Read Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense Online

Authors: Eve Seymour

Tags: #beautiful loser, #kim slade, #psychology, #mystery, #mystery fiction, #mystery novel, #suspense, #thriller, #kim slade novel

Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense (5 page)

BOOK: Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense
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nine

“I've no idea what
to wear.” Dressed only in my bra and knickers, I pressed my fallback little black dress against me. “What do you think, Chris?”

“Looks great for Cheltenham, but too formal for Devon.”

“Claire mentioned one of the guests is a lawyer.”

“Doesn't mean he'll be wearing a wig and gown.”

“Very funny,” I said, inexplicably miffed.

“Everyone will probably be wearing jeans.”

“Do you think so?”

“How about your long white skirt with your new top?”

“I suppose.” I returned the dress to the wardrobe and picked out other clothes.

“Much better,” Chris said admiringly as I slipped them on. “It makes you look softer, no hard edges.”

I gawped at him. Sudden tears filled my eyes.

“Sweetheart,” Chris said, cupping my face in his hands.

I couldn't tell him what I was thinking. It sounded too pathetic.

“Whatever has brought this on? I meant it as a compliment.”

“I know what you meant,” I said, my bottom lip trembling.
“People smell my distrust of them at fifty paces. I, somehow, give off the wrong vibe.” By
people
, I meant women. Masters at picking up on nonverbal communications, they easily spotted my weakness. I'd lost count of the times I'd been accused of being spiky, standoffish, aloof, and variations of all three. It was why I was so emotionally reliant on the tight circle of female friends I had managed to cultivate.

“Kim, honestly, please don't get upset. Here,” he said, pulling me close. Maddeningly, it only made me worse. Suddenly I wanted to bawl my eyes out.

“I wish I hadn't said anything. Me and my big mouth.”

“It's not your fault,” I said, my voice thick. “It's mine.”

He held me away from him, looked into my eyes, and shook his head. “For a confident woman you can be so insecure.”

The problem with being a shrink is that I knew myself only too well. Strangely, at times like this, rationality didn't come into it. Deeper, more primal emotions insisted on leaking through. Chris understood this better than anyone. It's probably why we clicked.

I grabbed a tissue, dabbed my eyes, and prayed that my unexpected burst of emotion hadn't screwed up the carefully applied
make-up
that concealed my scars.

“Here,” Chris said, patting the bed. “Sit down for a moment.”

I did as he asked. He put his arm around my shoulder, held me tight. “You are a lovely, lovely woman. I have absolutely no idea why folk sometimes get the wrong idea about you. It doesn't make any kind of sense to me at all. Maybe it's because you're passionate about what you believe. Maybe it's because they're jealous.”

I cracked a smile, grateful for Chris's attempt to make me sound noble. The dark truth was so much simpler.

My mind flicked back to a vagabond home life, to housekeepers who came and went, some only lasting a couple of days, a mother who wouldn't stay, random women who fancied their chances with my father to the extent that I never knew when I came home for the holidays who would be in the house. I remembered arguments fuelled by heat and passion and hard drinking, of me shouting loud to be heard above the clamour of men. I thought about my parallel existences, the
buttoned-up
schoolgirl and the wayward daughter, rules and routines versus domestic mayhem. I recalled having to behave like a man at home to survive; behave like a good little girl at school. Frequently, I got it mixed up, got it all wrong. As a
grown-up
, I'd adapted, done everything to shake off the traces of my past. Professionally, I pulled it off. Personally, I sometimes failed.

When I spoke my voice felt dull and leaden. “I'm fine. I was being silly. Let's go.”

ten

“More pudding?” Claire smiled,
spoon poised.

Claire Lidstone was the kindest, sweetest human being I knew. We'd been firm friends since primary school and had continued our friendship despite me being sent away to school.

I passed my plate. “Just a small helping.”

