Paradise City (17 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Day

BOOK: Paradise City
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‘Howard, are you OK?’

He lifts his head and forces himself to meet Rupert’s eye. He nods.

‘Yeah, fine,’ he says. Forcing the two unremarkable words out of his throat feels like pushing a basketball through a tight woollen sock, shrunk in the wash. ‘Christ. How could I have been so stupid?’

‘Well—’

‘It’s a rhetorical question, Rupert.’ Howard sighs, the breath coming out of his lungs in a clogged-up wheeze. He notices a tiny flap of skin emerging from the corner of his thumbnail like a splinter. It has been bothering him since this morning. It’s surprisingly painful for something so insignificant. Why hadn’t he tackled it before now? The fact that he hadn’t bothered to address this small niggle for over twelve hours, even though it was irritating him and even though it would have been so easy to prise it off with a judiciously applied pair of tweezers, seems at this moment in time to be a metaphor for his entire life.

Ever since his mother died, ever since Ada disappeared, ever since his marriage to Penny broke down, ever since he lost the only three people who believed in his fundamental goodness, Howard has known he is heading inexorably towards disaster with all the ponderous certainty of a hundred-ton trawler bowling into a bank of rocks. Why hadn’t he stopped himself? Why hadn’t he turned the ship round? Why had he let his life degenerate into this ugly stasis, where he could no longer look at himself in the mirror, where he knew he was acting in ways that were not true to his fundamental nature?

He has found it so easy to convince everyone else of his awfulness. People who didn’t know him, and even some who did, thought of him as a man who could take what he wanted – cash, companies, people – who could grab it all like sweets from a jar, just because he thought life owed him.

He had built this reputation and people had begun to look at him with wariness. They had believed in this unlikeable version of Howard Pink. Worse – they had started to respond to it. He was knighted. Claudia married him. He became respected by his peers. He ate in the finest restaurants. He was asked to write opinion pieces for the financial press. Of course he forgot who he was – who wouldn’t?

Little Howie Pink, who sewed buttons on waistcoats and sold schmattes from a stall on Petticoat Lane. That kid, with his big ears and spotty skin – what chance did he have? He was pathetic. An innocent in a life where toughness triumphed. After Ada had been taken from him, he’d packed the little boy away in a box. Now, here he was, faced with the nasty reality of who he had become: a dirty old man who wanked over a chambermaid in a hotel room for kicks.

He lifts the edge of his thumb to his mouth and bites off the hangnail, tearing it out with a firm pull of the wrist. A thin plume of blood marks the spot. He feels better.

‘Is she taking me to court then?’

Rupert steeples his fingers together. ‘No, Howard. As I’ve explained, Beatrice Kizza has not mentioned a lawsuit.’

‘Might as well have.’

‘And if she did choose to pursue that particular avenue,’ Rupert continues,‘ she’d have a bloody hard time making it stick. It’s her word against yours and, frankly, Howard, no one’s going to believe a fucking Ugandan maid. Not only that, but a Ugandan maid who’s taking money away from hard-working English folk. Asylum seeker, my arse. She’s got a nice little flat we’re probably paying for, she’s got a job, a steady income. Christ, she’s probably using the NHS to get her tits done. Probably wants her whole family to come over here next.’

Howard waves his hand to make it stop. He’s always surprised by how vicious Rupert can be, underneath that polished old-Etonian exterior. He wonders what Rupert actually thinks. Rupert’s own opinions are as slippery as fish. Howard doesn’t even know how he votes. Probably Tory, he thinks, given that he was at school with the Prime Minister. For all Howard knew, he had warmed the future PM’s toilet seat with his adolescent bum.

Rupert pours himself a glass of sparkling water from the cluster of bottles at the centre of the table. There is an outline of a green bubble imprinted on the glass. When did everything get so meaningless, Howard wonders? Water. The clear, quenching liquid that is a prerequisite of life itself. The oozing, tidal pull of seas and rivers. The glowering thundercloud. The birthing pool. The NGO-funded wells in African villages. The gleaming stainless-steel taps in First World kitchens. The beads of sweat strung across his brow like bunting. All of it – distilled now into the curved glass bottle in front of him and given the most anodyne, focus-grouped logo a wet-behind-the-ears management consultant could think of. A bubble. Emptiness itself.

