Chapter 62
Daniel
Daniel was about as close as you could come to having a skip in your step, without, well, actually changing the way he was walking at all. This time the legs kicking under the surface of the gliding swan were doing a merry jig.
He was late to relieve Dudley, but he didn’t care. The sunlight that drenched the top deck seemed to infuse the colours of the day with more vibrancy than usual. The gulls overhead squawked melodically, the brisk wind almost carried him up the stairs. For the first time in his life, Daniel felt the urge to whistle, which he resisted.
He felt sure that nothing could dampen his mood, but as he rounded the corner, he heard voices coming from the main salon.
‘You work for me, Carlos, not her. She needs to grow up and come to breakfast when I ask her to, not hide away in her room. If I had behaved like that as a child … honestly I can’t even imagine how my father would have responded to the insolence.’ It was Chuck speaking, and he sounded angry, unapologetically so.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Regas, I just thought that as she is eating in her room most days, it would not be an issue.’ Carlos’voice was quiet, and Daniel cringed to hear him sound so contrite.
‘Are you trying to tell me I’m a bad parent? Is it my fault she eats in her room? That is just how teenagers are these days! But I’ve had enough – no more mollycoddling, she needs to grow up.’ So they were talking about Mel. It struck Daniel as unfair that it was suddenly Carlos’ fault that Mel had grown used to getting her own way. ‘I don’t want you to send her food anymore. If she wants to eat, she’ll have to come and actually interact with me at the dinner table!’
‘If you think that is best, but having a teenage girl myself, I find it is not best to try and control them, much better to talk head on,’ Carlos explained plainly.
Daniel couldn’t see the exchange but he could almost taste the tension. He imagined Chuck turning purple in the loaded silence.
When he replied, Chuck’s tone was ice cold. ‘I will not be accepting parenting advice from my staff, thank you very much, Carlos, and most certainly not from absent fathers.’
Daniel felt the force of Chuck’s disdain from the other side of the wall. He listened as Chuck’s footstep faded away and then found Carlos perched on a bar stool, his head in his hands.
Daniel wasn’t sure whether to admit to his eavesdropping. It was becoming a bit of a habit, and not one he was proud of. He decided to be straight with Carlos.
‘I heard how Chuck spoke to you and I just wanted to say …’ Daniel realised he had, in fact, no idea what he wanted to say, so instead he just reached out his hand and laid it on Carlos’ shoulder.
When Carlos looked up, he had tears in his eyes. ‘But he is right about one thing, I am absent. I haven’t seen my Claudia for six months and when I did, she only wanted to spend a single day with me.’ Carlos swallowed a sob, and Daniel felt suddenly out of his depth.
‘I think the only thing you can do is make sure that she knows that you want to see her, and hope that one day she’ll understand why you couldn’t.’ Daniel wondered if his own father had ever felt so torn up about not seeing him or his siblings. What advice was he given?
Carlos nodded thoughtfully and wiped at his cheeks with the sleeve of his chef’s whites.
‘Also Chuck can talk – he and Melanie hardly have the best relationship,’ Daniel continued. Carlos gave him a strange look, a mix of caution and admiration.
‘You should keep your voice down,’ Carlos said, as if to illustrate the point, in a whisper. ‘There are a lot of persons on this boat who report back to him … Luckily for you I stopped doing that some time ago.’ Carlos hung his head again. ‘And I have certainly paid the price …’
‘What do you mean, Carlos?’
Carlos looked from side to side, theatrically gesturing for Daniel to lean in closer. ‘Well when I started for Mr Regas, he would often reward me with unexpected tips for sharing information about others on the boat.’ Carlos sighed. ‘But after a while it started to get me down, and I did not feel I could get close to anyone, so I stopped, and the money stopped. I mean the pay is obviously still very good but the generous tipping, that was done. Now I have less to send to my ex-wife, and less to visit my daughter. He controls peoplewith money, Daniel, to make them speak, to spill their secrets, but in the end it is to silence them … Whenever there is money involved, Chuck Regas has something to hide. Remember that.’
Daniel thought about the envelope with $75,000 dollars in. And then he thought about Ore’s.
Carlos went on, ‘So when you take the money, then you are in the trap and he will make you sign the DNA agreement in order to receive the transfer. He buys people’s voices.’
‘NDA,’ Daniel corrected.
Carlos ignored him; he was on a roll. ‘Even someone like Vicky is on the payroll. It was her who told Chuck about what Claude had done to Annie.’ Daniel nodded along, trying to keep all the connections in his head. ‘And she had overheard Annie talking to Agatha about it. By the time that Agatha did tell Chuck, he already knew and Annie was no longer on board.’
Daniel must have looked confused, as Carlos continued, ‘Agatha has been trying to get back into Chuck’s … um … good books is it?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Daniel confirmed impatiently, before coming to the end of the thought on his own, ‘and that’s why Agatha and Vicky don’t get along.’
‘Exactement,’ Carlos said sadly, ‘and that is his other tactic: divide and conquer, making everyone suspicious of each other. It’s an ugly business.’
Noticing awkward social dynamics was not Daniel’s strong suit. He’d thought that everyone seemed to get on reasonably well. Now with this new information to consider, he recalled Dudley’s tightly wound temper, Vicky’s standoffishness, Nicole’sskittishness, Agatha’s unprompted outpouring and sudden advance, the sudden hushing whenever he walked in on a conversation … In retrospect it seemed like everyone on this boat was on edge.
‘And the money and silence is the best option – let me tell you that. I heard, well overheard, from Vicky that Chuck gave Annie two options: sign the NDA and take the money, there was a lot of it, or never work again. You’ll know better than most that the world of the super rich is a small one, and a bad word goes a long way …’