“I can see your work doesn't interfere with your appetite.” Gavin Chadwick's laugh was light. His expression seemed to say
Yes, the story behind your face is intriguing but I'm too polite and sophisticated to ask or stare
. He had receding hair, which he swept back from time to time, and a face that exuded arrogant intellect. He wore a crumpled linen suit, the collarless shirt beneath oozing shabby chic. Throughout the evening I'd caught myself watching the criminal defence lawyer with a professional eye. Deferential to his hosts, he gave every appearance of clear interest in his fellow guests, but the sense that he was commanding the situation was definite and apparent. Maybe my observation was unfair. Maybe I was tired and a bit strung out. And what did it matter a damn? Whatever I thought, the Chadwicks were clearly enthralled by their new lives in Devon.

“It's such a slow pace of life.” Lottie Chadwick smiled. “Everyone has time to chat. There's no pressure. It's like going back to the Britain of my parents' generation.”

Careful not to puncture her illusions, my flat smile disguised the fact that my own observations were tempered by time, detachment, and experience. I could have informed Lottie about the crippling unemployment, the high cost of living, the stresses of residing in a holiday area where supermarkets are routinely plundered and roads blocked. I could have enlightened her about the merciless level of gossip, the
them and us
mentality that springs from moneyed people moving into an area where wages were well below the national average. “It's certainly a delightful place for children to grow up,” I admitted.

“I couldn't agree with you more,” Lottie enthused. “Ours have only recently broken up from school so it's all rather new to them. Milton's at Winchester. Serena's at prep school.”

I caught Claire's protective expression. She was one of the few people to witness my profound misery at being parked in a boarding school.

Claire's husband Charlie topped up everyone's glass and plumped back down next to me, his large frame, clad in a check shirt, solid and dependable. More used to seeing him in mud-
spattered jeans and Wellington boots, I couldn't ever remember seeing Charlie make such an effort to look smart.

“I think it's wonderful what you do,” Lottie said, leaning tipsily towards me with a lopsided smile. She had large brown downturned eyes that made her look vulnerable.

“She's not a neurosurgeon,” Gavin said, as though apologising for his wife's gushing manner.

I spotted the flex in Chris's jaw and caught the tail end of Claire's anxious frown. Gavin settled himself in his chair as though preparing for an entertaining debate. “How do you regard the current trend for counselling, Kim?”

This felt like the conversational equivalent of a light starter. Sooner or later, he'd be dishing up the main course. “Depends what you mean.”


Do-gooders
.”

Oh God, is that how you view me, I thought with a shudder. Heavens, I was too knackered for this. Time to go for the line of least resistance. “Naturally I'm not too impressed with enthusiastic life coaches who take a
six-week
course and then start mucking about with people's psyches,” I said with a laugh.

“Did you know that when
top-flight
footballers leave and go to another club, the Football Association has counsellors on hand for bereft fans?” Charlie said, eager from the look in his eye to put the conversation onto a neutral footing.

“That's my point,” Gavin said, handing him an appreciative smile. “We live in a society where everyone expects to use a counsellor, whatever the situation. I'm beginning to wonder whether we've bred a nation of
feeble-minded
wimps and losers.”

I smiled, said nothing, believing that my silence should move things along to the next topic.

Gavin, apparently, wasn't done. “My difficulty with any form of therapy is that it's too unquantifiable. There are no facts by which you can measure it.”

“There speaks the lawyer,” Claire said
good-naturedly
, heading off Chris's mutinous look. I lowered my gaze and plunged my spoon into a wildly elaborate chocolate confection and pushed in a mouthful. But Gavin was not easily deflected.

“In a largely secular society, therapy, the talking cure, whatever you want to call it, has almost taken on the role of religion.”

“For God's sake, Gavin.” Lottie gave an embarrassed laugh and looked apologetically around the table. “You're not addressing the witness stand now.”

“All I'm saying,” Gavin opined, “is that, unlike other sciences, it's largely open to interpretation.”

