Claire led her close friend Jennie up the narrow staircase to the third-floor landing of a red-brick building two roads away from a bustling shopping area in Knightsbridge. As Claire unlocked the door, she looked at Jennie’s face. It was blank.
‘Come in – there’s not much to show you; it’s very small.’
They walked into the kitchen; it was bare. The whole place in the bedroom and sitting room was cold. Jennie took Claire by the arm.
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ Jennie said. ‘It is small.’
‘It’s all I could find at a price I could afford in London.’
‘You’re in the most expensive part here. Do you have to live in London?’
‘I need to work. I need to earn money. I’ll doubt I’ll get anything outside of London.’
Jennie had seen enough. Claire saw the uncertainty in her eyes.
‘I’m moving on from Rick – I’m going to find my own independence again and this is the first step.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, but where does that leave you with Arrow Hall?’
‘There’s been a stabbing on the site, a fight leaving James, the project manager, badly injured in hospital. I’m uncovering a fraud that’s leeching money, and I’m uncertain how safe it is for me to be there with all that going on.’
‘You’ve told me enough. Walk away. Forget it – get on with something else in your life,’ Jennie said.
‘I’ve always wanted to see the new Arrow Hall completed, and I want to live in it again just as I used to. It’s leaving a very nasty, sour taste in my mouth.’
‘You’ve got more to tell me, haven’t you?’
Claire closed the door of her very small apartment and, twenty minutes, later sitting in a noisy coffee shop just off the high street, she told Jennie.
‘I’m going to do something I never thought I would ever want to be involved in again.’
Claire looked uncomfortable with a deep frown, and Jennie put her hand on Claire’s arm.
‘Take it slowly,’ Jennie said.
‘I’ve decided I’m going to do some work for Harry Stone,’ Claire said as she looked away from Jennie.
‘That does not sound a very sensible thing for you to be doing. Do you think it’s wise after all the unhappy memories he left you with?’
‘He came onto the site at Arrow Hall, two days ago. He looked very frail, just a shadow of how I knew him. His face was gaunt and grey; his hands were almost skeletal.’
‘You’re curious, aren’t you? You want to see what’s happening to him.’
‘That’s what concerns me. I don’t want that to be the motivation that drives me to go and work with him again.’
‘Does Rick know about this?’
‘No, not yet. But it’ll be the first thing I tell him when he comes back from New Zealand.’
‘You’re doing all this in a hurry, so be careful.’
‘Harry Stone lives alone in this seven-bedroom mansion on Brighton seafront; of course I want to see it. I think he’s an ill man; I want to find out what is really happening to him. And he’ll pay me – I need the money.’
‘You sound determined to go and see Stone again, but my advice is: don’t do it. Your bad memories will flood back; Harry Stone’s a shark just like the scam you’ve found circling Arrow Hall. I’m sure you can easily find work somewhere else,’ Jennie said, finishing her coffee.
‘I’ve made up my mind. The Arrow Hall fire was two years ago; it’s history now – I’ve moved on from that. And I don’t owe him anything even though, trying to lure me in, he gave me a diamond the other day. If it doesn’t feel right when I get to Brighton, then I just walk away again.’
Claire left Jennie later that morning certain of what she was going to do. She planned her visit to Marine House would only be for a short time. But Claire did not plan for everything, certainly not how her short time visiting Marine House would turn the indelible memories she had of Harry Stone upside down.