Nikki felt herself stiffen a little.
‘Yes, he was a huge supporter of Home, even early on. Everyone loved him, your dad.’
She was not lying. Not just a member but an early investor in Home as well, Ron Cox was the rare kind of superstar who knew your name, your pets’ names, had running jokes with the receptionists, always asked after someone when he did not see them on a visit. It was terrible to think of that person and know – from what Kurt had said at dinner, from interviews with the other children she had caught snatches of – how diminished that memory was, how far advanced his dementia. To think of that glimpse of him on the news, at an awards ceremony, frail and hesitant in his tuxedo, clapping and nodding along and smiling, rising like everyone else around him to his feet, seemingly totally unaware that he was the person being honoured.
‘What’s in the package, Nikki?’ he asked, earnestly. ‘I don’t know what game it is we’re playing, and it’s making me really anxious.’
For the first time in their conversation, Kurt took his eyes off the flames and looked up at her.
Nikki frowned, confused.
‘The package,’ Kurt repeated. ‘Last night after you left, Ned takes me aside and tells me he’s hiking my membership fees, gives me a figure so crazy I think I’m hearing things, right? My first reaction is to laugh, like this is some sort of initiation, a prank he’s cooked up. Because obviously this place is great but I wouldn’t pay that much to be a member, every single year. Nobody would, right? But Ned’s not laughing. No one else is laughing either. And he tells us all to expect a package, some sort of delivery. And I feel like everyone else in the room – Freddie, Jackson, Keith, Annie – understands something that I’m just not getting. Then this morning I get back from a swim and there it is, on my bed. And there’s something about this whole thing that makes me scared to open it – like it’s Pandora’s padded envelope, you know? Like I open this and things, I don’t know . . . change somehow. I’m probably being silly but . . . I just want to know what’s in it, Nikki. Can you tell me?’
There was a pleading look in his eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly.
Kurt raised his eyebrows at her response and she gave him a weak smile. She didn’t know, but she had a horrifying feeling she could guess. ‘I honestly have no idea what’s in the package – but I will find out for you.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m meeting Ned in ten minutes. I’ll speak to him. I’m sorry, I have to go.’
Nikki set off at a pace towards The Manor, calling up a number on her phone as she went.
It rang a couple of times before a slightly disengaged-sounding receptionist picked up.
‘Blackwell Row Chambers, to whom may I connect you?’
‘The office of Sebastian Shaw QC please,’ Nikki said.
There followed a momentary silence before the clerk picked up.
‘Hello? Hello, it’s Nikki Hayes here, from Ned Groom’s office at the Home Group. Look, I’m sorry to call on a Friday afternoon but I just need you to pull up a contract for him – it’s from quite a while ago. The Manhattan Home investment is what he’s after, from Ron Cox? Sorry, you know what he’s like – that’s all the detail I got, he just barks an instruction and expects me to guess the rest. Happy to wait while you look.’
She circled The Manor twice while she listened to filing-cabinet drawers being opened and shut on the other end of the line, her shoes crunching on the gravel.
‘Do you mean the loan agreement for eleven million dollars dated the seventh of August 1996? Or the termination of the loan dated the thirty-first of October 1996?’ he asked. She stopped, her feet suddenly feeling like lead. ‘Oh God, I’m not sure which he means and if I double-check he’ll go mad. What does a termination of loan actually mean?’