Paradise City (8 page)

‘Girls had more meat on them in those days,’ she is fond of saying. ‘No skinny minnies. And I was naturally slender so my agency kept telling me, “Lilian,” they said, “You’ve got to try and put some weight
on
, dear.” I mean, can you
imagine
, darling, can you?’

Lilian would give a light spray of laughter while Esme would shake her head dutifully. ‘No, Mum, no I can’t.’

There is a black-and-white newspaper clipping of Lilian as Miss Whitehall in a shockingly short houndstooth dress standing outside Big Ben, posing as if her life depended on it. Lilian is prone to fishing it out from a conveniently placed scrapbook any time she wants to make her daughter feel inadequate.

Esme thinks of it now as she hops on a bus to Hyde Park Corner, wincing as the skin on the back of her ankle catches against the back of her high-heeled shoe. Her mother, needless to say, swears by high heels but the soles of Esme’s feet are already prickling with heat. She hopes she won’t have to walk too far at the other end.

But by the time she makes it to the Dorchester – which is further up Park Lane than she had remembered – she is already five minutes late. Her ankles are red-raw, her toes uncomfortably squashed. A silver-haired Frenchman greets her at the door of the restaurant, eyeing her up and down as if she is a piece of second-hand furniture, before suavely sashaying across the plush carpet, leading her past a shimmering pillar of glass that falls from the ceiling like a divine shower curtain and then on to a corner table at which Sir Howard and his PR man, Rupert, are already seated.

‘Shit,’ Esme says under her breath. Turning up late is not a good way to start the Howard Pink charm offensive.

‘Sir Howard,’ she says, with as much confidence as she can muster. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’ She extends her arm. Sir Howard tries to stand but only gets three-quarters of the way out of his chair before his considerable stomach makes it impossible for him to continue without toppling over. He shakes her hand. His palm is cool and surprisingly smooth. A floral scent wafts from his open-necked shirt and she recognises it instantly as Roger & Gallet soap, of the kind once used by her grandmother.

‘You’re here now, I suppose,’ Sir Howard says, unsmiling. She can sense displeasure radiating from him.

Rupert leans towards her and introduces himself. ‘Good of you to come, Esme,’ he says, as though she is doing them a tremendous favour. He is well-spoken and conventionally handsome, like one of those men in the Gillette adverts. He looks much younger than Dave even though she knows they are contemporaries. She wouldn’t imagine the two of them as friends. ‘Dave said you’re one of his star reporters,’ Rupert continues, motioning to her seat. ‘I must say, I thought you’d be older. It’s a sign of age, isn’t it, when policemen and doctors start seeming like children . . .’

Esme notices Sir Howard staring fixedly at a point in the mid-distance throughout Rupert’s oleaginous patter. In person, the Fash Attack millionaire looks both smaller and more imposing than his photographs would lead you to believe. His face is dominated by a bulbous nose, framed by a receding hairline that is emphasised by a copious amount of gel, employed to slick the few remaining follicular wisps severely backwards. He is not wearing a tie and the collar of his white shirt lies open to reveal a sprouting of dark chest hair. For a titan of industry, he seems remarkably unintimidating but then she spots his eyes: brown and pinprick sharp, the pupils darting this way and that, trailing the waiters, taking in the other customers, analysing everything that comes into his field of vision. He is leaning his head against one perfectly manicured hand, the tips of his fingers so close to his nose he might be smelling them. He appears almost entirely uninterested in her.

‘I’ve been at the paper for eighteen months,’ Esme is saying as a waiter unfolds her napkin and casts it out over her knees. ‘Sir Howard, it’s very kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule,’ she adds, trying to get his attention. She is not used to middle-aged men disregarding her so flagrantly.

Sir Howard turns his head, lizard-like. His voice, when he speaks, is pointedly quiet.

‘I was led to believe you were going to apologise,’ he says.

Esme flushes. ‘Oh, yes, well, of course, Sir Howard. We – I mean, the paper – are really incredibly sorry for the oversight . . .’

