‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ he repeated, taking an aggressive step forward. ‘You bitch. You absolute fucking whore.’
His hand was coiled in a fist. He raised it and she thought he was going to hit her, but after one terrifying moment he slammed it through the air in frustration.
‘Get out!’ he roared as she held her handbag in front of her like a shield. ‘Did you not hear me?’ He picked up his magazine and hurled it across the room. ‘I said get out.’
Jennifer turned and fled. As she stepped out into the humid air, she was aware that her decision to set her life on a new course had been irrevocably made. All that remained now was to go back to Jim and tell him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
2015
The room was only half dark; Jim’s minimalist blinds looked good and offered privacy from prying eyes, but against the glare of New York’s setting sun, they were close to useless. He carried a glass of water towards the bed, stepping over the screwed-up tissues scattered across the floor like little rosebuds.
‘Here you go, medicine for the patient,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Sarah had obviously been going down with something when she had come round the night before, but it had quickly developed into a full-blown cold overnight; so much so that she’d had the day off work and had still been in bed when Jim had returned home from the office.
Sarah groaned and turned over, shielding her eyes. Her cheeks were as red as her nose, and her hair was sticking out at all angles. She took the pill from Jim and dutifully swallowed.
‘Thanks, babe,’ she croaked. ‘Sorry to be such a pain.’
‘Don’t be daft, you can’t help getting sick, can you?’
Sarah made a half-hearted effort to smile, then collapsed back on to the pillows. ‘But I’m sick in your flat. I’m cramping your style.’
Jim smiled. ‘Well I was planning on throwing a party later, but Hugh Hefner and Tommy Lee have called in sick too.’
‘You should go out,’ she said, propping herself up with a pillow. ‘By the sounds of it, Jen needs cheering up.’
Jim felt guilty for sharing Connor’s confidences. He hadn’t told Sarah everything, of course. Hadn’t told her most things, in fact: Jennifer’s pregnancies, the drinking. But he had wanted to see his old friend socially and felt awkward meeting her alone after everything Connor had said. He’d suggested the four of them go out for dinner, but when Sarah had dragged her heels, blaming her workload and the addition of the Hamptons summer social circuit to her reporting brief, he’d pushed the issue, saying that Jennifer needed ‘a fun night out’.
‘We can reschedule,’ he said, handing her another tissue.
‘Connor’s booked Domina,’ she said, shaking her head and blowing her nose noisily. ‘It’s properly difficult to get a table there. Go on, go. Tell them that funny story about Celine Wood giving you drugs. Besides, you’ve got Tivo in the bedroom and I want to catch up with Dancing with the Stars.’
Jim hadn’t seen Connor since Baruda, three weeks earlier, although they had spoken on the phone. The sale of RedReef was now going through and everything was in the hands of the lawyers. Simon had taken Jim out for dinner to congratulate him on the idea of an Omari diffusion brand, and when he confided that the wheels were in motion to make Jim CEO of the entire hotel group when Casa D’Or was finished, Jim believed that there had been some karma in trying to help Connor, or more specifically Jennifer, out.
Domina had apparently only been open a week. As Jim arrived, several couples who had made the social faux pas of just turning up on the night to ask for a table were being told by a frosty-looking platinum blonde that they were now taking bookings for six months’ time. Their own table was, meanwhile, not quite ready. He went to the bar and saw Jennifer sitting there alone, one black-trousered leg elegantly crossed over the other, a bronze pump dangling from her tanned foot. It looked so casual: the outfit, her dark hair pinned up, a flash of gold at wrist and neck, like she had just thrown it all on in a rush.
‘Hey,’ he smiled, giving her an awkward peck on the cheek. ‘Where’s Connor?’
‘Not coming.’ She held her phone up and looked piqued. ‘He’s just called. He’s out with investors and the meeting has finished but now they want to go on somewhere.’
She said it as though she didn’t believe it, but Jim knew the form of these things. Appointments turned to dinner and drinks, then private clubs, even strip joints – macho pleasures in the name of business – and you were generally beholden to the person holding the purse strings. By that logic he wondered if Connor’s priority shouldn’t be seeing him this evening, but being here alone with Jennifer looking like a goddess, he couldn’t help giving a silent prayer of thanks to the bankers who had taken Connor for a night on the tiles.
‘Where’s Sarah?’ asked Jennifer, putting her phone in her bag and looking around.
‘Ill. Bad cold,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t cancel earlier because we thought she was going to be all right, but when I left, she was doing a
fairly accurate impression of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’
‘I hope she’s OK,’ said Jennifer with concern. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Actually, she seemed pretty determined to have a night in watching the telly alone.’
‘Such are your charms,’ she quipped.
‘So it’s just us.’