“I’ve known him since we were kids.”
He nods.
“What’s he about?”
“He joined the army at nineteen and when he left, he joined on as security… why? Why are you asking?” Everything feels tight, claustrophobic. I don’t like where Isaac is trying to head this.
“You haven’t known him for twelve, thirteen years. Who interviewed him for the position?”
“My father. It was primarily for my security. Isaac, why’s this important?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes we think we know someone well and we don’t actually know them at all. Here’s dessert.”
He changes the subject while we eat, sharing desserts. He talks about national security, shares a couple of anonymised stories where someone was arrested whilst in a full BDSM outfit, complete with inserted butt plug and I remember the club in America. Those eyes.
“I saw you in Seattle.”
“Did you?” His face gives nothing away.
“In a club. We weren’t ourselves.”
“Who else would we be?”
“Someone with far more freedom.”
He nods and halves the last piece of cheesecake. “Being anonymous is quite freeing. Same as being a soldier. It becomes easy to hide.”
He doesn’t eat his piece of cheesecake. He waits for me to finish mine and then offers it to me, on his fork.
I accept, taking it slowing in my mouth, delicately. Letting him feed me. Just like he watched me being fed something else when we were both in Seattle.
I leave with Franklyn, taking a light aircraft back home, back to my sanctuary of a room in a castle, where I feel more and more like Rapunzel, just a version who had cut off her own hair and made a ladder to get herself down from her tower.
Chapter Sixteen
The summer wraps us in a humid blanket, its warm nights smothering us in our sleep. August has broken all records for temperature in Scotland, a Saharan wind carrying temperatures that have soared too high.
My father is uncomfortable. The heat has made him fractious and irritable, his treatment trying on him. On all of us. When I enter his room, he’s on a chaise situated near the open balcony doors, trying to entice any chance of a cool breeze from the loch. He’s pale, but he’s lost the drawn, pinched look he had when I returned from London to find my mother cradling him as he’d lay, collapsed, on the floor.
“Is there a forecast for a storm yet?” He sounds stronger.
“Not for another few days.”
“Damn. We need the rain. I’ve never seen the Loch so low.”
The waters are still. Barely a breeze fractures the surface. A boat sits on top, motionless.
“The rain will come.” It always does.
“And when it arrives you’ll stand outside in it, like you do when we have a summer storm.”
I sit down next to him and he takes my hand, the thin flesh covering bony digits. These aren’t the same hands as that of the man who would throw me into the air and catch me, or tuck me in bed at night with tales of princesses who killed the dragon themselves.
“How was London?”
We haven’t spoken since I’ve returned. He’s been tired, needing rest. I’ve taken on some of his engagements, telling the press about his ‘exhaustion’.
“London. I saw Goldsmith.”
