to say, “That’s my father.”’