I put my book down. I’m choosing a reading for my father’s funeral and just getting used to saying the words that my father has a funeral.
“I’m sure you can solve it, Franklyn.” It’s said in hope that he’ll leave me alone and sort it out himself.
“Elise is here. She’s upset and I don’t know what the protocol is for dealing with her when she’s crying quite a lot.” He sounds like his whole rule book for being a butler has just been torn up and shat on.
I want to laugh, but the thought of Elise being here is making me want to stamp my foot and shout instead.
“I’ll see her in the reception room.”
“Another problem. She’s been followed by the paparazzi. They got to the gate.” He has his calm under control now.
There’s a shadow behind him and Micky is there, not smiling, his eyes cold. “You need to check the reports before you meet her, Blair.” He pushes past Franklyn, not giving him a second glance or a polite request to move. “Here.”
I take the tablet he hands me and see the headline and more importantly, the picture. It’s Elise, her eye blackened and her arm bruised badly. The headline suggests that neighbours next to William called the police due to a domestic situation and paramedics attended.
I pass it back to Micky and say nothing.
“Be aware. She’s come straight up here and the paps have followed. They’re going to turn this into a whole freak show about a love triangle or something – between you, that dick head and her.” Micky won’t say Goldsmith’s name.
I could send her away.
I could refuse to see her and have a statement made that I’m not in, because they actually wouldn’t know if I was at home or not, and they won’t see me as the gates where they’ll be kept are a mile away from the building.
But some awakened strands of loyalty still strangle my heart.
“Bring her through and have Amelia ready for a chat once I’ve finished with Elise.” Amelia was my new head of PR, a new acquisition this last two weeks.
* * *
I head down to the reception room, catching a glance in a mirror and see a different woman to who last spoke to Elise. My eyes are older; they don’t laugh the same, but I have something back that I lost.
Fight.
My mother’s words, from wherever they came, resonate like the sweet chime of Christmas bells and from within the sadness there is the glow of a new beginning.
She’s sitting in a green leather wingback chair when I enter the room. Someone has brought tea – because tea cures everything – but her make-up is still halfway down her face from the rivers of tears.
“What’s happened?” I don’t rush over to her. I don’t open my arms for her to be held because I don’t want to.
“I had a row with William.”
“He hit you?”
She nods. Looks away from me.
“It wasn’t the first time but it never is, is it?”
I remember her arms and her weight loss. I think about his words towards me and his unspoken threats.
“You’re not there now, though.”
“And I can’t go back. The pictures are everywhere. What will people say if I go back to him?”
I rest my back against the wall next to the old iron fire. “But you would go back.”
She shrugs. “I don’t have anything else.”
“You have your family. Your job. For fuck’s sake. Elise, you can’t be a climber all your life.”
