The Woman in Cabin 10 (8 page)

BOOK: The Woman in Cabin 10
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- CHAPTER 9 -

W
e swapped seats twice more, but somehow I never found myself next to Bullmer, and it was not until the coffee was served, and we were free to leave our seats and return to the Lindgren Lounge, that I had the chance to accost him. I was just walking across the room, a cup of coffee in my hand, balancing myself precariously against the shifting of the boat, when a flash went off in my face, and I stumbled, narrowly avoiding drenching myself in coffee. As it was, a few drops spattered the hem of the rented gown and the white sofa next to me.

“Smile,” said a voice in my ear, and I realized the photographer was Cole.

“Shit, you
idiot
,” I said crossly, and then instantly wanted to kick myself. The last thing I wanted was him reporting my rudeness back to Rowan. I must be drunker than I thought. “Not you,” I said awkwardly, trying to cover my slip. “Me, I meant. The sofa.”

He saw my discomfort and laughed.

“Nice recovery. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell tales on you to your boss. My ego’s not that fragile.”

“I didn’t . . .” I floundered, but it was so uncannily close to what I
had
been thinking that I couldn’t think how to finish. “I just—”

“Forget about it. Where were you off to in such a hurry anyway? You were striding across the room like a marksman hunting down a lame antelope.”

“I . . .” It felt slightly pathetic to admit it, but my head was throbbing with a mix of tiredness and alcohol, and somehow it seemed easier to tell the truth. “I was hoping to talk to Richard Bullmer. I’ve been trying to speak to him all evening, I just never had the chance.”

“And you were making your move when I wrecked it,” Cole said with a gleam in his eye. He smiled again, and I realized it was his incisors that gave him a slightly wolfish, predatory air. “Well, I can sort that out anyway. Bullmer!”

I cringed as Richard Bullmer turned from his conversation with Lars and looked across.

“Did I hear my name?”

“You did indeed,” Cole said. “Come and speak to this nice girl, make amends for my ambushing her.”

Bullmer laughed, picked up his cup from the arm of the chair next to him, and strolled across. He moved easily, in spite of the slight roll of the ship, and I had the impression of someone who was very physically fit, and probably hard as nails beneath the well-cut suit.

“Richard,” Cole said with a wave of his hand, “this is Lo—Lo, Richard. I surprised her with a candid shot as she was making her move on you, and she spilled her coffee.”

My cheeks flamed red, but Bullmer was shaking his head at Cole.

“You know what I said about being discreet with that thing.” He nodded at the heavy camera slung around Cole’s neck. “Not everyone wants paparazzi shots of themselves at inopportune moments.”

“Ah, they love it,” Cole said easily, showing his teeth in a wide grin. “Gives ’em the proper celebrity experience along with the swanky venue.”

“I mean it,” Richard said, and although he was smiling, his voice no longer sounded amused. “Anne, especially.” He lowered his voice. “You know she’s self-conscious since . . .”

Cole nodded, the laugh dying out of his face.

“Yeah, sure, man. That’s different. But Lo here doesn’t mind, do you, Lo?” He slung an arm around my shoulders, crushing me into him so that my shoulder crunched against his camera, and I tried to smile.

“No,” I said awkwardly. “No, of course not.”

“That’s the spirit,” Bullmer said, and he gave a little wink. It was an odd gesture—the same one I’d noticed before when he spoke to Camilla Lidman—not avuncular, as it might have been, but more as if he were trying to level what he knew to be an intimidatingly uneven playing field.
Don’t think of me as an international millionaire
, that wink said.
I’m just an ordinary approachable guy
.

I was just trying to think how to reply, when Owen White tapped him on the shoulder and he turned.

“What can I do for you, Owen?” he said, and before I had a chance to open my mouth, the opportunity was gone.

“I—” I managed as he turned away, and he looked back over his shoulder at me.

“Hey, look, it’s always hard to talk at these things. Why don’t you swing past my cabin tomorrow after the planned activities, and we can chat properly?”

“Thanks,” I said, trying not to sound too pathetically grateful.

“Great. It’s number one. Looking forward to it.”

“Sorry,” Cole said in a low voice, his breath tickling the hair tucked behind my ear. “Did my best. What can I say? He’s a wanted man. How can I make it up to you?”

