“Sure you don’t want food? Shepherd’s pie here is quite good.”
“No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” He orders and the waitress leaves. He turns to Holly again, takes a sip of his beer, then puts it down.
“With a missing kid, why not go straight to the police? Why come to me?”
“My family is well-known,” she says, happy to be back on comfortable ground. “The Darling family has been stalked by the media for years. The police would mean publicity—lots of it.”
“You mean like with Mad Michael?” he says, humming a few bars of the ditty. Holly grimaces. Michael, Wendy’s baby brother. Brilliant, quiet, and by all accounts kind in a way his siblings were not. Until the accident, which no one could explain—a sensible boy falling from the third-floor window of his house. After, he developed a penchant for misadventures large and public—disrobing in Hyde Park, waving wooden swords, claiming he could fly. It all culminated in a popular 1920s ditty, written when he tried to jump from his old nursery window naked, arms flapping as he crowed at the sky.
“I detest that song,” Holly says through gritted teeth. “But yes. Great-Uncle Michael, and other, more recent events. I’ve experienced it firsthand, and it was miserable. I have a son as well as my daughter, and I’d like to spare them both that.”
“Right,” he says, all levity gone. He looks her up and down, as if it’s his turn to assess her. “I read the newspaper coverage. The car crash was tragic. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
She’s startled and takes a sip of her tea to cover it. People never mention the crash to her. But there’s something in his face. The semi-smirk he’s worn since she sat down has disappeared, but it’s more than that. It’s as if he somehow understands what she’s lost.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Your daughter was born after, I take it? There’s no talk of her in the newspapers.”
Her hackles go up again, even though it’s rational—expected, even, given his profession—that he would have researched her before their meeting.
“You’ve been busy,” she says.
He shrugs. “It’s my job. How old is your daughter?”
She hesitates, sees him notice. “Eden’s biological age is thirteen, but she looks considerably older,” she says. “She was born with a rare disorder that ages her prematurely. It’s one of the reasons we’ve kept her life so private all these years.”
The we is deliberate, as if someone else has sanctioned Holly’s decisions. If Christopher catches it, he doesn’t follow up on it.
“Has she been in contact with her father?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then why would he be interested now?”
Holly thinks of all the uses Peter could make of Eden and shivers. “We’ve kept her very sheltered because of her health problems,” Holly says. “She’s been . . . bedridden for the past few years. I don’t think she’d be able to run away on her own. Her father is the logical person to facilitate something like this. And, to be honest, he might find it amusing to know I’m worried. Let’s just say he’s never really grown up.”
He asks more questions. About Peter, about what he looks like and what he does for a living, and she tap-dances around both of those. She invents a fake name, says she doesn’t know his occupation.
“He had a certain glow. Charisma. Like a movie star,” is what she tells Christopher.
Christopher also asks about Eden. Again Holly skirts the truth. She can’t simply say, Actually, I haven’t spoken to my daughter in years. She’s been in a coma all this time, and now she’s vanished, whether under her own power or someone else’s I have no idea. Nor can she share that for all of those years, she’s been taking large vials of Eden’s blood every month.
After a few moments he changes course. “Tell me about your business. Darling Skin Care?”
She looks at him, surprised. “You’re interested in skin care?”
He gestures to his face. “Can’t you tell?”
He’s still far too handsome, but now she sees the dark circles under his eyes, the way his skin looks weather-beaten, as if he’s spent too much time outside, the trace of a scar along one cheek. She looks at him uncertainly, and he laughs.
“Sorry. That was a joke,” he says. “I never accept a client without knowing as much as I can about them. How long have you been in the business?”