Lexington Black (2 page)

He didn't mind so much that Sara had taunted
him. He had always been able to cry and not feel embarrassed about
it. What really hurt was the jibe about their father. He had loved
him. Loved him like none of his siblings had, not even Geri. Rob
had thought their bond was unbreakable. That was, until he was
found in his office, having taken a lethal concoction of sleeping
tablets and poison from the school's science lab. In the end, the
adoration of his favourite son had not been enough.

'Hey, bro,' Geri said softly behind him.

'What gives her the right to say things like
that? She has no right. She hardly knew him!'

'She's an idiot,' Geri agreed. 'She's just
spouting the same old guff Mum has filled our head with for years.
It took me a long time to see past it but you always did, Rob. You
kept your faith in Dad.'

'I hated him though,' Rob muttered. 'I still
can't look at his picture.'

'Yeah, but you know why he did it. You know
he couldn't live a lie any longer.'

'Yes, but it didn't stop me ballsing up my
marriage, did it?'

'How do you mean?'

Rob heaved a shuddering sigh. 'I'm not going
to fight Sandy over this, Geri. I've been a lousy husband. Ever
since Dad died I've never been able to fully trust anyone. Too
afraid they would just walk away from me one day like he did.
That's why she left me. I just wasn't prepared to give all of
myself. To make that final leap. Maybe there's some part of me that
wants to be prepared for the worst.' He looked down at her. 'That's
why I'm not really surprised she did what she did. I think there
was a part of me that wanted it to happen.'

'Maybe but I think you're being too hard on
yourself. Don't ever forget that she was the one that threw you out
onto the street. She's totally out of order.'

That night he crashed in the spare room,
grateful for the warmth and comfort. He wasn't tempted to stay for
longer than a few days, although Geri had repeated her offer. She
and Simon's relationship was strong but he didn't want to do
anything to get in their way.

******

The next afternoon after work, he assessed
his situation, sitting with the suitcases and dustbin sacks crowded
around him in the sitting room. Sighing, he tipped them all up onto
the floor.

The first contained his three old suits. He
hadn't worn them for years but kept them just in case. In case of
what, he did not know. A new career? He had no desire to work in
the City again.

Next he found two pairs of Loakes shoes and a
fistful of designer silk ties, all shoved in with various shirts
and tee-shirts. It seemed as if she had gone through the whole
house methodically, not giving him any excuse to go back for
anything she might have missed.

One suitcase held his shaver, toothbrush,
laptop computer and one battered photo album containing his family
history, plus more papers. The other had all his paperwork and
notepads with the various steampunk novels he had written over the
years. All started and never finished apart from one, which he had
self-published on-line. He had shown it to Sandy, saying he was
thinking of approaching a publisher. She had looked at it, laughed,
and told him not to give up his day job.

He hadn't written anything after that.
Ironically, six months later he had lost his job. The opportunity
had been there to launch his writing career but by then his
confidence in his abilities was non-existent.

He picked up the first notebook and flicked
through it. He had written a lot at one time, and it wasn't as bad
as Sandy said it was, even a few years down the line.

It would be easy to get distracted though,
and he had more important things to worry about, like where he was
going to live, and what the hell he was going to do with his life
from that day forward. He tossed the notebook back on the pile,
thinking a bonfire at the weekend would be a good way to start
de-cluttering.

So that was it. The entire contents of his
life and five years of marriage, reduced to an untidy heap on his
sister's living room carpet. He had a choice, which was to fight
for justice at the way Sandy had treated him or just walk away.

He knew without doubt what he was going to
do.

In the five months since he had been living
above Al's Kebab Emporium, Rob had learned to keep his windows shut
at all times, even when it was hot outside. If he did not, his
clothes and hair would be permeated with the faint smell of frying
meat, which wasn't a great impression to give the good customers of
Radley's Auto Emporium.

