“Simon!”
He didn’t answer.
Chapter 16
I didn’t see Simon for a few days after that.
In fact, the next several days were eerily quiet. This meant that I managed to get quite a lot of work done. I took Kennedy to a dog obedience class in Sittingston, where the instructor gave him one look and moved us up to their special ‘Premium Deluxe’ package.
There was no news from Verity. Not a single piece of correspondence passed between us for almost an entire week, which was unheard of in all the years we’d known one another.
Fine. If she wanted to be like that, then I’d show her how the silent treatment was done.
The heat refused to break. The opposite, actually, it kept building. Every day, I opened my curtains to blinding sunshine and perfect, blue, cloudless skies.
I even took to writing in the garden with my top off. Maybe if I tried hard enough, those deep recessive Mediterranean genes that I’d discovered in Valencia all those years ago would come back to the forefront.
One afternoon, the next week after our trip to see Jed, the lawyer that Ollie had found for me rang, and she and I had a productive conversation.
Her name was Constance Cropper. She was apparently the best in the business.
“Can I afford you?” I asked.
“Only some can, so do your sums before you engage,” she told me in a crisp RP accent, which gave me all the confidence in the system I needed. “Now that you’ve told me what you’re up against, I think we can handle it, and I don’t think I’ll need to bankrupt you in fees fighting it.”
Oh, well, that’s one positive thing.
“Leave it with me, and we’ll make them regret this whole action,” she said and hung up before I could get a word in edgeways.
Later that week, I arrived home from Kennedy’s second obedience training class (“A mild improvement,” the instructor said. “Like how there are different strains of the bubonic plague.”), when a text from Nigella came through.
Riz’s funeral is on TV.
I switched on the news channel to see a reporter outside the Hindu Temple in Bournemouth talking about the delays in releasing the body.
They showed footage of several high-ranking politicians arriving and other dignitaries. There was no sign of Simon.
I rang Nigella. “Haven’t you heard?” she said when I asked where he was.
“No,” I said. “Clearly not, like I told you, we haven’t spoken since that day we went to see Jed.”
“He went back up to Scotland with his parents to stay for a while. I don’t know how long for. They left at the weekend; I thought you knew.”
Oh.
Well.He’s under no obligation to tell me where he goes. None of my business.
And if that was the case, why did I go have a long shower and stand under the hot water, feeling sorry for myself?
That night, as I lay under a single sheet, sweltering in the heat, I gave myself my first real opportunity to think things through.
So, Riz was an extremely ambitious man. He was a doctor who’d risen through the ranks of his chosen career and the local Labour Party to be put forward as a candidate. Even if he was cannon fodder in an unwinnable seat, it was a big deal to get nominated.
Was his ambition what drove him away from his family?
And, then there was Simon, apparently, he was willing to play the game enough to get back together with an ex purely for political reasons. I thought back to the other day when Neuberger had mentioned Riz’s accounts on dating apps. Were he and Simon even together properly? Was that why Simon hadn’t seemed that fazed by the idea the phone calls meant he was carrying on with another man?
Were they open? They had only been broken up for a couple of months, and yet Riz had amassed a fair collection of profiles and subscriptions all tailored to discreetly getting his end away.