‘So the first thing to do is make sure this Kizza woman doesn’t speak to anyone else about this,’ Rupert says, ‘and to that end, I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a confidentiality agreement. Assuming you’re willing to pay to make this problem go away, which I would highly recommend as the most effective strategy, then . . .’

‘I did it, Rupert,’ Howard says. He is still in his opera clothes: a dark grey suit and starched shirt, fastened at the cuffs with silver cufflinks given to him by his mother on the day he opened his first shop. He had come straight here after Rupert called, making some feeble excuse to Bradley Minchin as to why he had to miss the second half of
La Bohème
.

‘Urgent business, I’m afraid,’ he’d said, shaking hands and pretending not to notice the guests’ startled expressions. Claudia had given him a look that he secretly referred to as her ‘Lady Macbeth stare’ but he didn’t have time to apologise. He knew she’d assume the role of gracious hostess as soon as he left. She was good at that kind of thing.

Jocelyn had driven him to the office, knowing not to ask any questions. The chauffer had tuned into Magic FM for the duration of the journey. It was Howard’s favourite radio station but he never admitted it to anyone else – least of all Claudia, who prided herself on being a Radio 3 buff.

When they got to Paradiso HQ, situated in a characterless patch of land behind Paddington Station, Tracy Chapman was singing earnestly about the need for someone to forgive her. Howard felt tears prick the back of his eyes. What had he done?

Now, looking at Rupert, he feels the need to unburden himself.

‘I did what she said I did,’ Howard continues. ‘Didn’t even know her name. But I just felt . . . lonely, I suppose. Fucking hell, that sounds pathetic. But you know what? I thought . . . I thought there was part of her that wanted it too.’

He shakes his head. How grotesque he was. What a stupid old man.

‘Howard, I think you should stop right there,’ Rupert says, holding up one hand. His palm is strangely unwrinkled, like a baby’s. ‘That’s not an avenue you need to go down.’

‘What do you mean?’

Rupert rubs the back of his neck.

‘First of all, I don’t care whether it happened or not. It’s not my position to judge. It’s my job to deal with what happens next.’ There is a pause. ‘And, erm, how can I put this? I think it’s safe to say Beatrice Kizza was not a willing partner in this . . . this exchange.’

‘Well, OK, Rupe, but you weren’t there. Just between you and me, it’s not the first time I’ve done this sort of thing. It was a five-star hotel! There’s a kind of . . .’

‘She’s a lesbian.’

Howard stops short. For a moment, he can’t make sense of what he’s just heard. The words seem jumbled. He waits, allowing them to slot into place in his head until they form a coherent sentence. And then, feeling that his neck is too big for his collar, he undoes the top button of his shirt.

‘Fuck.’ The expletive hangs in the air between them, a swollen cloud on the brink of bursting.

‘Yes, quite,’ says Rupert, leafing through several bits of paper and rearranging them on the table. ‘In fact, we’re in the unusual position of having Beatrice Kizza’s sexuality legally verified by the UK authorities. She was given permanent refugee status’ – Rupert checks the left-hand corner of a typed sheet – ‘in 2009. It says here that homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and punishable by up to fourteen years in prison. So . . .’

Rupert lapses into silence.

‘Right. So despite what you said a minute ago, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in court.’

‘Listen, it’s not going to court. Her email says simply that she wants to meet and I’m pretty sure that if you make a generous – but appropriate – financial gesture there’ll be no more trouble.’

‘Let me see that—’ Howard leans across and snatches the email from Rupert’s hands. His thumb is still bleeding and, in his haste to read the email, he leaves a trace of blood on the page. He tries to rub it off but only succeeds in smearing it further.

‘Shit.’ Howard takes his spectacles out of his inside jacket pocket.

