Friends & Rivals (50 page)

‘Did he?' Jack's expression visibly brightened. Lex had seemed totally noncommittal about London earlier, so this was good news indeed.

‘You know what? I'm shattered,' said Kendall, who suddenly looked it. ‘Do you mind if I cut and run?'

‘Of course not,' said Jack, kissing her warmly on the cheek. ‘Take care of yourself, Kendall, OK? And think about my offer.'

‘I will.'

‘Oh, and Kendall?' Jack called after her as she headed for the door.

‘Yeah?'

‘Merry Christmas.'

The streets of Mayfair were deserted as Kendall's black cab weaved its way south towards the river.

Christmas Eve
, Kendall thought sadly.
Everyone has somewhere to go. Family. Friends. Everyone but me.

Then she pulled herself together. She had family, albeit scattered and far away. More to the point, she had a friend, a friend she'd be joining for Christmas lunch tomorrow just as soon as she knew that Ivan had turned up somewhere, safe.
Thank God for Stella. Where on earth would I be without her?

Just then her mobile rang. Kendall leapt on it. ‘Ivan?'

‘No. It's me.'

Catriona sounded cold and distant. It was years since the two women had spoken, but the pain was still evident in Catriona's voice. Not knowing what to say – what
could
she say to the wife whose husband she'd stolen and whose family she'd destroyed – Kendall said nothing.

Catriona's next words shot through her veins like ice.

‘I'm afraid there's been an accident. Kendall? Are you there?'

‘Yes,' Kendall croaked. ‘I'm here. What happened?'

‘Drink-driving. The stupid arse downed the best part of a bottle of Jack Daniel's and wrapped his car round a tree on the Oxford Ring Road.'

Is he …?'

‘He's alive.'

The relief was so huge that Kendall thought she might vomit. She opened the window of the cab, letting in a blast of freezing night air.

‘But we don't know for how long.' Finally Catriona's calm, capable façade slipped. Kendall recognized the terror in her short, sharp intakes of breath. ‘He's in Intensive Care at the John Radcliffe. He hasn't regained consciousness.' The tears flowed freely now. ‘I don't know how things stand between you, but you're listed as his next of kin. Oh, Kendall!' Catriona broke down into uncontrollable sobs. ‘The doctors are saying he might not last the night.'

Jack walked along the paths of the St Martin of Tours cemetery, enjoying the crunch of gravel under his feet. It was early, not yet eight, but it was already shaping up to be a beautiful day, the sort of day that only LA could provide in the depths of winter. Above him a pale morning sky was beginning to burn through the mist and filter through the leaves of the giant eucalyptus trees. The air smelled of pine and honeysuckle and newly mown grass. Summer scents. They added to the sense of peace that Jack always felt when he came here. He'd never been a religious man – that was always Sonya's bag. But he had soul enough to appreciate the tranquillity of this church-
yard.

Crouching down by Sonya's grave, he swept away some dry leaves with his hands and laid down his flowers. In the early days he'd found it too painful to come here. It was too brutal a reminder of his loss. Later, the feeling became one of awkwardness. What sort of crazy person brought flowers to a dead person? But now, stretching out his long legs on the grass, Jack felt totally relaxed. He found he could talk with an easy sense of companionship, certain somehow that Sonya was there, she was listening. It beat therapy every time.

‘I miss her,' he confided. ‘I mean, I'm here, I'm with you, it's a beautiful day. I'm not unhappy. But I miss her more than I thought I would.'

The ‘her' in question was Catriona Charles. Ivan's car accident had been a terrible shock for all of them, even Jack. Pictures of his totalled Bentley printed in the
Sun
were shocking enough to make strangers wince. The car looked like a crushed Coke can, its entire front section obliterated by the huge tree Ivan had careered into at over eighty miles an hour. No one should have survived that crash, still less done so with their mental faculties intact. But then Ivan Charles always
had
had the luck of the devil.

