‘It’s me. The Ghost of Christmas Past,’ he said, smiling.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, throwing her arms around him. For a moment she forgot the awkwardness of their last couple of days in Thailand. She just stood there holding him, enjoying his shape, his smell, the sensation of his arms folded around her body.
‘I think you’d better put me down now,’ he whispered.
Rachel took a step back, just to check that what she had felt was real.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said, for one minute feeling inordinately glad that she had washed her hair.
‘Your sister called me. Thought you might need a friendly face.’
‘She did that?’
Liam was trying to make light of it, breaking the tension in the room, but the fact remained that he had flown thousands of miles to be with her. Now what did that mean exactly? She turned to look at him, but he avoided her gaze. Now what did that mean?
‘It was a military bloody operation,’ he said, laughing nervously. ‘Diana phoned me in the middle of the night and said I had to be in Bangkok by nine o’clock. There was a speedboat waiting for me at Sairee Beach, which took me to Samui for the first flight, then at Bangkok I was escorted through the fast lane to the private jet terminal.’
‘I bet you felt like James Bond.’
‘But better-looking, obviously.’
‘Well don’t start getting ideas above your station,’ said Rachel. ‘When we get back to Ko Tao, it’s straight back on the scooters.’
They both started laughing, but Rachel felt like she might burst into tears.
Liam put his small holdall on the bed and walked outside to the balcony. She followed him out into the balmy night, feeling as though she was part of a dream, as if they were back in Thailand, in some beautiful villa by the sea, living together, loving each other.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she said finally.
Liam nodded and turned to face her. ‘What’s happening, Rach? I’m worried about you.’
‘The potted version?’ she said, knowing that she had to tell somebody everything. ‘It’s a story about a billionaire, a pretty college student and a diet drug called Rheladrex . . .’
33
The view was so perfect that it made her forget everything. As the town car slid across the George Washington Bridge, Diana pushed her face up against the glass, smiling to herself as the glittering palace of Manhattan appeared to rise from the blue-green river. To her, New York had always looked like the Emerald City and had the same magical possibilities. As a girl, sitting in that cramped bedroom hiding from her parents’ screaming matches, she had read everything she could about the Big Apple, imagining what it would be like to actually visit the place, to see those flashing ‘walk/don’t walk’ signs, to feel the whoosh of the air coming out of the subway, to walk up to a hot-dog stand and order a chili dog ‘with everything on it’.
As they jostled their way cross-town and turned on to Amsterdam, Diana craned her neck to peer up at those boxy red-brick buildings like a tourist. Whenever she had visited New York with Julian, she had been dismayed to see him sitting in the back of the car reading the paper or flicking through messages on his phone, as though the exotic scene outside their little bubble barely registered. But of course, that was the truth. For a wealthy cosmopolitan like Julian Denver, a visit to New York was like the bus journey to work, and he had long since stopped seeing the bright red fire hydrants and the yellow taxis as anything other than street furniture. But Diana didn’t think she would ever lose her wonder at this city, however often she visited. To her, it was the most exciting place in the world, a place where anything could happen.
They turned off Madison and drew up outside The Mark, the doorman offering Diana a hand as she stepped out. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She couldn’t deny that she enjoyed this part of being wealthy, the part where people made a huge fuss over her, but she still felt slightly detached from it, almost as if someone was going to pop up any minute and say, ‘Ah-ha! Caught you! This isn’t your life, Diana Miller. There’s been an almighty cock-up and you’ve actually got to go back to Sheffield.’
But no one did. They smiled and took her credit card and handed her a key and showed her up to a wonderful suite, tastefully decorated, with tiny fragrant soaps waiting for her by the vast bathtub. It was like some sort of conjuring trick.
But as the bellhop closed the door with a discreet click and left Diana standing facing the perfectly smooth double bed, she suddenly felt terribly alone. No Julian, no Rachel, no Mum. What the hell am I doing here? she thought, sinking on to the mattress.
Rachel had been distraught when she had heard the news about her friend Ross. It had made perfect sense for her to fly out to Jamaica to see him, and Diana had been glad she could make the appropriate arrangements. But when Rachel had asked Diana to fly to New York and speak to the head of Denver Chemicals, she had been reluctant. She was not a detective or a reporter. In fact she didn’t really like meeting people she didn’t know very well, let alone asking them difficult questions. When Rachel had told her about this Rheladrex drug, though, about Julian and Madison’s connection to it, she could not help but be intrigued.
She showered and changed into a fitted black dress. It was smart, respectable, professional. She was due to meet Simon Michaels at Le Cirque – a restaurant she had been to once before and remembered as a place full of power-brokers. She wanted to be taken seriously. Her mobile phone buzzed with a text message. Picking up her clutch bag, she took the lift to the ground floor.
Her eyes scanned the lobby before she recognised the back of his head, his broad shoulders trapped in a suit, his hand thrust casually in his pocket as he killed time.
He turned and saw her. His usual greeting of a smile had been replaced by something more cautious.
‘What’s all this about, Di?’ he asked as he kissed her lightly on the cheek.
The previous day, Diana had phoned Adam to see if he had yet made contact with Simon Michaels as Rachel had asked him to. Adam was in New York, a detail that hadn’t e
xactly surprised her – as global head of the hotels division, it was where he had been based until Julian’s death had brought him back to London. It had also felt quite fortuitous, as if the gods were finally smiling on her, as it meant she did not have to meet Simon Michaels alone.