“Never mind,” I said awkwardly. He was standing uncomfortably close and I wanted to take a step back, but Rowan’s voice was nagging in the back of my head:
Network, Lo!
“Tell me . . . tell me something about yourself instead. What made you come? You said it’s not your usual thing.”

“Richard’s kind of an old friend,” Cole said. He grabbed a coffee from a passing stewardess’s tray and took a gulp. “We were at Balliol together. So when he asked me to come, I felt I couldn’t say no.”

“Are you close?”

“I wouldn’t say close. We don’t really move in the same circles—it’s hard when one of you is a struggling photographer and the other one’s married to one of the wealthiest women in Europe.” He gave a grin. “But he’s a good guy. He might look like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but that’s not the full picture. He’s had some tough times and I guess that’s what makes him hold on all the harder to . . . well, all this.” He waved a hand at our surroundings—at the silk and crystals and burnished fittings. “He knows what it’s like to lose things. And people.”

I thought of Anne Bullmer, and the way Richard had walked her to her cabin in spite of the roomful of guests waiting to talk to him. And I thought perhaps I knew what Cole meant.

I
t was around eleven that I finally made my way back to my room. I was drunk. Very, very drunk. Although it was hard to tell exactly
how
drunk, as we were now midocean, and the shifting movement of the sea mixed queasily with the champagne . . . and the wine . . . oh, and the frozen shots of aquavit. Christ. What had I been thinking?

There was a moment of clarity when I got to my door and stood for a moment, steadying myself on the frame. I knew why I’d got drunk. I knew exactly why. Because if I was drunk enough, I would sleep the sleep of the dead. I couldn’t cope with another broken night—not here.

But I pushed the thought away and began the task of retrieving my room key from where I’d stashed it inside my bra.

“Need a hand, Blacklock?” slurred a voice behind me, and Ben Howard’s shadow fell across the doorframe.

“I’m fine,” I said, turning my back so that he couldn’t see me struggling. A wave hit the boat and I lurched and staggered.
Go away, Ben
.

“Sure?” He leaned over me, deliberately peering over my shoulder.

“Yes”—my teeth were gritted with fury—“I’m sure.”

“Because I could help.” He gave a lascivious grin and nodded towards the top of my dress, which I was gripping with one hand to stop it from peeling down. “You look like you could use an extra hand. Or two.”

“Fuck
off
,” I said shortly. There was something wedged beneath my left shoulder blade, something warm and hard that felt a lot like a key. If I could only get my fingers far enough round . . .

He moved closer, and before I’d realized what he was about to do, he shoved his hand roughly down the front of my dress. I felt a streak of pain as his cuff links dragged over my skin, and then his fingers closed over my bare breast and squeezed, hard, in a way that was presumably meant to be erotic.

It wasn’t.

I didn’t even think about it. There was a ripping noise like a snarling cat, and my knee connected with his groin so hard that he didn’t even cry out, he just toppled slowly to the floor, making a kind of weak, gasping whimper.

And I burst into tears.

S
ome twenty minutes later I was sitting on the bed in my cabin, still sobbing and wiping borrowed mascara off my cheeks, and Ben was crouched next to me, one arm around my shoulders and the other holding a tumbler of ice against his crotch.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice still croaky with suppressed pain. “Please, Lo, please, stop crying. I’m really sorry. I was a dick, a complete arsehole. I deserved it.”

“It’s not you,” I sobbed, though I wasn’t sure he could understand the words. “I can’t cope anymore, Ben, ever since the burglar I’ve just been— I think I’m going mad.”

“What burglar?”

I told him—between sobs. Everything I hadn’t told Jude. What it had been like, waking up, realizing there was someone in my flat, realizing that no one would hear if I cried out, realizing that I had no way of getting help, no chance of fighting the intruder off, that I was vulnerable in a way I’d never thought I was before that night.

“I’m sorry,” Ben kept repeating, like a mantra. He rubbed my back with his free hand. “I’m so sorry.”

His awkward sympathy only made me sob harder.

“Look, sweetheart—”

Oh no.

“Don’t call me that.” I sat up, shaking my hair away from my face, and pulled out of his hold.

“Sorry, it just— It slipped out.”

“I don’t care, you can’t say that anymore, Ben.”

“I know,” he said distractedly. “But, Lo, if I’m honest, I never—”

“Don’t,” I said urgently.

