Do Not Disturb (5 page)

“Right. A natural asshole,” the girl taking her skis off next to him muttered sourly, trudging up the hill to the restaurant to join the others.

Lucas had won over 99 percent of his female classmates at Lausanne with his combination of humor, confidence, and insanely good looks. But Petra Kamalski remained immune to his charms. The only serious challenger to his crown as EHL’s top-performing student, she was just as beautiful as Lucas, although in a polar opposite way. In fact, with Petra, “polar” was definitely the operative word: tall, reed-thin and as pale as the Snow Queen, she had cheekbones that could cut glass and the sort of ice-blue Russian eyes that both mesmerized and terrified at the same time. Her long blue-black hair was always worn up in a high, tight chignon and her body, though clearly perfect, was hidden at all times beneath polo-neck sweaters and long governess-style skirts.

“What’s her fucking problem?” Lucas asked Daniel, glaring after Petra as she strode up the hill in her ultraexpensive, fur-lined Prada ski suit.

“Don’t take it personally,” said Daniel, slapping him on the back. “That’s just Petra. She hates anything with a penis.” Although this was true, Petra’s dislike of Lucas clearly ran deeper than generic animosity toward the opposite sex. In lectures, she was constantly trying to trip him up, picking holes in all his arguments and doing her utmost to embarrass him in front of the professors. She’d even gone so far as to accuse him of plagiarizing one of her papers last semester—a serious allegation that, had she proved it, would have gotten Lucas kicked out. As it was, the authorities had ruled “insufficient evidence,” hardly the
ringing endorsement of his honesty that Lucas had been hoping for. How come
Petra
had never been reprimanded for bringing the case maliciously and stirring up trouble?

The answer to that one was simple. Petra’s uncle was the oligarch Oleg Kamalski, a man rich enough to buy the whole of Lausanne, if not Switzerland, with his loose change. Old Oleg was not a man that anyone wanted to alienate—least of all an institution second only to Harvard Business School in squeezing cash out of its successful alumni.

For the rest of the ski trip, Lucas did his best to keep out of Petra’s way. But it was hard. Not only were they sharing a chalet along with nine other classmates, but Murren was so minuscule it made Ibiza look like New York City, making it even harder to escape.

When the day of their departure finally dawned, Lucas wasn’t sorry. He’d come back to Murren another time on his own, or at least without Petra, when he’d be able to relax. Checking out of the chalet with only ten minutes to go before the train for Lauterbrunnen was due to leave, he suddenly discovered that his briefcase was missing.

“I don’t understand it,” he said, spinning around in frustration. “It’s been under my bed the whole trip. Where can it possibly be?” Then, noticing Petra standing smugly in the lobby with the others, firmly clasping her own matching Chanel luggage, it dawned on him. “You moved it, didn’t you? What the hell have you done with it, you shit-stirring bitch?”

“My, my, we
are
paranoid,” she smirked. “It’s no good blaming others for your own disorganized habits. I don’t know why you brought work up here with you anyway. I’m going to trounce you in management theory no matter how hard you cram.”

Lucas, who had never hit a woman, contemplated breaking his streak. But he knew that if he laid one finger on Petra he would get kicked out. And he wasn’t about to risk that for anything.

There was nothing to do but to stay behind and hunt. After three long hours, he found the case stuffed behind a pile of ski boots in the garage—damn that stupid woman. But by then it was too late to get a connection to Lausanne. He’d have to stay in the village another night—yet more wasted time and expense—and catch a train first thing in the morning.

With nothing else to do, he trudged up the snowy hill to the Regina Hotel and settled in for a long night at the bar. His plan was to stare into his whiskey glass until a strategy for wiping Petra Kamalski off the face of the earth appeared before him. But after about fifteen minutes he found himself joined by a big blond Englishman about his own age who looked even more depressed than he did.