Rupert waves her apology away with a flap of the hand. ‘It’s quite all right. I’ve explained to Sir Howard that it was the picture desk who messed up. Dave tells me it won’t happen again.’

‘It won’t,’ says Esme, although she has absolutely no way of ensuring this.

‘I hate that fucking picture,’ Sir Howard says, launching the swear word across the table just as the waiter arrives bearing three identical egg-shaped bowls.

‘To start the meal, we present to you an amuse-bouche of shrimp and lobster ravioli with a ginger consommé.’

There is a slight pause.

‘Well get on with it then,’ says Howard. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

The waiter looks suitably apologetic but then takes a small age pouring the consommé into each of their dishes from individual white jugs. Once this is done, he stands back for a moment as if awaiting plaudits for the culinary genius on show. When none is forthcoming, he gives a simpering smile, bows and clasps his hands together.

‘
Bon appétit
,’ the waiter says, retreating backwards like a royal footman.

‘Christ,’ says Howard. ‘I thought we’d never get rid of him.’

Esme laughs. He looks at her, his eyes suddenly twinkling.

‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Esme.’

‘Are you Scottish?’

‘No, my Dad was.’

‘Was?’ Howard fires back.

‘Yes, he died when I was eight.’

He puts his spoon down and seems genuinely taken aback. Esme is used to all sorts of reactions when she tells strangers: shocked intakes of breath, sympathetic squeezes of the arm, patronising assurances that ‘time’s a great healer’ but, perhaps because he’s had to deal with his own loss, Howard’s appears oddly sincere.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally.

Rupert grimaces and wrinkles his brow, to show that he is terribly sorry too.

‘It’s all right. It was a long time ago.’

‘You never get over something like that,’ Howard says. ‘How did he die?’ he asks bluntly.

‘Drink driving.’

‘Christ. Did they catch the bastard?’

‘They didn’t need to. My father was the drunk driver.’

Howard sits motionless, a spoonful of soup hovering dangerously over the tablecloth at a midway point between bowl and mouth.

She tries not to think of her father too much but now, having mentioned his death without exactly wanting to, broken fragments of an unasked-for memory coalesce in her mind, each tiny element shooting towards a central point like a series of magnetic filings. The image is of Esme, standing at the threshold to her parents’ bedroom when she was eight years old. She is watching, frightened, as her mother kneels in front of the bed and clutches at her hair, sobbing as she grabs fistfuls and pulls at it until small piles of ash-blonde litter the sheepskin rug beneath her knees.

‘Mummy?’ she says, this child version of herself.

Her mother stops crying, the effort of it causing her to hiccough. She turns her ravaged face towards Esme and tries to smile, her lips rubbed raw of lipstick, her cheeks veined with black, and it is this – the strangeness of her half-tragic, half-comic face, the disarray of her make-up – that affects her daughter most of all, that will stick with Esme for years.

Her memories of her father are more indistinct. A strong arm, lifting her onto his shoulders. A loud expressive laugh. Terror mingled with affection in his presence. A knowledge, even at that young age, that her father was good-looking, a charmer, a man others liked to be around.

At the time of his death, her brother Robbie was too young to know what had happened. For a few years after the police knocked on their door one drizzle-dark November night, interrupting
Jim’ll Fix It
, Robbie kept asking her what their father was like and she would try to answer as truthfully as she could.

‘He was fun,’ she said. ‘He told good stories. He made Mummy laugh.’

But, looking back, Esme is not sure, any more, how much of what she told Robbie was her true recollection and how much of what she remembers was a story she told herself from faded photographs, a desire to make the best bits real by saying them out loud. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if it matters.

Esme smiles brightly, breaks off a lump of bread from the warm roll on her side-plate and butters it, re-positioning the knife in a precise, straight line. She taps the knife handle three times with her index finger. The number three, she has convinced herself, has mysterious talismanic qualities that keep her safe.

