7pm. Wednesday, 8th November
The cubes of ice clinked, one against the other, all but drowned in the Tanqueray gin and artisan tonic which JP ordered with ice, no lemon, for both of them. Honor opened her mouth to ask for whisky – Glenmorangie – then closed it again.
For a brief second she thought of sitting with North in the bar of The Gallows Widow.
His face as he listened to her. Absorbed. Open. The shape of his mouth. She wondered if he’d left the country yet. She’d been hard on him. But it was better this way. Cleaner. For the first time since she opened the paper and saw Ned’s death, she allowed herself to relax. She was bone-tired, but she was back in the real world. Her world of laws and due process and power. She was finding Peggy this way, not on some mad quest with a psychopathic sidekick, and JP was going to help her do it.
He held out his heavy-bottomed glass. The drink clear and honest like water. He was relieved, she thought. More than relieved – ecstatic she was sitting in front of him, in a smart suit and a silk shirt. Sane and together. She panicked him with her disappearing act. Of course he believed she tried to kill herself, and who could blame him? Devastated, he presumed she went away to try again. There was guilt on her side then. She’d been cruel to leave like that. To have so little faith in the man she was to marry. She should have given him another chance to hear her out and to believe her.
The sight of him made Honor want to weep. She was wrong to keep him at a distance. She should have married him when he asked – certainly the third time he asked. Hadn’t he looked out for her since her childhood – been a better father than her own father, been a better lover than a man half his age. Everything he possessed, he built himself – coming from nothing to have everything. He wasn’t perfect – he had political convictions which verged on the extreme, but she could moderate the worst of them.
“Drink,” he said. “You look like you need it. I bloody know I do.”
They sat in the far corner away from the pianist – the notes flying round and over them. What’ll I do when you are far away, she hummed along. Frank Sinatra. Or Bob Dylan. She preferred Bob Dylan – JP would be a Sinatra man.
“Honor…” JP was calling her back. “Tell me all of it, ” he said, and she forced herself to ignore the flicker of irritation she felt at the order.
She took it fast but JP Armitage kept up, and she didn’t have to repeat herself or explain any of it. He knew some of it already – Peggy’s disappearance and her meeting with geeky Ned. His death. His eyes widened as she took him through the run in the park. North. Her attacker in the bathroom. North again.
The pianist stopped wondering what he would do and admitted he was a fool for love.
JP sat up straighter in his chair at her mention of North’s role in her departure from the hospital, but she pretended not to notice. The drive into the sea. The helicopter. North wasn’t a criminal. She didn’t know what he was, but she didn’t care. There was Ned, and Peggy, and now that poor young banker’s body pulled from the sea. A simple DNA test would prove who it was.
JP had to believe her. Did he?
“Honor, what you’re telling me is incredible.” He stared into his drink. He hadn’t even touched it – ice melting, bubbles almost gone. It was murky, she noticed, its surface oily from the gin.
She reached out to him as he raised his head. And she could see that he believed all of it. Every word. Relief washed through her. He’d never looked so angry, so in charge, and she rejoiced that he was older, wealthier and more powerful than other men. That he knew what was to be done, because she needed him, and need was the best kind of love of all wasn’t it?
“You’ve been to hell and back.”
As he slid his huge square hand over hers, she smiled at the touch of a man who thought about the consequences of his actions. Who knew right from wrong.
“Show me the notebook. Are there names in it?”
She picked up her new handbag, unzipped it, pulling out the plastic bag with the notebook in it. Except it wasn’t Peggy’s notebook, it was Advanced Mathematical Theorems by Thomas J Jackson. A black shiny cover, white font. How had she not noticed the difference? Because North had bought a book as close in size to Peggy’s notebook as he was able. The same shape and weight to make the switch that much easier. Michael Bastard North.
“He took it.”
Her brain did a rapid calculation as to the effect this would have on her credibility. Would JP take it as further proof of the insanity she was denying?
“He’s a criminal – of course he took it.”
But there was something else. Nagging at her.
“He’ll sell it or he’ll use it to bargain with.” JP shrugged. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it back.”
Armitage slid his hand over hers again, warm and dry, keeping her safe. An itch in her brain.
She hadn’t mentioned the notebook in her story, so how did JP know she should have it?
“Do you trust me, Honor?”
Did she?
Could she?
Ned’s voice. Trust no one. But he didn’t mean the man she was going to marry. He meant Michael North who stole the most important thing she had, Peggy’s notebook. She was exhausted. It was an easy enough mistake to get confused about what she had and hadn’t said. She must have mentioned it when she told him about escaping from the island.
She’d always known that a man could look like a husband and father and turn into a violent predator. But a man could look like a husband and father and be just that. A defender. A protector. A partner. JP’s face was so familiar to her. When this was over, she’d marry him. A huge white wedding in Westminster Abbey with 2,000 guests and vintage lace and satin and a diamond tiara. He’d like that. And maybe she would have a baby with him. Do that for him.
Do you trust me?
If she wasn’t willing to answer that question with an affirmative, she couldn’t marry him, and she wanted to marry him. A spring wedding with boughs of deep pink cherry blossom in the Abbey – she’d carry a sprig in a hand-tied bouquet. Her mother always loved cherry blossom.
There was a sharp pain in the back of her hand, as if a dozen wasps had stung her all at once. She made to pull away, but JP kept hold as if he was never letting go of her again. Happiness drained from his face. His expression darkened. Intent. Tormented. His brow furrowed. He didn’t understand. “I need to explain better,” she thought, but her mouth refused to work. Swaying in her seat as JP swam in and out of focus. Fighting it. She had to stay awake for Peggy. Her world tipped, the piano music discordant, crazy sharps and flats, and JP lifted her from the seat, waving away the waiter.
“It’s all good,” she heard. “One too many.” Her head against his broad chest, his heartbeat, his powerful arm around her, the muscles, his broad hand at her waist, as the buzzing, tinkling room dipped and spun. Too warm. A walk. Desperate for fresh air – he realised without her speaking the words. He took her key card, half-carrying her out of the bar, across the art deco foyer, but not towards the front door. She wanted the door and the green-coated porters with their stove pipe hats. The outside and the black cab. North. But it was JP holding her up. Not North. Holding her tight to him. Here comes the bride. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health into the elevator. Watching him. Blurring. His face distorted in the shining brass-plate of the elevator. Not who he should be.
And before she knew it, before she could speak, she was out again into the spinning, topsy-turvy world with its marshmallow floor and its numbered bedrooms with their spying eyes. The endless corridor, her hand reaching out – grabbing hold – but the wall slipped from her grasp. Resisting again at her doorway. Like an over-tired child who didn’t want to go to bed. Like a hopeless drunk wanting to stay at the party. Overcome. Feeling her weakness.
Pushed into her room where she staggered, half-turned, her eyes closing, feeling herself falling through space, spread-eagled, on to the bed.