I glanced at Chris and saw the dangerous crease in his brow. He had a face like a man being told his lottery ticket is one number short. I understood. He was feeling protective of me.

“What do you think, Kim?” Gavin pressed.

“Me?” I spluttered. Dabbing at my lips with a paper serviette, I met his crafty expression with a straight look. “You're surely not asking me to rubbish my own profession?” Please don't ask me to enter the witness box, I thought. Please don't tempt me to bang on about the things I most care about and, consequently, make a fool of myself.

“I'm asking you to defend it.”

Why? I felt like slinking off home, running a hot bath and, snug and warm, heading off to bed with Chris. Judging by the expressions of my friends around the table,
sock it to him
seemed the prevalent mood. I couldn't tell exactly what Chris was thinking. He refused to meet my eye.

Forcing a game smile, I decided to turn the tables. “Never mind me. I've always wanted to understand how lawyers make the moral leap to defend a guilty client.”

“Atta girl,” Charlie muttered under his breath.

Gavin's smile exposed small, pointy teeth. A sudden image of the dead rat flashed through my brain. “Everyone's entitled to a defence, guilty or otherwise,” he said.

“But surely when a client has committed a serious crime …”

“Like murder or …”

“Stalking,” I said, eyes level with his so that I couldn't see Chris's expression. I have no idea why I said it. The words simply fell out of my mouth without thought or consideration.

“Where the evidence is irrefutable?” Gavin added helpfully.

I nodded. “How does the lawyer square it with his sense of morality?”

“He doesn't. Morals are irrelevant. In fact, it could be argued they're dangerous.”

“How do you work that out?” Claire interjected.

“If a lawyer takes a moral stance, he's in effect making a judgement. That would be fatal. He's not there to judge.”

“But surely if he
knows
his client is guilty …”

“Then he'll advise him to plead guilty. Simple as that,” Gavin said. “The lawyer's duty is to uphold the law, to work within its constraints, to see that it's correctly applied.”

“To exploit technicalities,” I said.

“To argue points of law,” Gavin insisted, humour in his eyes now that I'd foolishly waded back into the conversation. “To assert the burden of proof,” he continued.

“What about miscarriages of justice?” Chris said.

“It happens,” Gavin conceded, raising his glass to his lips, “but that's not usually our fault.”

Chris let out an exasperated laugh. “Whose fault is it then?”

He shrugged. “Miscarriages usually happen because of problems with chains of evidence.”

“You mean the police are to blame?”

“More often than you'd think.”

“No wonder cops have such a low opinion of lawyers.” We all looked at Chris, the growl in his tone loud enough to be heard in the next county.

“On occasion the feeling is mutual.” Gavin smiled thinly. “A police officer doesn't have the onerous responsibility of representing a client.”

“For which the lawyer is paid handsomely,” I pointed out.

“A little simplistic, if I might say,” Gavin said as though he thought it uncommonly naïve of me. “Have you ever seen anyone appear in court unrepresented?”

I said that I had not.

“Defendants don't have the faintest idea how to put forward the evidence,” Gavin said. “They wander off the point. They waste everyone's time. They're cannon fodder for the prosecution. Believe me, there's nothing fair or just about that.”

I scraped up the remnants of my pudding, wishing I'd asked for a bigger portion. I was in no doubt that the meddlesome lawyer was warming up for a second round. I was also terribly aware that we'd all had too much to drink. Licking my spoon, I watched him watching me. He had that predatory smile on his face again. It made me feel peculiarly
self-conscious
.

“Cheese and biscuits, anyone?” Claire piped up with a tight, anxious smile.

To my relief, the conversation swerved off in a different direction. It didn't take Gavin long to do the verbal equivalent of stalking me again. Swift in his conversational moves, I hardly had time to see it coming, let alone prepare. We were back onto the subject of my work.

“Surely, these girls you treat make
self-obsession
a luxury?”

