She sat back in her chair, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. She felt better off-loading her problems to Phil, just talking to him made things simpler, but it was all too much for her at the moment; her nerves were too raw.
‘Can we do this tomorrow?’ she asked, surprising herself.
‘Sure.’
‘It’s just there’s been so much going on, I think I need to veg out this evening.’
Phil laughed. ‘You, veg out?’
‘I mean it. Let’s watch a film or something.’
‘I’m not entirely sure you’ll be impressed with my DVD collection, ’ he said, opening the TV cabinet where they were all neatly stacked up. Taking her wine, Sasha walked across to flick through them.
‘The Hundred Greatest Rugby Tries,’ she read, pulling a face. ‘The Sylvester Stallone collection . . .Die Hard . . . Crank 2 . . . Well, it’s nice to see that you’re in touch with your feminine side, Bettany.’
She walked across to a leather sofa and sat down, curling her legs under her. ‘OK, forget the DVD,’ she said. ‘Let’s just finish the bottle of wine and you can tell me about Australia. Why did you leave, or is that a stupid question?’
‘Actually, I haven’t really left,’ said Philip, sitting at the other end of the sofa. ‘Lily and her mum are still out there, so I couldn’t move back to London permanently. This job is just a twelve-month secondment, so I’ll be going back to Sydney next April.’
Sasha tried to hide her disappointment. Philip had never been the one who excited her; he had always been her partner, co-conspirator, friend. He’d believed in her when everyone else thought she was an airhead fashionista unable to run anything except a bubble bath. And a decade ago she’d been so certain he wasn’t right for her. Too dull. Too steady. But now? What was wrong with someone who treated you with respect, who knew you inside out, good bits and bad, and loved you still? She felt a stinging sense of regret.
‘I’m so sorry about the way things ended between us,’ she said softly.
Philip shrugged. ‘I loved you and you hurt me. But when I eventually heard the whispers about your relationship with Robert I knew there was no point being with you when you just wanted to be with someone else. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry how it ended with Robert. The accident, I mean.’
‘Thank you, but you didn’t have to say that. Other men would have secretly gloated.’
‘Gloated? How could you gloat that someone got killed?’
‘What I mean is that not everyone has as much dignity and decency as you.’
Tension crackled between them and, unable to stand it any longer, she reached out to touch him, but Philip pulled away.
‘That’s not why I invited you here this weekend.’
‘I know,’ she said, her eyes beginning to glisten.
‘Oh Sasha ...’ he said, taking her hand and kissing her fingers gently. It felt so good, so right. She gave a nervous little laugh.
‘I feel like a teenager snogging on my parents’ sofa,’ she said.
Philip smiled. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘why don’t we take this upstairs to bed?’
74
He couldn’t sleep. How could he? Nobody could rest with such a weight hanging over their head. Miles Ashford turned over and looked at the red digital numbers of his bedside clock: 3.45 a.m. He had taken a Xanax at midnight; it hadn’t even made him drowsy. Had it been only six hours since his attorney Michael Marshall had called, telling him that a detective superintendent from the Royal Bahamas Police Force wanted to question him?
Miles sat up and reached for his cigarettes, hoping it would do something to relieve the anxiety – an emotion he was unused t
o. A man as successful as Miles Ashford had not got where he was today without being able to handle extreme pressure; he just didn’t get rattled. Not when his $500 million residential project had to be shelved in Dubai last year. Not when the banks were breathing down his neck after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Not even when he had run into a Kosovan gangster when he had tried to buy a series of brothels in London’s Soho. All those things were just setbacks, concerns or irritations. This . . . well, this was different.
He swung his legs off the bed and reached for his navy silk robe, pulling it tightly around his body before walking through to his study. It was Miles’ favourite room in his Fifth Avenue duplex, with a huge bay window that looked out on to Central Park. After dark, it resembled a black hole in the heart of the city. Whoever coined the expression ‘the dead of night’ was thinking of 3.45 a.m. in NYC. Even in the city that never sleeps, this sliver of time after the party people had gone to bed and the early risers – the market traders, the workaholic Wall Street tycoons – had not yet started their day was a moment that was eerie and still.
Miles didn’t turn on the light, content to just gaze out on to the city, letting the darkness and silence soothe him. He closed his eyes and immediately felt himself transported back to the island. For a second, his memory of that night was so clear he could almost smell the sea air, the pineapple bushes, the mangrove. Growing up, Angel Cay had been his Eden, a private pirate island to explore and to run wild in, rich with imagination and adventures. But not any more, not now.
He turned from the window and sat at his desk. His empire spanned a dozen industries and six continents, yet the glass surface of his work station was remarkably uncluttered. In two hours’ time it would be set for breakfast by his butler Stevens and the world’s most influential newspapers would be in a neat pile ready for him to read. But now it just contained a stack of contracts, a phone, a copy of Fortune magazine and a small desk lamp which finally, reluctantly, he turned on. Blinking in the yellow light, he picked up the sleek black phone and dialled his attorney. If he had to go back to Angel Cay to confront this, he wasn’t going to do it alone. Sasha Sinclair, Alex Doyle, his sister. They were going to come with him.
75