Clare Layton - Those Whom the Gods Love

He’d had a drink with Fergus only a couple of weeks ago, and had tugged the conversation round to Steve and the so-called rape, but it hadn’t got him anywhere. Fergus had turned chilly – very much the grand QC – and pretended he could barely remember Steve. He clearly wasn’t going to take any responsibility for what had happened, which left it all on Harbinger.

Dom was useless these days, far too tied up in Cabinet Office secrecy to react honestly to anyone else’s problems, and when they’d last had lunch in the Athenaeum, he’d refused all attempts to talk about Oxford. Robert was a busted flush, now that his party was out of office and everyone knew he’d never get back on the front bench. He’d see any call from Harbinger as a PR opportunity, or a chance to moan on about how awful it was to lose everything you’d worked for since university. Harbinger had had more than enough of that the only time he’d been rash enough to agree to meet Robert. He’d drunk far too much and practically wept into his whisky before Harbinger had been able to get away. Creepy.

He wondered where Sasha was working now. She’d always been sensible. And she’d never have forgotten Steve. She’d remember every detail of what had happened, just as Harbinger did. It could be worth looking her up. He might get hold of her number and give her a ring tonight.

The friendly smell of the flat greeted Ginty as soon as she unlocked the door, and she leaned against the jamb, breathing it in. The air was stuffy after her two-week absence, but the mixture of vanilla-scented soap, books, pot-pourri, washing powder, and something indefinably her, was so familiar that it made her feel hugged. She’d never be able to forget Rano and his men, but already they were twenty-four hours and a thousand miles away.

The six lemons she’d left on the sea-blue ceramic plate had survived the heat and still looked glossily yellow as they marked the boundary between the working and eating ends of the huge scrubbed oak table under the windows. She was home.

A messy heap of mail spread out in front of her. Even before she bent down to collect it, she could see cards from all the courier firms and postmen who’d tried to deliver parcels that wouldn’t go through the door. Books, probably, for review. She’d have to phone to make arrangements for another delivery, but that could wait until she’d had a bath.

There had been no hot water when she’d got back to the hotel yesterday, after Rano’s men had dropped her at the checkpoint. Some of the other journalists had been drinking in the lobby bar when she’d arrived and had tried to make her join them. She’d muttered something graceless about having to phone her editor and escaped. Upstairs, with the door locked on the lot of them, she’d wrenched off her clothes and blundered across her untidy room to the shower, longing to wash off the sweat and the sick, humiliating fear she’d felt at Rano’s hands. But the water had hardly even been tepid. Swearing, shivering, trying to hold back the absurd, unnecessary tears, she’d rolled herself first in the inadequate towel, then in the quilt, and tried to get warm.

She shivered again, in spite of the stuffiness and the knowledge that no one had actually done anything to her and she was perfectly safe now. More than that, she’d come home with tapes and photographs that might at last get her the kind of work she wanted.

It couldn’t come soon enough. She was so bored with writing frivolous articles about the loneliness of the longdistance singleton and the perils of falling in love that she could hardly make herself do it, and yet that was usually all she was offered. There was still a pile of stuff on her desk that she hadn’t been able to force herself to finish before she’d left for the refugee camps.

The relentlessness of the freelance life was beginning to get to her as badly as the repetitive silliness of so much of what she was asked to write. Every minute that wasn’t spent trying to finish work that had already been commissioned had to go into hustling for more, and she still had to take everything she was offered, however excruciating. As a teenager she’d fantasized about the perfect man; now all she wanted was the kind of important weekly column that would earn enough to pay her bills and leave her free to pick and choose among the rest.

No wonder I’m losing my touch with diets and dreams of Mr D’Arcy, she thought, hitting the ‘play’ button on her answering machine before opening the windows over her desk.

At the other end of the big room was a pair of french windows, leading to the narrow balcony that provided all the garden she had. Unlocking them, too, she was glad to see that all the herbs and lilies were flourishing in their big glazed pots. Her expensive new automatic watering system must have worked. She picked some basil and rubbed it between her fingers, breathing in the clean, aniseedy scent.

As she listened to the voices of her friends and clients, she looked out over the rooftops and the tiny cat-ridden plots below, glad she’d traded a real garden for this extra height. A police helicopter chugged low across the sky in front of her, then passed again and again, circling noisily overhead. She peered down, wondering whether its officers were monitoring some fugitive hiding in the gardens.

They were a well-known escape route for the area’s school-age burglars, who nearly always overestimated their own strength. When they found they couldn’t hump their stolen televisions and videos over the high fence at the far end of the row, they dumped them there. Ginty’s flat had been turned over twice in the three years she’d had it, and both times her not-very-valuable possessions had been found under the fence and returned to her, grubby and slightly battered.

Few of the phone messages needed answering straight away, which was lucky. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone yet. The boiler thundered in the background. It shouldn’t be too long before the water was hot.

A couple of journalists she didn’t know had called, telling her the names of the mutual friends who’d handed over her phone number and asking if she could help them with background on her father.

‘You’ll be lucky,’ she muttered, assuming that the magazines must be gearing up for a big splash to coincide with his September South Bank concerts. Well, they could get their facts from the press releases or from his agent. She never commented publicly on either of her parents.

The crushed basil leaves were still in her hand when she went back inside, not quite sticky yet but already disintegrating. The smell made her think of holidays and tomatoes and Tuscan sunlight. And Julius. They’d been happy for a long time, until she’d screwed that up, too. A bleep signalled the end of one message, then a familiar voice said:

‘Ginty, it’s your mother. I got your card. Thank you, but I don’t think there is anything I need from you this weekend.’

So, what’s new? Ginty thought.

‘The caterers have everything under control. But if you had time to get hold of some Fru-Grains for your father, he would be grateful. The only shop round here that used to do them has just gone bust. He flew in yesterday and is well. The tour’s a success so far, and he’s pleased with the orchestra now. The strings have come together at last, he says. He can tell you all about it before the party. We are looking forward to seeing you.’

Ginty sighed, wishing her mother could occasionally sound as though she cared. She required her daughter’s presence at all the major family anniversaries, but that was all. From behind a mask of cool detachment, she made it quite clear that Ginty’s opinions were worthless, her friends inadequate, and her yearning for warmth as embarrassing as her lack of height and brains.