Apart from not smelling like kebabs, Rob's
work uniform was a far cry from his designer suit days, yet he
avoided the border-line obscene tee-shirts with sexist logos on
that his younger work colleagues favoured. As the Radley
book-keeper, a tee-shirt with the message "ORGASM DONOR" wouldn't
have gone down well with anyone. His boss was pretty tolerant, but
only when customers were not likely to see them, and Rob's desk was
in full view of the street.

Every morning he would drive to work in the
old Volvo that had replaced his Porsche 911 when his career had
gone down the toilet, three years before. He was happy enough in
his job, although he could do it blindfold. Every evening he would
drive away, trying to pretend he wasn't dreading the evening,
staring at the television in his dim little flat.

The real problems in their marriage had
started when he was made redundant. Overnight he was no longer a
Junior Partner with a City accountancy firm, but someone who just
hadn't made the grade.

Trouble had been rumbling around for months
but he had been confident he would be one of the lucky ones. After
all, he had bought in a major client that other comparable firms
would have given their pensions to own, but when his company had
succumbed to a hostile takeover, some jobs within were duplicated.
It was a head-rolling exercise, and his was one of the first to hit
the block.

So it was a case of "thanks very much. Now
piss off." He had taken the generous pay-off and spent the next six
months trawling the Capital, looking for work along with many other
displaced professionals caught out by the banking crisis and
recession.

As the months passed, he was aware of Sandy
looking at him with disappointment, then annoyance. He wasn't
trying hard enough, she said. He was doing something wrong.

Paul Radley ran a showroom and workshop,
looking after high-end sports cars. He had known Rob's father, and
always looked after his succession of Jaguars with loving care. As
a child, Rob would spend time poking around the workshop as the men
talked, or sitting in the expensive motors, playing with the
controls and choosing which one he would buy when he was older.

One day, to get out of the house and for want
of something positive to do, he had walked into town and stopped
off at Radleys. Paul was white-haired and still spritely. When he
said he was looking someone to keep the company accounts in order,
Rob leapt at the chance.

'Great. So now you're a book-keeper,' Sandy
had sniffed when he told her.

He didn't let her get to him. For the first
time in a very long while, he felt wanted.

Despite Geri and anyone else who had told him
to fight Sandy through the courts, he preferred to walk away from
their marriage and not look back. And on the whole, he had not.
Their large house had gone, and Sandy was in the arms of the
barrister who had obligingly severed her marital connection with
Rob, whilst he was left with her bitter accusations that he had
been "emotionally retarded." She had been on sticky ground,
throwing him out as she had, but because she had taken care to give
him all his belongings and documents and her lawyer was familiar
with the Ivana Trump motto "don't get even, get everything," Rob
judged that it would be easier and less expensive for both of them
if he did not demand more money or contest her reasons. In the end,
he considered himself lucky that he had escaped with his bank
balance and balls intact.

Christmas had been surprisingly tolerable,
under the circumstances. He had gone to the Welsh coast with Geri
and Simon, and they had spent a lot of blustery hours at the beach,
flying his power kite, walking and eating huge pub meals. It was
depressing to hear his sister and her mate rutting enthusiastically
in the middle of the night, but it was a small price to pay for
their kindness and hospitality.

One Thursday morning, late in April, the
showroom was dead quiet. Paul and the Sales Manager had gone out to
lunch, leaving Rob in charge.

After half an hour of paperwork he left his
desk, thinking that the Audi R8 nearest the window could do with
some loving care. As he polished the car, traffic and pedestrians
constantly streamed past the tall, wide windows. Some people looked
in, noses pressed against the glass as they gawped at the gleaming
cars therein. It drove Paul crazy. He was always outside, wiping
off greasy marks as soon as the window-shoppers and school-kids
moved away. He had even put a large sign up asking people not to
lean on the glass but they still did it. Something about the
elegant vehicles inside drew people to stop and stare.