The email is brief and to the point. He is surprised at its polite, almost chatty, tone.

‘Dear Sir Howard,’ it goes.

 

You won’t remember me but we met in Room 423 of the Hotel Rotunda in Mayfair. It was Monday 4th May and I was the chambermaid who came to turn down your bed before dinner. My name is Beatrice Kizza. I don’t think you know my name because you never asked it.

As I was folding back the sheets on your bed, you came up behind me, took out your penis and pleasured yourself while holding on to me. I felt degraded and humiliated by your attentions. I also feared for my own safety.

I know that you are a rich and successful man. I would therefore like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss ways in which you could compensate me for the above incident.        

As yet, I have not told anyone else about what happened. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely, Beatrice Kizza.

 

Howard reads to the end, then folds the paper carefully into quarters. He sits for a while, staring into space, aware that Rupert is looking agitated.

‘“As yet”,’ Howard muses out loud. ‘What does that mean?’

His shame of a few moments ago has subsided. In its place is a more familiar sensation: the urgency of tackling a problem that needs to be solved.

Rupert shakes his head.

‘I’m not sure, Howard. But reading between the lines, I suspect she’s after money. Otherwise, surely, she would have gone to the police.’

Howard checks who the email was sent to:
[email protected]
. It’s a standard address available from the website, designed to fool customers into thinking they’ve got direct access to the chief executive. But of course, this email address doesn’t come to him. It goes to his PA. It goes to Tracy.

His heart lurches forward.

‘Has Tracy seen this?’

Rupert looks uncomfortable.

‘Yes, Howard. Yes, she has. It was Tracy who alerted me to this, um, this unfortunate, ah, situation. But listen, Howard, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. We’ve got this under control early enough and—’

‘What did Tracy say?’ His PA is a woman of unimpeachable morals who has shown him nothing but loyalty for over twenty years and who lives a quiet, dignified life in a terraced house in Epsom with her two cats, Mork and Mindy. For some reason, the idea of Tracy reading about his seedy behaviour in a hotel room on a day when he was meant to have been remembering his long-lost daughter makes Howard feel more wretched than anything Rupert has said up to this point.

‘She didn’t say anything.’

Howard slumps forward and places his head back in his hands. He stares at his darkened reflection in the shiny granite. A half-remembered flash of Ada as a toddler comes to him, wearing silken shoes and a bridesmaid’s dress, carrying her teddy by the ear, stumbling towards him with a naughty smile and shouting, ‘Dada, where ARE you?’

He starts to cry. Rupert, as Howard had known he would, pretends not to notice.

 

 

Esme

T
here are some people who love going home to visit their parents. Esme is not one of those people.

She’s never had a particularly easy relationship with her mother. It wasn’t overtly antagonistic – they were both far too well-trained in the arts of silence to give voice to any of their frustrations with each other – but it was tricky nonetheless. A conversation with her mother was an incremental battle of slights and disappointments, all overlain with a prickly sense of martyrdom. When Esme doesn’t visit, Mrs Reade will respond with heavy sighs on the other end of the phone line.

‘I know you’re very busy,’ she’ll say. ‘But it would be good to catch sight of you once in a blue moon.’

And then, when Esme does traipse halfway across the country to come and stay, taking off one of her precious Saturdays to do so (the
Tribune
only allows you two a year as holiday), her mother will invariably make pointed references to how nice it is to see her daughter throughout the course of the weekend.

‘It’s so rare I get the chance, darling,’ she will say. ‘I hardly ever clap eyes on you these days.’ Laughter. Meaningful pause. ‘I mustn’t be greedy. Something’s better than nothing, after all.’

A sad gaze out of the window, followed by an effortful attempt at a smile.

It’s the fact that she’s only got one of her parents still living that makes the whole exercise so much more intense. Esme has often wished her mother could meet someone new. The pressure of looking after her would be substantially lessened. But Mrs Reade has never shown much interest in romantic entanglement. She prefers, instead, to take a revisionist attitude to her first marriage.

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