He’d had no illusions he was the love of her life of course, just as she had not been his. They’d discussed their proposed marriage in coolly practical terms before the announcement was drafted for The Times.
Veronica came from a grand family of rapidly declining fortune and though her parents had sniffed and muttered that Lytton “wasn’t quite of our type my dear,” they hadn’t needed tarot cards to see his star was firmly on the rise.
Lytton had come from nothing equipped with no more than an instinct for a deal, a nose for rundown property and the vision to see what it might become. He’d started at the bottom of the building trade and sweated his way up through almost every discipline. Now he had the hands-on expertise to turn that vision into profitable reality.
Veronica supplied class and she did it in spades.
Still their marriage had been more a business partnership than anything else—more so over the last decade. She played lady of the manor here while he spent more time at the London apartment. They’d even talked vaguely of divorce although just as there was nothing holding them together equally there was nothing in particular driving them apart.
He never asked if she’d taken lovers but assumed she had. She’d certainly been discreet. And the two of them still rubbed along all right—still talked, discussed and debated. Perhaps their separate lives had helped give them plenty to say to one another.
But even now he couldn’t find it in him to grieve openly for her as anything other than a vague acquaintance. The knowledge unsettled him.
He wondered if there was anyone else out there, beyond her parents, for whom she meant more.
Lytton had allowed his in-laws to take charge of the funeral arrangements with relief, but also knowing they probably needed the comfort of ritual. Nobody expects to outlive their only child.
He looked again at the wedding portrait as if it showed a pair of strangers. Viewed with a dispassionate eye it had some artistic merit he supposed. A black and white image lightly tinted by the photographic studio. And the frame was heavy and hallmarked if not to his taste.
He hesitated a moment then turned the picture over and removed the back. The frame could be sent to some charity organisation—the inimitable Mrs P would see to it—but the photo inside? He found himself undecided whether to keep it as a memento or throw it away.
Behind him on the far side of the room the door opened after a perfunctory knock. Annoyed, Lytton swung away from the window in time to see Steve Warwick stroll into the room.
If his business partner was not exactly the last person he wanted to see right now he was pretty high up on the list.
“It’s quite all right Mrs P,” Warwick was saying breezily over his shoulder. “He’s expecting me.”
“No I’m not, Steve,” Lytton said. “Go away.”
But Warwick had already closed the door firmly behind him, leaving the flustered housekeeper on the outside. Now he paused and was regarding him with a half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Warwick was a few inches shorter than Lytton. He had a fulsome stockiness that belied his flair and determination on the squash court. Left to his own devices Warwick made business decisions with the same reckless abandon. Maybe that explained why he’d been weeks from bankruptcy when Lytton had bought out the major share of his property development company more than a decade ago. Lytton had mistakenly assumed gratitude would temper his partner’s impulsive nature.
“You want me to leave you to wallow in your grief? Oh, please, this is me you’re talking to. Spare me the theatrics at least,” Warwick taunted, once again damning that hope. He shook his head. “My friend you look like shit.”
“Were you expecting to find me in celebratory mood?”
Warwick laughed. He laughed easily—sometimes too easily at the expense of others. His were classic English blond, bland, blue-eyed good looks coupled to a public school drawl. Warwick often made Lytton feel like a rough-arsed gypsy by comparison—albeit scrubbed up and on his way to the dock.
Warwick came forwards pursing his lips as he gave the quiet book-lined study a cursory inspection. “I can never understand why with all this space you choose to hide yourself away back here,” he said. Another flashing grin. At least Warwick didn’t have typically English teeth. “Unless you let the lady Veronica beat you to the decent rooms of course.”
“You know as well as I do that I’m hardly ever here.” Lytton turned back to the window. The woman was still talking on her cellphone. She seemed somehow familiar.
Kel, the black kid had called her. Kel short for Kelly? Hmm, Kelly . . . He could swear he knew the face but couldn’t place it. Why hadn’t he asked her full name? “I like to see the comings and goings.”
It had been Veronica who’d favoured the pomp and grandeur of a central room at the front of the house above the imposing entrance hall. There she could survey her domain oblivious to what was going on behind her.
Lytton wanted his finger on the pulse. Otherwise you found yourself robbed blind by people who blamed you for not catching them sooner when the company went to the wall.
He prided himself that he’d never lost his grip even if he’d come close to it today—with a cleaner of all people. A moment’s sympathy, empathy—like she knew what it was to lose someone—and he’d almost let her see the truth.
That he didn’t give a damn.
Lytton wasn’t sure how he would have explained if she’d chosen to call him on it, that he’d stopped loving his wife a long time ago. The feeling had been entirely mutual.
“Specialist cleaners? My God that’s a little on the vulgar side isn’t it?” Warwick spoke at his elbow, peering down at the white van below. “I’d no idea such people existed. How very American.”
Lytton’s jaw tightened. “You’d rather I’d asked Mrs P to sweep up the pieces of my wife’s skull, wrap them in newspaper like broken glass and put them in the dustbin with the potato peelings and the remains of last night’s supper?”
Even Warwick flushed at that. “Hardly. But we can’t afford for this to get out Matt, can we? Now especially—when the Big One is so close.”
He didn’t need to be more specific. The Big One in question was the Lytton-Warwick Cup—although Lytton wanted to change this to the Lytton-Warwick Memorial Cup since Veronica had put so much work into the arrangements. It was a horse race on the flat over a mile and four furlongs with a purse to rival the classics. The company’s first foray into corporate sponsorship, designed to give them maximum kudos with the type of people Veronica’s parents really would consider social equals.