Perfect Strangers (3 page)

Looking back, Sophie could see that Will’s success and desirability hadn’t made her especially happy; in fact, it had fed her insecurities and made her quite neurotic. For the entire duration of their relationship she had spent a fortune on buttery blonde highlights and lived on little more than miso soup and salad, thinking that being blonder and slimmer than everyone else was the way to hold on to her man. If nothing else, she was glad that tyranny was now over and had no desire to jump back into it.

‘Mum . . . we’ve been through this,’ she pleaded.

‘What? You’re still young, you’re pretty enough. And you’re not exactly going to get your old life back any other way, are you? Don’t expect there to be any money in the pot, Sophie. There’s no life insurance. Your father left us with nothing.’

The way she spat out the word ‘nothing’ made Sophie’s stomach turn over. Growing up, she had wondered if her parents had ever really been in love. Once or twice she had suspected her mother of having affairs, but Peter and Julia stayed together and the danger had passed.

‘Mum, please. Can’t you leave him alone on today of all days? He made one bad investment, that’s all. There’s no need to hold it against him in life
and
death.’

‘One bad investment? He gave every penny we had, everything we had worked for, our entire life savings to
that man
.’

Her mouth twisted into a snarl. Julia Ellis still couldn’t say his name.

‘He was only trying to do his best for us.’

Julia was unrepentant. ‘He was foolish, he was greedy, he was reckless and now he has ruined my life.’

Sophie felt her temper flare. ‘Greedy? You were the one who wanted the big house, the exotic holidays. Dad would have been happy with a little house by the river so long as he had his boat and he had us.’

Her mother rounded on her, her small, even teeth bared. ‘Don’t pretend that you didn’t enjoy the high life,’ she snapped, her voice quivering with anger. ‘Would you have preferred to go to the local comprehensive rather than Marlborough? To go to Margate on holiday rather than Mustique? You had the best education, the money, the lifestyle. We spoilt you, and you were every bit as angry as I was when it was all gone, so don’t throw this back at me and blame my so-called greed.’

Sophie closed her eyes and for a moment she was somewhere else. On the Thames on her dad’s boat. A tinny radio drowning out the noise of the engine, the air sticky with summer heat and dragonflies. They had got as far as Old Windsor when Peter Ellis had told her that his safe investment hadn’t been as safe as he’d thought. Along with thousands of others across America and Europe, he was the victim of a $30 billion Ponzi scheme, and he was unlikely to get a penny of his money back.

‘
You’re kidding?
’

She could hear her voice now, bristling with annoyance and panic.

‘
How could you let this happen?
’

‘
But none of it matters, Sophie. So long as we have each other
.’

Back then, she hadn’t believed him.
Daddy, I’m so, so sorry
, she thought, feeling ashamed of how she had behaved, how she had thought that money was the only thing that mattered.

There was the crashing sound of a glass smashing, and Sophie opened her eyes. Her mother was leaning against the Smallbone kitchen units, her face creased. For a moment, Sophie didn’t know what to do; she couldn’t remember Julia Ellis ever giving in to emotion. Even at the graveside she had been composed and upright.

‘He’s left me, Sophie,’ sobbed Julia, her voice barely audible, sliding down to the floor. ‘He’s left me.’

Sophie knew what she meant.
He’s left me to this
.

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 they 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.’

She tried to keep her face as impassive as possible. They’d had a brief affair soon after she had begun at the
Tribune
, when Isaac’s recent divorce and Ruth’s eagerness to please the boss had spilled over into an out-of-hours relationship. The fling had lasted weeks, and within six months Ruth had been posted to Kosovo. At first she had thought it had been a rather extreme reaction to their break-up, but the truth was that Isaac had known about her desire to become a foreign correspondent and had done everything in his power to make that happen. For that she would always be grateful.

‘So I thought I’d give you a heads-up about some changes that are happening,’ said Isaac. As always, he was impossible to read. But she’d heard rumours that the
Tribune
’s London bureau chief, Jim Keane, was ready to move on. As his number two, she’d be in pole position to take over.

‘How old are you, Ruth?’

Her heart gave a little jump. So he was cutting to the chase before they’d even ordered their first course.

‘An experienced forty-one, Isaac, as well you know,’ she said smoothly.

Ruth held her breath. She had dreamt of this moment her entire career, throughout that time in the Balkans, then stationed in Cape Town – her bag permanently packed as she waited for a call from the foreign desk, day or night, dispatching her to Namibia, Mozambique or Angola. And now finally London, covering all those dreary weddings, openings and parties that passed for news stories, hoping against hope that one day it would all be worthwhile and she would finally get the position she deserved: bureau chief of one of the most important territories in the world.

‘I won’t bullshit you, Ruth,’ said Isaac. ‘There’s talk about shutting the bureau down.’

For a moment she couldn’t take in what he had just said.

‘You’re closing us down?’ she croaked.

Isaac looked apologetic.

‘We’re not the
Herald Tribune
or the BBC. We’re smaller, leaner, and to be frank, we’re struggling financially. We can’t afford to keep a team out here.’

Ruth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘But this is London. The financial capital of the world. America’s ally . . .’

‘Which is exactly why we’ve kept it going so long.’

She was still shaking her head. ‘I don’t believe this. I thought it was going so well. The Bernard story . . .’

‘Ruth, one great story does not pay the rent on an office in Victoria. You know it’s all about the bottom line these days, and the London bureau doesn’t generate anything that we can’t get from local stringers and freelancers.’

‘Local stringers?’

She had worked with them many times before – fixers, interpreters, hacks from the native newspapers. They were often difficult and unreliable; he couldn’t seriously be thinking of handing the
Tribune
over to them?

‘Isaac, local reporters have their place,’ she said, trying to keep calm. ‘But they are never going to be as impartial as a
Tribune
journalist. Remember Kosovo?’ She had been shortlisted for a press award for her balanced reporting. ‘Local journalists are more likely to be biased because of their politics, their allegiances.’

‘London isn’t Kosovo, Ruth.’

He put his hand on the tablecloth.

‘The view from upstairs is that we don’t need
Tribune
journalists out in the field any more. Not in English-speaking territories anyway.’

‘This is just cost-cutting.’

‘To an extent, yes it is. I’ll be honest, we’re not getting enough from you to justify the upkeep of the goddamn photocopier. Ruth, the media is changing. It’s the new way, kiddo: they want blogs and as-it-happens tickertape crap. Citizen journalism – stories phoned in seconds after the thing has happened. No one wants investigative journalism any more.’

‘Bullshit,’ snapped Ruth, before she could stop herself. She’d been up since six and she was in no mood to mince her words. And what did she have to lose anyway? ‘Don’t try and dress it up as the fallout from the digital revolution. You’re just cutting corners, pure and simple. You’re taking away the real journalists and bringing in interns to write cuts jobs from the internet and press releases. And relying on the general public to send in their cell-phone videos isn’t
reporting
. I can’t believe you don’t agree with me, Isaac.’