Special Relationship (15 page)

"Great. Now let's go and see some art or something," he replied.

"What has got into you, Nick?" she asked.

"Just enjoying life," he said.

They walked through Tompkins Square Park and browsed the food market on its perimeter. Then they took a cab to the Museum of Modern Art, Katherine having heard they were showing Edvard Munch's The Scream.

When they reached it, she read aloud from the guide: "
A haunting image of a hairless figure on a bridge under a startling yellow and orange sky,
The Scream
has captured the imagination since 1893.

"This pastel version, from 1895, is one of four, and the only one owned by a private collector. The
painting was part of Munch's Frieze of Life series, which considered love, and death, and particularly human angst in its portrayal of human emotion."

She looked at the
image. "One hundred and twenty million dollars – that's what it sold for last year."

"Stretch even you, Nick."

"I could get credit."

"Not so the poor guy Munch. He was so penniless that the debt collectors came and took away his easel.

"The sister he loved died at fifteen; he battled alcoholism and madness, but on the upside he had a string of gorgeous models that used to visit until late in his life. And not, apparently, just to model."

"Is there anything you don't know, Katherine?"

"I don't know what it means, Nick."

"The painting?"

"Yeah, I guess, and everything else, I suppose," looking at him.

She turned back to the pastel.

"It's ironic to think that without him having to endure a life of misery and madness the world wouldn't have seen The Scream.

"Maybe people are at their most creative when they are unhappy, and most troubled," she said, thinking aloud.

Edvard Munch was undoubtedly a troubled man, thought Nick as they viewed more of his paintings from the exhibition. The Weeping Nude was a painting he found compelling. He wondered why the sobbing, naked girl on the bed was so grieved. And for some reason, it reminded him of Alex. What had gone on in her past?

"Come on, let's go back to mine or the Library and we'll watch telly or I'll whip your arse at backgammon once again," Nick said.

"It's only because you keep throwing doubles. I'm sure you are using dodgy dice."

They walked back to the apartment, collecting
paninis from a deli on the way.

After looking behind her for the minder who usually followed, but who she hadn't spotted all day, Nick explained to Katherine that he'd been given the day off.

She questioned his current carefree attitude to his security. "One day we'll get your finger in the post and you will be in a cellar somewhere wishing you hadn't been so lax," she admonished him.

"And what will you do with my finger, same as the other night?" he asked.

"Nick!" she exclaimed, punching his arm hard enough to bruise.

"Ouch!" he laughed.

"You have a foul mouth and you deserved it, and if you beat me at backgammon I will punch you again." He did beat her at backgammon seven-four but she didn't carry out her threat and they sat down to read the papers.

"Bankers certainly are public enemy number one," she said, reading The Sunday Times on her iPad.

"Well, just below child molesters, yes.

"They were just gambling more than they should have been because they thought they were infallible and that we were in an era of never-ending prosperity and rising house prices and everything.

"Few saw the end of the boom, least of all the fucking politicians, who were behaving so high and mighty despite the fact that most of them had been fiddling their expenses for years.”

"Give me a hug, poor Mr unjustly-berated banker," she giggled.

Just as he was about to take her in his arms her mobile sounded.

"Oh, fuck, it's Jonathan. Might be Cheng," she said
, pressing the answer button, then putting a finger to her lip to warn Nick to stay quiet.

"Everything all right?" she asked.

Nick couldn't hear Jonathan's reply but clearly all was well as he observed Katherine's reaction.

"Oh great, as long as he's good," she said.

"What time is it there?" she asked looking at her watch.

"No, I'm at Nick's at present, we've just got back from meetings and stuff.

"Stopped off for a coffee and some business things and I'm off to the hotel soon."

Until now, she hadn't even registered in her own mind that she'd been unfaithful to her husband but lying to him wasn't difficult. And, truth be told, she wasn't much bothered whether or not he found out that she'd slept with her boss. She was sure he would be far from distraught if she told him the truth there and then.

"Yep, we leave New York Wednesday afternoon, so early hours Thursday your time."

"OK, you too," she said, pressing the 'end call' button.

"My mum's sill got Cheng and she'll take him to school and pick him up for the rest of the week," she told Nick. "He – Cheng – is well and says he is 'counting numbers' till I get back. Jonathan calling me at two in the morning his time is a bit perplexing, though," she added.

"Maybe he just couldn't sleep. Or he can't count numbers," Nick suggested.

She smiled at him.

Alex had decided to miss the cinema the night before after Kerry had called to say she couldn't make it. Instead she'd cleaned both herself and the flat and she felt a whole lot better for it.

In the early hours she finally gave into temptation and turned on her main phone and looked at her missed calls, of which two were from Tavis who she was supposed to be meeting the next day. He'd left no voice mail. She'd call him in the morning.

Then, among the texts received since she switched herself off from most of the outside world, there was one from Nick which was now a couple of days old.

"Won't even be eleven," she thought, and typed out her reply: "Enjoyed lunch too. Hope cheesecake queue is abating." Kiss or not? she thought and added the 'x' before pressing the 'send' button.

Once it had gone she scrolled through the other messages and was relieved to see none from the cryptic texter who was warning her off Nick
Hensen.

