A very generous portion of cold maggots in ketchup-flavoured mayo.
I can’t believe I ordered it again tonight. It was even worse than before.
Even though he was driving, Dad drank two pints of Harveys and ate a steak pie and beans and ordered a glass of red wine with it — a large glass. Mum had a small sherry and they had an argument about who would drive. She insisted she would drive back. The food arrived but I had to run out of the room and into the toilet, to get away from the nauseating atmosphere.
It was just so ridiculous. The whole day and evening.
Mum’s driving for a start. She drives like an old woman — well, she is an old woman, I suppose, forty-six is pretty ancient — but she drives like she’s a hundred and forty-six — at a steady forty-six. She never goes over fifty, not even on the motorway. She never overtakes anything, not even bicycles unless she can see ten miles of clear road ahead. She just sits behind them. Irritating me. But not Dad.
He even told her to slow down tonight! We were doing fifteen miles per hour behind a bicycle and he actually said to her, ‘Susan, slow down, you’re too close.’
My family.
My embarrassing family.
The things they say.
But this really made me laugh. Mum suddenly said she wanted to light a candle for Cassie, have it burning on the table with us during our meal. So my dad went up to the bar and asked if they had a candle they could light for his daughter. Ten minutes later the chef and two other members of staff appeared with a small cake, with a candle burning in the centre of it, and walked towards us, all smiling at me and singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
I’m still laughing about that, even though it’s nearly midnight and I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow that I’ve not even started yet.
But, honestly, I have to say, I’ve not felt so great in a long time!
34
Saturday 28 February
Six hours late. An hour out of JFK the flight had turned back because of a technical fault. They’d been deplaned and sat in the goddam terminal for over four hours before finally boarding again. They’d originally been scheduled to land at 7 a.m., now it was 1.30 p.m. Most of the day wasted.
Standing in the long, snaking queue for passport control at London’s Heathrow Airport, Tooth yawned. He could stay awake for as long as he needed, and sometimes, concealed in enemy territory back in his days in the military, that meant staying awake for forty-eight hours or longer, waiting for a target to appear. But right now he was looking forward to a few hours’ sleep in the room he had booked at the Waterfront Hotel on Brighton seafront. Maybe he was getting old.
He’d stayed awake in his cramped economy seat at the back of the plane for the entire flight, planning what he needed to do when he arrived.
Once the plane was taxiing at Heathrow and he was able to get an internet connection, he’d pulled up a street map of Brighton and Hove on his phone, reminding himself of the layout of the city. Looking up the street Judith Forshaw had put down on the hotel registration form.
Western Road.
Was it a real or false address? Whatever. The news stories about Walt Klein said his fiancée was from Brighton. A city of just 275,000 people. New York was a city of eight and a half million people and he never had a problem finding anyone there.
It would be a slam-dunk to find her in Brighton.
He slipped his passport out of his pocket and checked the details he’d filled in on his immigration form. His name, for the purposes of this visit, was Mike Hinton. He didn’t like travelling on false documents, they added a layer of risk that wasn’t usually worth it. But with his recent history in Sussex, there would be a marker on his real name for sure. Hinton. Mike Hinton. Accountant.
Ten minutes later the immigration officer studied his passport, then asked him to remove his cap. Tooth lifted up the baseball cap, which he had pulled down low over his face, and gave the woman officer a pleasant smile, whilst trying to mask his concern that she had recognized him.
She looked at his passport again, back at his face, back at his passport, then closed it and handed it back to him. ‘Have a nice stay in the UK, Mr Hinton,’ she said and smiled back.
Tooth stepped forward without replying and took the escalator down into the baggage reclaim hall, where he had his holdall to collect. He didn’t like to let it out of his sight, but some of its contents would have been confiscated if he’d tried to take it as carry-on baggage.
When it arrived he picked it up off the carousel and strolled across to the green exit channel, his laptop bag and holdall both over his shoulder. He always travelled light. It was easier to buy clothes wherever he was, and bin them before leaving. In fifteen years of globetrotting, he’d never owned a suitcase. And for most of his jobs, he was in and out of a place without even needing to unpack what little he had with him. New York had been an exception; he’d been stuck there far too long, because he’d had to deal with assholes.
He was on his own here. Just himself and a woman who thought she was smart. But she clearly wasn’t that smart. She’d been engaged to a crook with frozen assets, and now she’d stolen, clumsily, something she could never sell, and for which she was going to die.
Unpleasantly.
Tooth didn’t do pleasant deaths.
35
Sunday 1 March
‘A friend of mine told me, many years ago, that the secret of life is to know when it’s good,’ Rowley Carmichael said, his arm tightly round Jodie’s waist, wind whipping their hair about their faces. ‘And right now it’s really good. Incredibly good.’
She stared up into his eyes, her own sparkling brightly in the stern lights of the ship. As brightly as the stars above them, like gemstones in the velvety darkness of the warm night sky; like the diamond engagement ring on the black velvet pad of the ship’s jewellery store that he had bought her just a few hours earlier, the price of which she had pretended not to notice. Although she was already thinking of a couple of shops in Brighton’s Lanes where she would get a good price for it in a few weeks’ time. ‘I know it’s corny, my darling, but I feel like that couple on the Titanic — remember that film?’
‘Jack and Rose, weren’t they called?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.’
‘Weren’t they on the prow of the ship?’ he said.
‘Want to go up to the prow?’
‘Here’s fine!’ Smiling, he raised his flute of vintage Roederer Cristal and clinked it against hers. ‘Cheers, my darling. To the future unsinkable Mrs Rowley Carmichael!’
‘Cheers to my unsinkable husband-to-be!’ she said, sipping her drink, then standing on tiptoe to kiss him. A long, long, lingering kiss as they both leaned against the stern rail, whilst she struggled not to let her revulsion show. His mouth was slimy, and his tongue felt like a foraging rodent running amok inside her own mouth. Fifty feet below them the wake of the ship glistened with phosphorescence before fading into the darkness of the Indian Ocean.
‘I still can’t believe you agreed to marry me,’ he said. ‘Incredible! We’ve only known each other properly for a few days.’
‘I still can’t believe you asked me,’ she replied with a smile.
‘I couldn’t be happier, it wouldn’t be possible,’ he said.