After six weeks at the John Radcliffe Hospital, with Catriona dutifully visiting him for hours each day, the jammy bastard had made a full recovery. He would still need hours of physio, possibly for the rest of his life, and he was under strict doctor's orders to rest and avoid stress of any kind. Kendall had also made regular visits. The shock of what had happened seemed finally to have cleared the way for forgiveness, and there was no animosity towards her from Catriona or the children. Even Hector had hugged her in the hospital cafeteria, a moment that brought tears to Kendall's eyes.

‘I won't be able to manage you any more, you know,' Ivan told her, sipping his favourite orange juice that Catriona had brought in from Huffkins in Burford. ‘According to the quacks here, all I'm fit for is knitting.'

Kendall laughed. ‘Please! You wouldn't have the patience.'

She didn't say anything to Ivan, because she didn't want to risk upsetting him or precipitating a fight, but the truth was she'd already decided to quit the business. Jack's offer to join JSM was a generous one and kindly meant, but the thought of seeing Lex Abrahams at work every single day was more than Kendall could bear. He and Ava were happy, and she told herself she could be happy for them … but only from a distance. In any case, her heart just wasn't in it any more. The music business wasn't about music. It was about business. In the early days with Ivan, she'd enjoyed the fight, the constant battle to stay at the top of one's game. But not any more. She wanted to go home, to see her family, to start again. It was time to close this chapter and open a new one.

Jack had called Catriona a couple of times, but he knew from Kendall how Ivan still felt about her, and he was wary of doing anything that might jeopardize his recovery, or make a difficult situation worse. The times they had spoken, Catriona had sounded strange, agitated, as if she were in a hurry to get him off the phone. Reluctantly, Jack had taken the hint and backed off.

‘I spoke to Hugh Storey the other day,' Jack told Sonya. ‘You remember Hugh, from Oxford? The rower who looked like John Cleese? Anyway, he said Ivan was living with Catriona again. He ran into him at some lunch party in Woodstock and Ivan said he was happier than he'd been in years. You're going to tell me I should be happy for him, aren't you? Happy for both of them? Well, you're right of course. That's the trouble with you, Son. You're always right.'

At that moment a starling landed right on top of the gravestone. It hopped from foot to foot, observing Jack for a moment with its beady, amber eyes. Then it took off, swooping back up into the trees.

Jack grinned. ‘I get it. You wanna change the subject.'

He tried to think about something positive to tell her, some happy news to share. JSM was going great guns, but Sonya didn't want to hear about business. Eventually he said, ‘Lex is coming home today. I'm worried about him, actually. He's supposed to be setting up our new office in London, which he
was
excited about. But every time we've spoken recently he sounds like his cat just died.'

Jack would see Lex tonight at dinner. He hoped his fears were ill-founded, that he'd just been catching his partner at bad moments on the phone. But he couldn't shake the feeling that something was really wrong.

Lex gazed out of the plastic plane window at the familiar sights below. The wide grid of freeways, lined with toy-sized palm trees; the grey circle of smog surrounding the city like a carefully blown smoke ring; the tower blocks of downtown, incongruous in such a low-rise city, and dwarfed by the snow-capped peak of Big Bear behind them. This was LA. This was ‘home'. So why did it feel so alien? He'd been desperate to get out of England. But now that he was finally here, it hit him with a jolt that what he was running from could not be escaped with air miles. Geography couldn't fix a broken heart.

‘I'm gonna have to ask you to stow your computer, sir,' the pretty stewardess told him politely. ‘We've started our descent.'

‘Of course. Sorry.' Lex flipped shut his MacBook and handed it over. He'd had the figures open on his lap for the past three hours, but may as well have been staring at a blank screen.
What's happening to me? I can't focus on anything.

He'd finally done the deed and broken up with Ava last night. He'd assumed that she already knew things weren't right between them. He'd been so down and evasive with her lately, refusing to look at apartments for them to move into in London or to talk about summer vacation plans; barely touching her sexually. He'd given her all the signs. But when he actually sat her down and let her know it was over, she'd gasped and sobbed and wailed like a wounded animal. It was awful, just awful.