Howard has finished his soup. Rupert coughs drily and conversation is temporarily suspended. In the uncomfortable semibreve of silence that follows, it is Howard who speaks first.

‘You’ve read about my daughter, I suppose?’

Esme nods. She glances anxiously at Rupert who had made it abundantly clear on the phone that she was ‘on no account whatsoever’ to mention Ada Pink’s disappearance over lunch. But of course, she has read the press cuttings, has seen the smudged newsprint image of Ada Pink’s features staring out at her from bygone front pages: the same passport photo used again and again, depicting an unsmiling, frail-looking girl with hollow cheeks, a prominent brow and hair scraped back like a ballerina.

Esme had been in her first year at university when Ada Pink disappeared and the story of her vanishing had seemed little more than a backdrop to diluted Red Bull cocktails and pyjama-themed pub crawls. But now, meeting Ada Pink’s father, she is struck by the force of his unhappiness. After all these years, she thinks, his devastation is fresh as new snow.

She fiddles with the corner of her napkin.

‘She’d be about your age by now,’ he carries on. ‘Ada. That was her name.’ A pause. ‘Or is. I’m never sure what tense to talk in.’

He gives a bark of bitter laughter, shattering the strange atmosphere that has settled around the table. She wonders whether to say something about how sorry she is but, at the same time, doesn’t want to sound bogus. She has, after all, only just met him. She’s a journalist, not a friend.

‘Well, I suggest—’ Rupert starts, but Howard interrupts him. His gaze is glittery, unfocused; his smile twisted.

‘Let’s order some plonk, shall we, Esme?’ he says, picking up the heavy bound wine list. ‘Toast absent friends.’

She nods her assent, surprised, all at once, to find she has the beginning of tears in her eyes.

Over a starter of artfully arranged radishes and crisp lettuce leaves that costs more than anyone could reasonably have anticipated, an equilibrium of sorts is established. Howard, warmed up by a full-bodied Pauillac (he had been politely conscious of the fact that the
Tribune
was paying), allows himself to relax. He regales Esme with riotous stories about famous people he has met, including the time he hosted Elizabeth Taylor on his private yacht and she lost one of her diamonds in the shower.

She glances across the table at Rupert, wondering if they are teasing her for sport, but he appears perfectly relaxed. He catches her looking and grins wolfishly, as if implying he’s heard every one of these anecdotes a thousand times before. Rupert really is very handsome, albeit in a rather boring way: the male equivalent of a neatly ironed shirt. But there’s something about him she can’t quite ignore, as if his very blandness poses a challenge. She wonders what he’s like in bed. Filthy, she imagines. Probably has a thing about spanking.

At the end of the meal, they order coffee. It comes in pretty china cups. Sir Howard picks out three lumpen brown sugar cubes with his fingers and drops them in his coffee, causing a small splash of liquid onto the tablecloth.

‘Well, Esme, I don’t mind saying that I wasn’t looking forward to this lunch. Thought Rupert was a bloody idiot for setting it up.’

Esme stirs in her milk. She has already realised Sir Howard is the kind of man who doesn’t want to be interrupted in full flow.

‘But I’m glad to have met you, sweetheart.’

She swallows her indignation. With men like Sir Howard, you just had to go with it. That was how you got the best contacts. Journalism taught you all sexism was relative.

He leans over and pats her hand paternally.

‘We should be going,’ Rupert says. ‘We’re already late for our 2.30.’

‘Sure, sure,’ Howard replies, pushing back his chair. ‘Rupe, can you sort out a Fash Attack discount card for this young lady?’

‘Oh, really, there’s no need,’ Esme says, without meaning it.

‘Nonsense. You’ve given me a couple of hours’ diversion in the midst of an otherwise painful day of shareholder meetings and buying concerns,’ he says jovially. ‘It’s the least I can do. Besides, it’s all part of bolstering our relations with the press.’ He wags his finger at her. ‘No more unflattering photos, eh? Are we agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

He buttons up his jacket, which sits tightly over his waistband, then leans in to kiss her on both cheeks.