Opposite the showroom was a coffee shop. In
the summer there was bright red awning and black cast iron tables
outside, surrounded by pots of vivid red geraniums to give an
Italian air to the place, but in the winter, one could see the
occupants inside the shop, steaming up the windows. Rob watched
them for a moment, wondering what their lives were like. How many
people were going through divorces, separations, job losses? He
felt a vague sense of unreality, as if he would wake up any moment
and be back at his large house, waiting for Sandy to come home. The
thought of it actually happening filled him with alarm. He had long
since lost any affection for his wife, and was actually looking
forward to the imminent arrival of the decree absolute, severing
his ties with Sandy for good.

With a resigned sigh, he continued his task.
The Audi was his dream car, curvaceous bodywork and come-hither
headlights, metallic white paint finish that sparkled like
diamonds. He lovingly stroked the last few smudges away from the
door handle, caused by the child of a wealthy client who obviously
had not learned to wash her hands. He breathed on the metal and
rubbed off the mark, running his hand along the car's flank to feel
the silken metal underneath his fingers tips.

As he stood up, he was aware of another
reflection besides his own, in the side window of the car. A man
was standing outside, staring in. Although the image was somewhat
warped, he was close enough that Rob could see he was well-dressed
in a dark tailored suit. And he hadn't been looking at the car. His
whole attention was on Rob.

Rob turned rapidly and looked him in the eye.
The man stepped back. A fleeting look of shock passed over his face
and then was gone, replaced by an insolent gaze which made Rob feel
as if all his clothes had just fallen to the floor. The stranger
smiled slightly and turned away.

Rob found his heartbeat had elevated
slightly. The guy had definitely been checking him out, but what
was more disconcerting was Rob's reaction to it. He shivered
slightly, trying to shake off the feeling. He was flustered, that
was all. No-one had done that before and made him feel so
alive
.

The door to the showroom opened as he was
sitting down at his desk again. He discreetly watched the man walk
around the Audi. His footsteps were loud and measured in the quiet.
Late thirties, possibly early forties and wealthy, definitely a
potential client, not just a dreamer. Rob realised he was aware of
the scrutiny, in the mirrored wall than ran along the side of the
showroom. He quickly looked down at the empty pad of paper in front
of him and picked up his pen, but he hadn't a clue what to
write.

'Beautiful,' the man said, loud enough so
that Rob could not ignore him. As he looked up, the man's hand was
on the Audi's flank and he stroked it as if it were that of a
racehorse. 'Such fine lines. Such engineering. A work of art. I
expect I would have to part with a lot of money to own a beauty
like this.' His gaze fell on Rob, whose mouth was still half open.
He had been transfixed by the hypnotic deepness of his voice, the
accent redolent of moneyed New York.

'She is lovely, isn't she,' Rob responded
finally.

'I wasn't talking about the car.' The man
fixed Rob with eyes the colour of silver bullets. His lips twitched
in a smile. 'I'd like to take her out.'

Rob was still trying to work out what he had
meant from the last sentence. He rapidly gathered himself together.
'Yes, of course. When were you thinking?'

'Tomorrow afternoon. Three o'clock.'

'That's fine. I'll need some details. Your
name is...?'

'Lexington Black.'

Rob wrote it down, thinking what kind of
parents would have saddled their son with a name like that. He went
through the information he needed for insurance purposes. Finally,
with the arrangements made, they stood up at the same time.

'We'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Black. It may
well be my colleague, Greg Soames, who takes you out...'

'No. I want you to do it.'

Rob opened his mouth and shut it again. 'I'm
the accounts department, Mr. Black. Mr. Soames is our Sales
Exec...'

'You will take me out tomorrow,' Lexington
Black said calmly, and Rob could see it was ill-advised to argue
with him.

'That's no problem, Mr. Black,' he said
smoothly. 'I'm Robin ...'

'I know who you are.' Black held out one
elegant hand with long, tapered fingers. His handshake was cool and
very firm, with an intimate squeeze just before he let go.