Today wouldn't be much better. He'd barely slept a wink on the plane, and tonight he had to face Jack and tell him that he wouldn't be moving to London after all. Someone else would have to oversee JSM's expansion. Lex had only offered to do it in the first place because the alternative was coming back to LA and spending every day with Kendall. But now that she'd turned down Jack's offer and reportedly quit the music business, there was nothing to stop him coming home. London winters were grey and bleak and long and unutterably depressing. One more and he'd end up on suicide watch.

They landed on time and for once Lex made it quickly through Customs and baggage claim. The heat mugged him the moment he stepped outside, the sunlight so bright he instantly began scrambling for his shades. Jumping into a yellow cab, he headed straight to Malibu. Patricia, his lovely Guatemalan housekeeper, was there to greet him, relieving him of his bags in the pristine white kitchen and offering to make him frittatas.

‘You look
theeen
, Mr Lex,' she exclaimed disapprovingly. ‘You go on a crazy diet?'

It's called unrequited love
, thought Lex.
I've been on it for a while.

‘Sit down, please. Eat. I cook.'

He stooped down to kiss her on the cheek. Patricia was so short she could be half-Munchkin. ‘Later,' he promised. ‘I need to sleep right now. But I have a dinner later, so will you be sure to wake me at six, latest?'

Climbing into his crisp, Egyptian cotton sheets, Lex felt as close to happiness as he had in months. Within minutes he sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

‘Would you like to order now, sir, or are you still waiting on your other party?'

The waitress looked at Jack with a mixture of pity and bewilderment. She clearly thought he'd been stood up by a date, but couldn't imagine how such an elegant, good-looking man would find himself in that position.

Irritated, Jack looked at his watch. Lex was forty minutes late and his cell phone was switched off.
Fuck it.
‘I'll order, please. I'll have the California roll, the salmon hand roll and the snow crab claws.'

‘Anything to drink?'

‘A beer. Asahi, if you have it.'

As soon as the waitress left, Lex came running over to the table at a jog. ‘Sorry. Really sorry. I overslept.'

From the crease marks imprinted on his cheeks, the wildly unkempt hair and the shirt buttoned up wrong, Jack could see he was telling the truth. ‘Rough flight?'

‘It was OK.' Lex ordered a beer and began attacking what was left of the bowl of
edamame
. Without preamble he announced, ‘I can't go back to London.'

Jack sighed. He'd been expecting something like this, but it was still depressing to have his suspicions confirmed. ‘You wanna tell me why?'

Lex told Jack about his break-up with Ava and the strain of having to play out their relationship in the public eye. ‘I wasn't comfortable with it from the beginning. Here in LA it was easy with me and Ava. But once we got to England and the media got involved and her father … it was all too much.'

‘I understand,' said Jack. ‘But—'

‘Look, no “buts”, OK?' said Lex harshly. ‘My mind's made up. I'm not asking your permission, Jack, I'm telling you. I won't go to London.'

‘Fine,' snapped Jack. Well this was rich! If anyone ought to be feeling angry and aggrieved here it was him, not Lex. He was the one being let down, with some half-arsed explanation about Ava Bentley. It made no sense anyway. In all likelihood, Ava would spend at least half her time in LA, maintaining her US career, so it wasn't as if Lex could avoid her.

The sushi arrived and they ate in silence. Jack had lost his appetite but Lex suddenly found himself starving, wolfing down roll after roll. Watching his partner stuff his face with
his
food, Jack finally lost his temper.

‘What the fuck is going on with you? If you're mad about something, why don't you just tell me? Because for the life of me I can't think of one reason why you should waltz in here, acting like a spoiled child and giving me the evil eye.'

Lex stopped, mid-mouthful. ‘You can't think of one reason?'

‘Not a one,' said Jack defiantly.

Now it was Lex's turn to lose it. ‘How about you fucking Kendall in London?' he spat, pushing his plate away. ‘How about that for a reason?'

For a moment Jack was too flabbergasted to respond.

‘How about the pair of you being all over each other at Annabel's on Christmas Eve? Or you trying to lure her back to LA to be with you? You know how I feel about her, Jack. How I've always felt about her.' There were tears in Lex's eyes. ‘How could you do that to me?'

‘But you were with Ava,' Jack protested.