The Vow (7 page)

But things didn’t go quite as he had hoped. As an illegal immigrant his employment opportunities were very limited and although his size and menacing appearance would have afforded him lucrative work for the men who ran the seedy world of protection, drugs and prostitution, this was not at all what he had in mind. He wasn’t too sure exactly what he did have in mind, but it certainly wasn’t washing dishes in the hot, crowded and noisy kitchen of a
West End hotel that was happy to employ those without work permits and pay them a pittance. This was however where he found himself in the autumn of the year Marcus Delacroix married Helena Langham. Disillusioned and frustrated, the only bright spot in his life was the community sports centre where he spent most of his free time working out in the gym and kickboxing with anyone who had the guts to get in the ring with him.

That
grey and blowy day in mid-October had not been a good one so far for Saule. The hotel kitchen had been particularly busy over lunch, he had slipped on an area of wet floor breaking a dozen plates earning himself a hail of abuse from the scrawny little sous chef who enjoyed baiting the big man, safe in the knowledge he needed the job too much to retaliate.

When the doors of the staff lift opened onto the underground parking area, Saule took in the situation at a glance. A well dressed middle-aged woman was pinned to the side of her car by a teenage thug with a knife in his hand. A second older man was emptying the contents of her handbag onto the ground. Dropping the sacks of kitchen rubbish he was carrying Saule was on top of them before anyone was really aware of his arrival. All of his suppressed fury spilled out, the adrenalin flowed and he did what he did best; kick arse.

Suddenly realising what was happening the youth with the knife let go of the woman and lunged at the enormous black man who had appeared from nowhere. He badly mistimed his thrust with the weapon; Saule simply sidestepped it, grabbed his wrist and bent it back. The crack of the bone was audible to them all. The mugger sank to his knees screaming with pain only to be kicked hard in the ribs by the biggest Nike trainer he had ever seen. He’d already had enough, he made no attempt to fight back just curled himself into the foetal position and lay there groaning.

Saule turned his attention to the second man who looked uncertainly at his injured mate and then at the exit, but before he could make a run for it Saule was on him. A ferocious kidney punch sent him staggering against a car, the back of his head was grabbed and his face smashed into its bonnet.

As Saule prepared to repeat the manoeuvre the woman, seeing the already bloody face, shouted, ‘Stop! Please don’t do it again or I think I’ll be sick.’

Saule tossed the man onto the floor next to his partner giving him a hefty kick for good measure. He turned to the woman and asked,
‘Are you ok, lady?’

She was looking rather pale but managed a weak smile and replied,
‘Yes, yes I’m fine. Thank you, thank you so much. What do we do now?’

‘
Well, I could kill them both’.

Seeing her horrified expression his face split into a huge grin and he told her,
‘Only joking. Do you want to involve the police?’

She considered the consequences of that and answered,
‘No, not really, and I think you’ve given them more punishment than the courts are ever likely to.’

Saule nodded, picking them both up by the scruff of the neck, one in each of his huge hands he told them,
‘Get out of here while you’re still able and if I ever see either of you again I’ll do more than break a few bones.’

The two men looked at one another and set off for the car park exit as fast as their bruised and bleeding bodies would carry them.

The woman who had now regained her composure held out her hand to Saule and told him, ‘My name is Helena Delacroix and I can’t tell you how pleased I am to make your acquaintance Mr…?’

He took her tiny hand in his as he replied,
‘Saule, it’s just Saule.’

‘
Well, Saule, I know my husband is going to want to thank you in some way for what you’ve done, how can he contact you?’

‘
He doesn’t need to thank me, it was a pleasure.’

From watching him,
Helena already knew he had enjoyed himself. Marcus is really going to like this young man she thought. She insisted and finally he told her, ‘I work in the kitchen here, ten until three, six to midnight, seven days a week.’

Saule hadn’t really expected to hear anymore, but late the next afternoon one of the receptionists at the sports centre stuck her head around the gym door to tell him someone was asking for him at the front desk. He was surprised when the well dressed young guy, only a few years older than himself, introduced himself as Marcus Delacroix,
Helena’s husband.

They shook hands and Saule asked,
‘How did you find me?’

‘
I asked around,’ replied Marcus. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’

Within a month Marcus ha
d called in a couple of favours. Saule had an Honourable Discharge from the Nigerian army and was no longer an illegal immigrant. He packed in his job at the hotel, pausing only to carry the sous chef downstairs and deposit him head first into a swill bin. He moved his few possessions into the flat above the coach house at the Delacroix’s home and started a new career as Marcus’s chauffeur and general factotum. He enjoyed driving the beautiful cars Marcus always had, but there were other aspects of his work for the already ruthless young businessman which allowed full rein to his more unusual talents. Theirs was a relationship built on trust and loyalty that had not foundered in more than twenty years.

~

Amelia was sitting on a low wall outside the station as Lucy emerged into the bright sunshine. Skipping over to her Lucy engulfed her mother in a bear hug.

‘
Oh it’s so good to see you, Mum! You look great, I like the new hair.’

The two women had not seen each other since February when Amelia had accompanied James to a conference in Paris and Lucy had caught the TGV up to spend a couple of days with them. No one seeing them together could have doubte
d they were mother and daughter; it was from Amelia that Lucy had inherited her high cheekbones and near black hair. At fifty-two she was still a woman who turned heads, a source of satisfaction to both her and Lucy who hoped she too would age that well. The new haircut was a sharp jaw length bob that suited her and there was not a grey hair to be seen, Amelia would never have allowed that. Dressed today in cream linen trousers and a heavily embroidered Indian cotton top, the first Mrs Weston looked considerably younger than her ex-husband. Careful about diet, a very moderate drinker and a regular visitor to the local gym, she deplored Kit’s freefall into middle-age, physically anyway, as it seemed unlikely that he was ever actually going to grow up mentally. She regularly told him all this, only too well aware she was wasting her breath. Ever had it been so.

