Perfect Strangers

Julia hadn’t coped with the fallout of the scandal at all well. At one point she’d even left Wade House, packing a small suitcase and telling her husband that she couldn’t take it any more. She’d returned within forty-eight hours, presumably realising there was no hope of a big divorce settlement, and retreated into a shell. Sophie hadn’t missed the bottle of antidepressants in the bathroom cabinet, the bottle of gin in the closet. What if her husband’s death pushed her over the edge?

She knelt down beside her mother, feeling her own mood soften.

‘Money comes and goes. Nothing matters so long as we’ve got each other.’

She meant every word she said. So many things had been put into perspective in the last couple of days. The importance of family above everything was one of them.

‘But the house,’ sobbed Julia. ‘There’s a mortgage on it. I’ll never keep up the payments.’

‘So we’ll sell it,’ said Sophie defiantly. ‘We’ll buy something just as lovely, just a little bit smaller.’

Julia nodded without lifting her head from her knees.

Outside, the sun emerged from behind a cloud, sending a shaft of late afternoon light into the kitchen. As it warmed her face, Sophie felt a strange, calm optimism.

They’d had such a run of bad luck, things had to get better soon. Surely.

2

She was late again – she was always late. Ruth Boden peered out of the black cab’s window as the streets of Mayfair sped by. Come on, come on, she thought angrily as a white delivery van moved out in front of them. Not today, I can’t be late today of all days. She glanced down at her phone to check the time – it was only five past, not actually late, not really – and wondered if she should send him a text, say she was running behind. No, that would look unprofessional, and that was the last thing she needed.

‘Oh God, come on,’ she muttered to herself as they stopped at some temporary traffic lights. ‘Why are they always digging up the goddamn roads?’

‘Tell me about it, love,’ said the cabbie. ‘I tell you, since the bleeding recession, there’s more holes in London than they got in Calcutta.’

Ruth smiled politely and willed the lights to change. She was due to meet Isaac Grey, the Washington Tribune’s editor-in-chief, and although she knew him well, it was still important to make a good impression, especially when there were rumours flying around that the Tribune’s London office was about to be restructured. It was, on paper at least, a huge opportunity for Ruth. She’d been the star London reporter for five years, and ever on the job, she’d been up since six chasing a lead. This morning the lead had come from a contact in the Met who had rung to say that some hotshot American lawyer had been found hanging in his million-pound flat; a sex game gone wrong, he’d said. It had sounded too juicy to ignore, so Ruth had shot over to Westbourne Grove, only to find that it was an overdose, the man had been revived by the paramedics – and to cap it all, he wasn’t even American, he was Canadian, for Chrissakes!

Ruth shook her head at the memory. It was obviously useful having contacts within the police force and she was well aware that the detectives liked having her around – the sassy American journalist who always spelt their names right – but sometimes Scotland Yard’s efficiency left a lot to be desired. Ruth had been brought up on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, and she couldn’t help feeling disappointed that there seemed to be very few Inspector Lestrades left in the force. Even worse, this morning’s wild goose chase had made her late.

The black cab’s tyres gave a little squeal as they pulled up outside the restaurant.

‘Thanks so much,’ said Ruth, pushing a twenty-pound note into the cabbie’s tray before slamming the door and running up the marble steps, her heels clacking on the stone.

Isaac was waiting for her in a private booth, flicking through his BlackBerry, his trademark scowl on his face.

‘So sorry, Isaac,’ she said, leaning over to air-kiss him. ‘Got called out to a big story on the other side of London.’

‘I hope it was good,’ he said as she slid into the red leather seat beside him. Isaac Grey always seemed to be pissed off about something – Ruth remembered he’d had that same pained expression the day he’d interviewed her at the Tribune’s office twenty years before. His hair had taken on more silver and the lines around his mouth had got deeper, but time certainly hadn’t mellowed him. ‘Goddamn BlackBerry,’ he muttered. ‘Ten times a day I dream about smashing it with a hammer. And now they tell me I should be tweeting.’

Isaac was as old-school as th

ey came, a battle-scarred newspaperman who rolled up his sleeves and had ink on his fingers. She knew he loathed the onset of digital media – she’d once heard him yell, ‘You can’t wipe your ass on a JPEG’ across the office – and he hated answering to younger, slicker Harvard grads who knew nothing about the editorial side of the business and were now questioning his methods about generating revenue for the business.

‘So,’ said Isaac, finally putting his phone down. ‘Can we expect another one of your world exclusives?’

Ruth allowed herself a smile. Three months ago, she had scooped all of the other papers when she had broken the story of Kirk Bernard, a New York hedge-funder now based in London, who had been burgled at knifepoint in his Mayfair home. The level of violence and the fact that a rich foreigner had been targeted sent a twitter of anxiety around both sides of the Atlantic. Bernard’s valuable art collection – most notably, a Rubens and a Monet sketch – had been stolen, almost certainly to end up in the private collection of some super-rich Eastern European gangster – or so the tabloids had speculated. But Ruth had discovered that the paintings hadn’t been stolen at all. Bernard had simply hidden them in the attic for a few months, claimed the insurance, then hung them back on the wall, claiming they were clever reproductions. Unfortunately his wife liked to throw dinner parties, and a guest at one, a visiting professor from the Sorbonne, had noticed that the ‘replacement’ paintings were suspiciously accurate. When Ruth had interviewed Bernard in Pentonville pending his deportation, Bernard had simply snorted and said, ‘Who gives a shit if they were real or not? To me, they’re just cheques with faces.’

On that occasion, Isaac Grey had sent her a magnum of champagne, but Ruth was hoping for something more substantial today.

‘You know me, always on the lookout for a scoop.’

‘Uh-huh. So how’s things?’

‘Great,’ she said breezily.

He took a sip of the red wine that the sommelier had handed him.

‘You know we go back a long way.’