Up in the kitchen over the Shalimar, all was quiet except for the radio playing; the girls weren’t in yet to get ready for the evening’s trade.
‘Chris is down the wholesaler’s,’ said Ellie, taking the teapot off the dresser, which was loaded, as always, with her ‘crystals’ as she called them; gemstones and glassware fashioned into dainty swans, penguins, dragons. She made the tea and put the pot and two bone-china cups on the table. ‘Take the weight off, Annie,’ she said, and Annie sat down and watched as Ellie took a seat opposite and poured the tea out.
‘This is awful,’ Annie said, voicing what they were both thinking. ‘I can’t believe it.’
Midway through pouring the tea, Ellie slapped the pot down on the table and put her head in her hands. ‘Shit,’ she muttered, and groped for a hankie, found it. Red-faced, eyes wet, she blew her nose hard, tucked the hankie back in her pocket and looked at Annie.
‘Dolly! Why, for God’s sake? What did she ever do to anybody?’ Ellie gasped out.
Annie reached for her hand and patted it. ‘I don’t know. Have the police been here yet? Have they asked you anything?’
Ellie shook her head. With unsteady hands she picked up the pot and took another stab at it. This time, she got the tea into the cups. Slopped in milk. Pushed one cup across to Annie.
‘Thanks.’
The news came on the radio. Ellie jumped to her feet, went over to it, turned it off.
‘They keep talking about it. It’s horrible. It was such a shock,’ she said, and her voice was steadier. Then she looked at Annie. ‘I thought Mr Carter would come with you. Being as it’s Dolly, being as it’s such a terrible thing to have happened.’
‘He’s away. Busy,’ said Annie.
Yeah, busy doing what? drifted through her brain. Didn’t they say you should always trust your gut feelings? But that he was having an affair – that was too horrible, too devastating, to take in.
But it’s possible, yes?
Yeah, it was. Max was a handsome man, charismatic; he drew women to him. Annie had seen it happen. Had actually seen the cheeky cows ignore her, standing right there beside him, and zoom in on him like a missile. She had even laughed about it to herself, secure in the knowledge that Max would never stray. But now, well, who knew? She was eleven years younger than him, but she was in her forties now, and loads of wealthy men in their fifties went for girls half their age. Young and nubile, the girls flattered them and looked so good as the men flaunted them in front of their jealous friends.
He wouldn’t be the first man to do it, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. All those secret trips to Europe, those covert chats to Gary on the phone . . . But maybe some of those calls hadn’t been from Gary at all. The way he’d pulled away from her, detached from her, getting up and going into another room, closing the door, talking low. And afterwards, he’d been different with her, there was no denying it. She wasn’t imagining it; he’d been cold to her.
So was he really talking to Gary?
Or was he talking to some other woman?
‘Annie?’ said Ellie, seeing she was miles away.
‘Yeah,’ said Annie, coming back to the here and now. She took a swig of the tea, picturing the girl. She’d be a brunette, twenty-ish; keen-eyed and sniffing out wealth, power . . . and of course she would be gorgeous. Annie had seen it all before. The young Eurasian beauty on the arm of a decrepit but wealthy-looking old man in Kingstown. The glamorous blonde flirting with a man twenty-five years her senior in the Sandy Lane restaurant. She and Max had been sitting at the next table, had even smiled at each other, sharing the unspoken thought: there it is again. Blondes had never done it for Max. No, it would be a brunette. Like her, only a lot younger. The pain of it clamped at her guts, made her feel sick.
‘You know what?’ Ellie was saying, hands clasped around the teacup as if trying to get them warm. ‘I spoke to Doll last Monday on the phone. We were going to meet up next Thursday at the Ritz, our usual thing.’
Annie nodded: she knew. Tea at the Ritz. Once, she had regularly joined them there.
‘Now she’ll never make it,’ said Ellie, her face dissolving into tears again. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, going to the worktop and tearing off a hank of kitchen roll. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, chucked the tissue into the bin. She came back to the table and sat down with a shuddering sigh, then stared at Annie with reddened eyes. Ellie’s mascara was all down her cheeks, she looked a mess.
‘Who the fuck would do a thing like that?’ asked Ellie. It was a howl of protest.
‘She was shot, Tone said when he called me,’ said Annie, swallowing past a painful lump in her throat.
‘That’s right. She was shot. God, poor Dolly.’ Ellie’s eyes were bright with tears. She gulped and stared at Annie’s face. ‘I thought Tone would’ve collected you from the airport. You came in a cab.’
Annie shook her head, trying to think past this huge obstacle in her brain. Dolly was dead. Truth was, she’d been so devastated by what Tony had told her on the phone that she hadn’t thought to mention transport to him, and he hadn’t offered. Which, now she thought about it, was odd. Usually, Tone was on the ball with such things. But then, he’d had a shock too.
‘You got a spare bed, Ellie?’ she asked. She felt weary, right through to the bone.
There was a flicker of hesitation before Ellie recovered herself and said, ‘Course. There’s always a place for you here.’
Of course there was. Annie was the boss’s wife, after all. Right now, she was wondering how much longer that was going to be the case. It made her feel sad, hurt, angry. She and Max had been through so much, and she didn’t want it to end this way, with him having a hole-in-the-corner affair and her having to cope all alone again.
She loved him. Worshipped the bones of him.
She drank the tea and let out a heartfelt sigh. ‘I need a kip. After that, maybe this is going to make some kind of sense.’
But I doubt it, she thought.
‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room,’ said Ellie, standing up. She paused there, clutching at the kitchen chair. Her tear-reddened hazel eyes met Annie’s. ‘They’ll find out who did it, though, won’t they? The Bill, I mean,’ said Ellie. ‘They’ve got to.’
Annie nodded. ‘They will,’ she said.
Or I will, she added to herself.