“Would you do me a huge favor?” the man asked, looking nervously about him. His accent was pure cockney, straight out of Mary Poppins, and deep enough to be menacing had it not been for his gentle-giant aura. “Would you pretend you know me?”

Even sitting on a bar stool, Lucas could see he was huge, at least six foot six and broader than a WWE wrestler. But his kind, slightly drooping eyes, freckles, and mop of surfer-blond hair were all more overgrown Labrador than killer Doberman. He was handsome, in an Iowa-farm-boy-meets-London-barrow-boy sort of a way. And right now he had a desperate, pleading look in his eye that not even a hardened cynic like Lucas could ignore.

“Sure,” he said, smiling. “Why?”

Before the man could explain, three of the dullest-looking businessmen you could imagine—gray suits, center-parted hair, matching blue ties done up to strangulation point—walked into the bar and headed in his direction. Flinging his arms around Lucas in a bear hug, the stranger started loudly proclaiming his surprise and delight to see him.

“After all this time! Amazing!” he gushed enthusiastically. “Fancy seeing you in Murren, of all places!”

The three Swiss stooges held back and hovered, looking baffled.

“This is Jimmy,” the man explained to them, gesturing toward a mutely smiling Lucas. “We used to knock about together as boys. Haven’t seen each other in…oooh, how long has it been now, Jim?”

“Longer than I can remember,” said Lucas, who was rather enjoying himself.

The blond turned back to his companions. “Look, d’you mind if we catch up for a bit? You guys go on to the fondue restaurant, and I’ll, er…I’ll join you a bit later, yeah?”

“But…but…” the first suit stammered, “we booked the table for four. Without you, we will be three.”

Jesus, thought Lucas. They couldn’t have been any more Swiss if they’d been full of holes and gone “cuckoo” on the hour.

“They’ll understand at the restaurant. They know me there,” said the blond, reassuringly. “Honestly, you lot go ahead and have a good time on me, all right? I’ll catch up with you later.”

After more persuading in a similar vein they finally waddled off, like three penguins skidding back out onto the polar ice. Only then did the blond breathe a sigh of relief and introduce himself.

“Thanks,” he said, pumping Lucas’s hand like the arm of a slot machine. “I’m Ben. Really, thanks so much. I swear to God, if I had to spend one more hour with those guys I’d have flung meself off the north face of the Eiger.”

“They did seem a little tightly wound,” conceded Lucas with a chuckle. “I’m Lucas.”

“An honor and a joy to meet you, Lucas.” Ben grinned. “Let me buy you a drink.”

Ben Slater, it turned out, ran a hedge fund in London and was in Switzerland wooing possible institutional investors. The three stooges were all senior management from UBS, men almost exactly as powerful as they were dull.

“I know I ought to be over there with them, dunking my bread in the cheese and talking bond yield curves,” said Ben with a sigh. “But I really can’t face it. That fondue cheese is fucking disgusting anyway.”

Lucas laughed. “I agree. Here’s to ditching them.”

In the end, they got along so well that they both decided to stay on for a few more days and this time actually enjoy the skiing. The staff at the Regina knew Ben well and were happy to move him into a larger two-bedroom suite so that he could share with Lucas. Better yet, he insisted on footing the bill for them both—“Honestly, mate, my fund is paying. It’s a corporate expense; you don’t owe me a penny”—and had been so persuasive that even the notoriously proud Lucas felt comfortable accepting.

Neither Ben nor Lucas was naturally a big talker. But over the course of numerous long slope-side lunches and evenings propping up the bar, they came to share pieces of their respective life stories and discovered themselves to be somewhat kindred spirits. Ben had grown up in a happy family, unlike Lucas. But he had also been very poor and had to work against the odds to shake off his background and achieve the professional success that he had. And there was something so impossibly good-hearted about him, so jovial and warm and open, one couldn’t fail to be drawn to him. Having always hated Englishmen, and especially cockneys since his string of bad experiences at the Britannia, Lucas was shocked to discover that the country could also occasionally turn out some genuinely charming people. Ben was the archetypal diamond in the rough, and from day one Lucas adored him.

