‘As far as I know? London. Can’t tell you any more than that I’m afraid – mainly because I don’t fucking know.’
Jackson narrowed his eyes – no mean feat, given the puffy slits they’d been to begin with.
Adam held his hands up.
‘Honestly, mate, as far as I can tell, he’s not on the island. He sent an email saying he’d been called away to London. That’s literally all I know.’
Jackson took a couple of steps forward and all at once his face was right in Adam’s, and when Adam jerked his head back, a nasty little smile crossed Jackson’s face, and he was spitting as he spoke and you could almost feel the waves of rage emanating from him as he hissed directly into Adam’s ear that he could tell his brother that he was a fucking dead man. That anyone who tried to blackmail Jackson Crane was a fucking dead man.
And with that, Jackson turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, although not without shoulder-barging the doorframe on the way out.
With a deep sigh, Adam sank for a moment onto the armchair that sat in the curved bay window, pausing only to lift his feet up and let them drop on the big Louis Vuitton trunk in front of it that served as a coffee table, resting his heels on the copies of Home’s in-house magazine, Home Truths, fantailed across it. He stared out at the pitch-black sea.
Suddenly he felt absolutely spent.
One of the windows of the room was ajar and from the lawn, down below, he could hear the sound of music, a breaking glass, laughter. All in all, apart from Ned’s absence and Jackson’s coked-up tantrum, it had been a pretty typical Home launch, so far. It was also going to be his last. That was what Adam had decided. Come what may. Even if it cost him his marriage, even if it broke Laura’s heart, he could no longer be part of this. He did not expect to be forgiven. Not by Laura, not by Ned, not by anyone. He did not deserve to be forgiven. He had let himself down and he had let his wife down, not once but over and over and over. He had allowed terrible things to be done at Home, and said nothing. He had done terrible things himself.
He had burned the original Home Club down. Torched the fucking place. Well, Adam and two other guys from the club, both of whom had been paid well for their work and their silence. Adam? He had done it for nothing. He had done it for love. All those family memories up in smoke. All those old signed photos from over the decades, all up the stairs. All that history. Adam would never forget how he’d felt the next morning, Ned waking him with a phone call to tell him: ‘Bad news, mate, I’m afraid. Turns out there was some old thesp fast asleep in the gents last night . . .’ And Adam had dropped the phone, it had literally slipped through his fingers, meaning it was not until he picked it up again that he could hear Ned at the other end of the line, howling with laughter. In the years since, he had wondered whether Ned might not have found it almost equally funny if it had been true. Sometimes, with a shudder, he thought about what else he might have done, in those days, if Ned had asked him to, or told him the future of their business depended on it.
He had not been threatening Ned, when he had dropped that remark – was it only the previous afternoon? – about all he had done for the club, although he could see now how Ned had taken it that way. All Adam had been trying to do was point out how many risks he’d taken. How much he’d sacrificed. How much of himself he had allowed to be eroded, corroded.
Christ, he felt knackered. Adam checked his watch. Ten past midnight. Time to muster the energy to do a final round of discreet goodbyes – and then it would be back to his room to call Laura. To call her one last time while she still loved him and thought he was basically a kind and decent and worthwhile human being. Perhaps one of the only people in the world who actually thought that. For now.
Adam reached up and adjusted his mask back onto his face, not without effort. His arms felt like lead, his hands seemed to be hanging loose and heavy from his wrists. Jesus. It was as if not just one leg or one arm but his whole body had gone to sleep; his torso was tingling, his scalp felt stretched too tight over his skull. It was hard to tell whether the lights were fading and brightening or it was just his tired eyes playing up.