"Nick, what was it about Alex's photo that sort
of enticed you so much? She is very pretty no doubt but in your line of work it's not as if you haven't seen similar lookers before, Olivia included. Agreed, she might be a bit, err, volatile.."

"
Liv definitely is volatile," he said as the long-awaited text reply from Alex finally arrived. He knew it was her by the unique tone he had allocated to her calls and messages but out of politeness to Katherine he resisted the urge to look at it.

"It wasn't just the photo but the whole file. She was, still is, a mystery, but I'm enticed by that. From the moment I read what our people were saying about her, that she wasn't who she said she is and that they couldn't trace her and that they were worried about her, I just became a bit spellbound.

"And when I met her, first time at the lift, well..."

"You were hooked?"

"I guess so," he replied.

"But not so hooked that you didn't sleep with me a week later?"

It was a good question and one which he had difficulty answering.

"Katherine, I never thought of you as a lover, I don't know why, but I just saw you as my very efficient assistant.
..well, you are more than an assistant, my deputy. Maybe you are just too good at your job...”

"Which is why we should let things settle, so I'm going to the Library to see if their notable book collection includes one on backgammon theory, and I will see you in the morning. Office at ten."

She kissed him on the cheek, grabbed some orange juice from the fridge – "I'm stealing this" and left him with the advice to swot up on the Jack Wyatt account.

Instead, after she'd left, he checked Alex's text message.

Alex apologised to
Tavis for missing his calls over the weekend and also that she had to cancel their Soho trip because, she lied, they had the chance of a new contract and that the client was asking for more details.

She felt better doing so by voice than text and, although she wanted to, she didn't even ask after Nick, so to ensure that
Tavis was getting due attention. "We'll definitely do it soon," she promised.

Tavis
said it was no problem and that he was still going to laze around for the day anyway. "Give me a call if you get half an hour," he said.

For Nick, the rest of the trip couldn't end quickly enough. By Tuesday, he was working out the number of hours to the return flight and he could have been in any office in the world as he talked
figures with the likes of Jack Wyatt and the gold investor whose name he had difficulty remembering.

"We're at a pivotal point for gold, I'm sure," Nick told him. "If we go higher here, then I think we could be in another sustained bull run. But any weakness and it could signal a major change and the run that we've seen - since 2006 - could be at an end. So I think we are just going to have to wait for the time being and see which way the big boys start betting."

What he was really telling the client, he knew, was that if the price went up it might continue going up and if went down it might continue going down. But the client seemed happy with the forecast, shook his hand and said how pleased he was with his investment in the fund.

"And remind me, your own business, is what?" he asked.

"Online porn."

For fuck's sake, Nick thought as he left.

"Katherine, please come in here," he shouted after Michael Harris had left not only his office but the building. "Who's next?" he asked.

"Tyler Morris, half an hour."

"Please can we go to see a show or something afterwards."

"Can't, I'm meeting a girlfriend for dinner, sorry," she said flatly.

"You are my assistant and I thought the job description included organising my working life and also post-work entertainment," he teased her.

"You haven't been entertained?" she asked, lowering her voice, "A blow job, some good straight sex, a trip to Coney Island and an educational class in the world's highest quality art. No pleasing some people."

She was joking with him, surely, but he couldn't be sure as her ebullience of the last couple of days had gone. He looked at her but she wasn't smiling.

He was nonplussed.

"I've had a great time Kath, would you do me a favour and get the number for Kants, Kansies or Kats or whatever it is called." She left and came back a couple of minutes later. "Katz's," she said handing him a piece of scrap paper with the number scribbled down.

"Oh, and if it's cheesecake you are ordering, you will need to eat it before you go."

"Come back Kath!" he said when he had taken in what she had said and she was almost out of the door.

"What do you mean?"

"The UK only allows the importation of dairy products from other European Union nations. Last time I looked the US wasn't in the EU," she smiled sarcastically.

"You are fucking joking?"

She didn't answer, just looked at him.

"But we've got private flights," he said.

"We still go through customs, as you know." she answered.

He called Katz's and asked for them to have ready six full-sized blueberry cheesecakes very fresh for Wednesday lunchtime. He'd decided on strength in numbers. Even if customs found one they might not find them all.

He couldn't help but press the intercom button for Katherine. He really needed to know whether the teasing and jesting they had clearly enjoyed over the weekend was, for some reason, now no longer part of their relationship, apparently killed in an instant by Katherine for reasons he didn't know.

"Hi Nick," she said.

In normal circumstances it would be hard not to laugh, but this time he was worried that for some reason she wouldn't see the funny side, so he was easily able to restrain himself. "Hi Katherine, before I forget. I've ordered six blueberry cheesecakes from Katz's." He waited for some reaction – but there was none - and went for broke, "Would you call them and arrange payment."

"Are you serious?" she asked flatly.

"Why not?" he said.

What had happened to her. Why hadn't she told him just to "fuck off", with a laugh on her face as she would have done the day before?

At the meeting with Tyler Morris the investor inquired about the possibility of increasing his stake in Hensen Fund Management, and Nick promised he'd look into it and maybe he should come to London in a couple of weeks when "the bean counters have got some numbers together.”

Tyler was one of Nick's more likeable business associates. He had just turned 50 and to his credit was still with his childhood sweetheart who was pregnant with twins when he married her in impoverished circumstances 30 years earlier.