For his part, Ben didn’t think he’d ever met someone with as much energy and ambition and lust for life as Lucas. After the mind-numbing tedium of his business trip, being in Lucas’s company was like being jolted back to life with a cattle prod—only funnier. They laughed all the time, about Petra and Ben’s hopeless love life and the fat Swiss matrons in their bright-pink jumpsuits, wiggling their hippo-like rear ends down the bunny
slopes. By the time Lucas finally returned to Lausanne and Ben boarded his private jet back to London, both of them nursing hangovers worthy of a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records, a lasting friendship had been forged. For a loner like Lucas, this was a seismic event in his life and, though they didn’t see much of each other for the next few years, he never lost the feeling that in Ben he had gained a new brother.

Those carefree days in Murren with Ben felt like light-years ago now. Jumping onto the bus for Ibiza Town, Lucas sank gratefully into a vacant seat and began to get his breath back. He flattered himself that he was still fit, but there was no doubt that the adrenaline involved in putting distance between himself and a potentially murderous, cuckolded husband took a lot more out of him than an hour on the treadmill.

Still, Carla was definitely worth it. She always had been. And a summer of exciting extramarital sex was the very least he owed her after everything she’d done for him.

As the rickety blue bus wound its way down into town, he could see the tan-tiled roof of the guesthouse where he was staying. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was clean and the service was friendly. Certainly it was a world away from the dreaded Britannia.

He’d already come a long way. He knew he ought to feel happy, coming back home triumphant after graduating top in his MBA class. But in fact he felt more anxious than he had in Lausanne before his finals. Part of it was nervousness about his upcoming interviews in London. He was applying for jobs at a number of hotels there, but the one he really wanted—a junior management position at the world-famous Tischen Cadogan in Chelsea—was going to be very hotly contested. Candidates with a lot more experience than he had were sure to be applying. And yet he knew, he just knew,
that he could do a better job than any of them, if only he were given the chance.

But it wasn’t just work that was bothering him. Yesterday he’d been to see his mother.

It was only the second time Lucas had been back since the day he’d stormed out at fifteen. The first time was after he got accepted at EHL four years ago, and that had been so uncomfortable he’d been in no hurry to repeat the experience. He and his stepfather had hovered in the same room, barely acknowledging each other’s presence, as awkward and stilted as teenage lovers at their first dance. Their mutual loathing hung in the air like the stench of rotting meat, but the only way to break the tension would have been through violence, a step neither man wanted to take.

It wasn’t that Lucas didn’t miss his mom and brothers, or that he’d stopped loving them. Far from it. But the pain of watching Ines wasting her life and continuing to take abuse from that monster Jose was more than he could bear. Instead he’d salved his conscience by writing and sending money. Even back in the Britannia days, when he could barely afford a stamp, he made sure to save something each week for his mother. Inevitably, though, the distance between them took its toll.

He hadn’t realized quite how irrevocably his life had diverged from the rest of his family’s until yesterday. Thankfully this time his stepfather was not around when Lucas turned up at the house. But that was all there was to be thankful for.

The house itself was even more dirty and dilapidated than he remembered it.

“Jesus, Mama,” he said, looking around him in horror at the grimy windows, crumbling woodwork, and broken furniture. “What did you do with the money I sent you last month?”

Ines shrugged. “Your father took it. He had to pay some bills.”

Had to buy some more whiskey, you mean
, thought Lucas bitterly. The lines around his mother’s mouth and etched-in deep
grooves along her forehead spoke of a lifetime of hardship—hardship that could have been avoided, if only she’d had the courage to come with him, to break away. She was only forty, but she looked twenty years older at least and so fucking defeated it made him want to scream.

“And what about Paco? He’s earning, isn’t he? Or Domingo. Why aren’t they contributing?”