In the early evening Max lets himself in to the Airbnb flat he has rented for the last couple of weeks just off Leicester Square. Its sash windows overlook Gerrard Place where people are wandering along to theatres, looking for restaurants or standing in the freezing cold, chatting and smoking outside pubs. Watching them move around, unaware they’re being observed, he runs over what happened today, how life for him will soon become completely different, and how all these people will soon be very much aware of the name Max Saunders.
It occurred to him, while Hazel was speaking in court – steadily unsticking the glue from her memories – that she is a natural for this kind of public arena. She speaks well, quietly and carefully, and creates that weird kind of empathy with onlookers not many people have but every celebrity wants.
He goes to the tiny kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine, thinking how, even in the mainstream press, he can see the tide of public opinion turning. He knows that the more Hazel is discussed, the more normalised her situation will become. In the last few days, even before her meeting in the prison with Laurel, she has been approached by a television morning show who want to do an interview with her, and then a fashion magazine who want to feature her in a double-page spread. Of course, Max thinks as he drinks, she is remarkably pretty. That’s always going to help.
He takes his glass back to the sitting room, swallowing a little as he goes, grimacing at the cold hitting his stomach. He needs to answer the numerous emails he has received from the literary agent, Romilly Harris, regarding his book proposal. She is straining at the bit to get it out to auction. Thank God, he thinks, the court was closed to the public today. If anyone leaks what happened, they will be in contempt. If there had been journalists allowed inside to witness what Hazel said, his scoop would have been blown out of the water.
He remembers then the packet that a sad-faced Toby had handed him after the hearing. He roots around in his bag and retrieves it. Tearing it open, he pulls out an old cassette tape, its label worn away. He turns it over in his hands and looks inside the package but there is no note, only a compliments slip from Toby Bowman’s office. He wanders through into the sitting room, staring down at the tape. Outside, someone shouts drunkenly from the street but Max doesn’t notice. He tosses the tape into the air and catches it one-handed.
Tomorrow morning, first thing, he’ll go into Soho and buy a cassette player. They sell them in those vintage shops he’s often walked past, never understanding how they make any money.
For now, though, he settles himself down in a chair, listening to the sounds of the city rumbling outside, drinking, smoking and thinking about those two little girls, those sisters, who seem so pitched at opposite ends on the spectrum of good and evil.