“Lo, what I did, I was a shit, I know I was—”

“I said
don’t.
It’s over.”

He shook his head, but his words, somehow, had stopped my crying. Maybe it was the sight of him, stricken, hunched, and so very miserable.

“But, Lo.” He looked up at me, his brown eyes puppy-dog soft in the soft bedside light. “Lo, I—”

“No!” It came out harsher and louder than I meant, but I had to shut him up. I wasn’t sure what he was about to say, but whatever it was, I was certain I couldn’t afford for him to say it. I was stuck on this boat with Ben for the next five days. I couldn’t let him embarrass himself more than he already had done, or this trip would become unendurable when we had to rub shoulders in the cold light of day. “Ben, no,” I said more gently. “It was over a long time ago. Anyway,
you
were the one who wanted out,
remember?”

“I know,” he said wretchedly. “I know. I was a twat.”

“You weren’t,” I said. And then, feeling dishonest: “Okay, you were. But I know I wasn’t the easiest— Look, that’s not the point now. We’re friends, right?” That was overstating it, but he nodded. “Okay, then don’t screw this up.”

“All right,” he said. He stood up painfully and swiped at his face with the arm of his dinner jacket, then looked at it ruefully. “Hope they’ve got an onboard dry cleaner.”

“Hope they’ve got an onboard dress mender.” I nodded at the rip all the way up the side of the gray silk dress.

“Will you be all right?” Ben said. “I could stay. I don’t mean that in a sleazy way. I could sleep on the couch.”

“You totally could,” I agreed, looking at the length of it, and then shook my head as I realized how my words sounded. “No, you couldn’t. It’s big enough, but you can’t; I don’t need you to. Go back to your cabin. For Christ’s sake, we’re on board a ship in the middle of the ocean—it’s about the safest place I could possibly be.”

“All right.” He walked, hobbling slightly, to the door and half opened it, but he didn’t actually go. “I—I’m sorry. I mean it.”

I knew what he was waiting for, hoping for. Not just forgiveness, but something more, something that would tell him that squeeze wasn’t completely unwanted.

I was damned if I’d give it to him.

“Go to bed, Ben,” I said, very weary, and very sober. He stood in the doorway a moment longer, just a millisecond
too
long, long enough for me to wonder, with a shift in my stomach that echoed the shifting sea, what I would do if he didn’t go. What I’d do if he shut the door and turned around and came back into the room. But then he turned and went, and I locked the door after him and then collapsed onto the sofa with my head in my hands.

At long last, I don’t know how much later, I got up, poured myself a whiskey from the minibar, and drank it down in three long gulps like medicine. I shuddered, wiped my mouth, and peeled off my dress, leaving it coiled on the floor like a sloughed-off skin.

I stripped off my bra, stepped out of the sad little pile of clothes, and then fell into bed and into a sleep so deep, it felt like drowning.

I
don’t know what woke me up—only that I shot into consciousness as if someone had stabbed me in the heart with a syringe of adrenaline. I lay there rigid with fear, my heart thumping at about two hundred beats per minute, and I scrabbled for the soothing phrases I’d repeated to Ben just a few hours before.

You’re fine
, I told myself.
You’re completely safe. We’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean—no one can get in or away. It’s about the safest place you could possibly be.

I was clutching the sheets with a rigor mortis–like grip, and I forced my stiff fingers to relax and flexed them slowly, feeling the pain in my knuckles subside. I concentrated on breathing in . . . and out. In . . . and out. Slow and steady, until at last my heart followed suit, and I could no longer feel its frantic pounding in my chest.

The drumming in my ears subsided. Apart from the rhythmic shush of the waves, and the low engine hum that permeated every part of the vessel, I couldn’t hear anything.

Shit.
Shit.
I had to get a grip.

I couldn’t self-medicate with booze every night for the rest of this trip, not without sabotaging my career and flushing any chance of advancement at
Velocity
down the drain. So that left—what? Sleeping pills? Meditation? None of that seemed much better.

I rolled over and switched on the light and checked my phone: 3:04 a.m. Then I refreshed my e-mail. There was nothing from Judah, but I was too wide-awake now to go back to sleep. I sighed and picked up my book instead, lying splayed like a broken-backed bird on the bedside table, and opened it to the last page I’d read.

BOOK: The Woman in Cabin 10
5.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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