I countered with a dry smile. “Nothing glamorous about starving yourself to death.”


Attention-seeking
then?”

I took a sip of wine to cloak my creeping irritation and fiddled with an earring, the sign to Chris that is was time we went, but he wasn't looking my way. He was surveying Gavin with dark, murderous eyes.

“You don't accept that eating disorders are symptomatic of a greater underlying conflict?” Chris said.

“Conflict is an inescapable fact of life, my friend.”

“I'm not your friend.”

The room fell silent. I braced. Here we go. I wondered why the hell Claire and Charlie had invited the ghastly Gavin and his wife in the first place. It wasn't as if they appeared to have anything in common.

The lawyer gave a strained smile. “I meant no harm, nothing more than a turn of phrase. I apologise if I've caused offence.”

“None taken,” Chris said, eyes like stone.

“The point I was trying to make,” Gavin said, spearing me with a look, “is that therapy and the mental ailments that supposedly afflict us are a uniquely Western problem. In the Third World people are too busy surviving and finding enough to eat to indulge in psychological nonsense.”

I arranged my expression into one of neutrality. He really was quite the most odious man I'd met in a long time. God save me from ever needing a criminal lawyer. Feeling cornered, I put down my glass, smiled, and focused my gaze.

“Whether you live in the Third World or here in the Western world, there's a hell of a common denominator,” I said.

Gavin took a deep drink from his glass. “What's that then?”

I waited a beat. “We're all terrified.”

Had I suddenly spoken in Farsi, he couldn't have looked more perplexed. “Not sure I follow you.”

“Our paranoid fear of growing old, losing our youth and looks, our monetary potential, something that Westerners are consumed by, and the inevitability of death frightens the hell out of most people.”

Gavin shook his head. “And you really believe that shit?”

First profanity of the argument meant he was on slippery ground. I noticed Chris accept more wine from Charlie, who was flashing him a
What the hell is going on here?
look.

Gavin fixed me with an elastic smile. “Most of us would get better without having to shell out huge sums of money to people who play on our neuroses.”

“Isn't that what lawyers do?” Chris said, raising a ribald murmur of agreement around the table.

“I'm not being personal, you understand.” Gavin's expression assured his guests that it was simply a lively discussion between intelligent people. “You get where I'm coming from, don't you, Kim?”

That was the point. I didn't. Here I was, supposedly having supper with friends, and this man had singled me out. In the same way, and in spite of quietly minding my own business, a stranger had also selected me for special unwanted and unwarranted attention. What had I done to deserve it this time?

Pressing down hard on my nerves, I treated Gavin to my warmest, most confident smile. “Let's take an example from your line of business. A guy comes to you asking you to defend him. To do that, you need to gather all the facts.”

“Absolutely.”

“He needs to communicate with you. Communication is the key.”

Gavin agreed with his eyes.

“And we like to think we live in an age of communication, right?”

“Yes,” he said, “Voicemail, email, mobile phones, text services …”

“Exactly. We can talk to each other at the push of a button. We can tweet and Facebook ourselves into oblivion, but there's no real human interaction. In fact new technology provides us with a cloak for avoiding contact.”

“You can spend days talking to recorded messages,” Claire chipped in.

I nodded. “In reality, at some strange subconscious level, people are more keen than ever to shy away from personal contact.”

Gavin frowned. “I'm not sure I quite understand.”

Everyone's eyes fell on mine. It felt as if all sound had been sucked out of the room. My heart stuttered in my chest.
Maybe it's because you're passionate about what you believe.
Reckless and unable to help myself, I explained, “Family ties are not as strong as they once were. Our marriages are failing. Friendships are often among the people with whom we're employed and are therefore transitory, or we may have tons of imaginary friends, faceless people we meet on the Internet through social networks. We work long hours. For some, there's no division between work and pleasure. Even the gym, where lots of us meet, has a competitive component.”

BOOK: Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense
9.01Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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