Looking back Amelia couldn’t quite remember what had possessed her to marry Kit. At twenty-two, she was nearly half way through her Articles when he blew into her life and turned it upside down. She had kept her head down at
Cambridge, worked hard and got a First. She hadn’t drunk, smoked, done drugs or slept around. Her friends were the quiet studious types whose idea of a wild night out was sitting in the corner of the Students’ Union nursing half a cider.

Her mother was well connected and through her Amelia was offered Articles at an old and well respected firm of solicitors in the City. She was doing well there and the right people were starting to notice her. Her life was organised and tidy, right down to her knickers drawer whose sensible cotton contents were day and colour coded.

The young Kit Weston was not a tidy person nor was his life in any way orderly. With his uniform of denim so faded it didn’t look as if it would survive another wash and tee-shirts which would never be quite white again, he was very different to the suited and booted young solicitors Amelia usually dated. And then there was the ponytail half way down his back and the gold earring. Like the daughter he was soon to father, Kit wasn’t good-looking in the traditional way but he was very attractive and people, particularly women, were drawn to him.

Kit had known since he was a child that he was going to be a photographer. At ten, he had been bought his first camera and was soon winning the junior section of photographic competitions, by his early teens he
successfully took on the adults and at sixteen was regularly selling his work to newspapers and magazines. It wasn’t just his technical skills which were impressive, his creativeness and sympathy for his subjects brought something unique to his pictures. Try as they might his parents could not persuade him to continue his education beyond A levels, and not long after his eighteenth birthday, armed with the minimum of personal items and the maximum photographic gear, he set off around the world. He travelled for three years seeing life and people at their best and their worst. He saw beauty and squalor, hope and desperation, war and peace. The images he sent back to an agent in London were original, thought provoking and sought after. By the time he returned to England his reputation was established and despite his youth work poured in.

Amelia met him at the house of a mutual friend. An unlikely couple they became inseparable immediately, were married within the year and parents by the end of the next. Lucy’s arrival had been a bit of a surprise but not an unwelcome one. Amelia took a career break and they moved out of
London to a charming if ramshackle cottage in the Essex countryside. They were a happy little family, both of them delighting in their treasured and sunny natured little daughter. Their careers prospered. Kit’s work received international acclaim, and returning to work when Lucy was a toddler, Amelia rose to partner in a big mixed practice. The cottage was renovated and extended, and if over the years they found they had less and less to say to each other there was always Lucy to talk about. Kit’s infidelities, meaningless to him, were conducted at a distance and with enough discretion never to come to Amelia’s attention.

From the outside they seemed the perfect couple. But when Amelia met the architect James Bradshawe during a planning enquiry she was working on, and was immediately attracted to him, she had been forced to examine her marriage. She found that after twelve years it was empty.

One evening as they sat on after a late supper, Lucy tucked up in bed, she turned to her husband and said, ‘Kit, I think we need to talk.’

He smiled at her sadly and answered,
‘Yes, I suppose we do.’

He poured them more wine and they sat late into the night thrashing out the details of a divorce they were determined to keep amicable and cause the eleven-year-old Lucy as little upset as possible. Naturally distraught at the outset, young Lucy soon realised that things hadn’t really changed all that much. She was used to her father being away working so often it now seemed she actually saw more of him, and he was even more inclined to spoil her when they were together. Staying with him in his new flat in
London gave her access to all sorts of treats in the capital and as she was allowed regularly to take Amy with her, she was perfectly content with the new arrangements.

By the time two years later when within a few months of each other both her parents remarried, she was fully sensible of the advantages of having two sets of adults trying to keep her happy. She had become very fond of the easygoing James, and Catherine made such an effort to make friends with the teenager that Lucy couldn’t help but like her father’s exuberant new wife. That over the years Kit did not go on to have any more children pleased her. She was prepared to share him with his new wives, but a half sister or brother would have been a very different thing.

It was only a short drive to the small picturesque village where Amelia lived with her second husband. James had treated the traditional black weather boarded barn with his customary sympathy and skill and it had emerged as a spacious and stylish home standing in a two-acre garden which was the couple’s passion. Lucy had never lived here but loved to visit, and sharing her mother’s love for plants enjoyed watching the garden evolve.

As they pulled into the drive, the short wiry figure of her stepfather appeared from the side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow and he waved a greeting.

‘Hi, Lucy,’ he called out. ‘Good to see you. I’ll just empty this and I’ll be with you. Your mum has made a jug of her fruit punch and I don’t know about you but I’m gasping for a drink.’

He wiped his perspiring forehead on his sleeve and set off towards the compost heap. Lucy followed Amelia into the cool of the house. In the kitchen she paused by an old easy chair covered with a tangle of tabby and ginger legs and tails to stroke the three cats all curled up together.

‘Hello, you lot, having a busy day again I see.’ To her mother she remarked, ‘Marcus has a cat, his name is Silk.’

‘
Well, that’s a good sign anyway, not too much wrong with a man who likes cats,’ Amelia replied lightly.

‘
I’m not sure how much he actually likes him, he was his wife’s. Marcus doesn’t talk much about her, it’s painful I suppose. Do you know anything about her, Mum?’

Amelia paused whilst preparing the glasses for the fruit punch, thought for a moment and then said,
‘Not much really. Her maiden name was Langham and she inherited a large but ailing business from her father. Marcus took over the running of it when they married and turned it in to what it is today. She was a good fifteen or so years older than him.’