The Judas Scar (6 page)

‘And you’re a lawyer?’ Will asked.

‘For my sins.’

‘Best corporate lawyer in the whole damn City,’ Ian said, like a puffed-up father boasting about his favourite son.

Luke shook his head. ‘Nothing great about being a lawyer. We’re just successful parasites.’

‘And that’s how you met? Through work?’

‘We met playing golf, actually. Luke joined the club last year. Met at the bar and hit it off in an instant. A mutual love of fine watches and fast cars.’ Ian laughed loudly.

‘And you, Will?’ Luke asked, ignoring Ian. ‘What do you do?’

‘I’ve a wine shop.’

‘Oh, it’s a fabulous shop!’ exclaimed Emma. ‘A real treasure trove.’

‘This is one of his.’ Ian held his glass up, the liquid inside like watered-down honey, sparkling pale gold in the sunshine. ‘From one of those mixed cases I bought from you last year at the opening of the shop.’

‘It’s very good indeed,’ said Luke.

The table fell silent again and Will listened to the sound of the children playing on the other side of the house, both happy now.

‘He’s also a wonderful photographer,’ Harmony said. ‘Really talented.’ Her compliment was delivered with too much enthusiasm, and to Will it sounded insincere.

‘I enjoy it, nothing more than that.’

‘What about you, Harmony?’ Luke said, turning his attention on to her. ‘What do you do?’

Will watched her fingers fiddling with the gold Tiffany heart at her neck. He’d given it to her on their tenth wedding anniversary and he loved how she played with it gently between her fingers.

‘I’m based at Imperial University, well, in offices opposite,’ she said. ‘I’m involved in business development.’

‘What field?’ Luke asked.

‘I’m a scientist by training. But I work in technology transfer, which is basically securing funding for various university-developed patented compounds.’

‘Oh, she’s not just a pretty face,’ Emma said, standing to clear the plates. ‘Harmony is the cleverest person I know.’

‘Of course I’m not,’ Harmony said.

‘You are,’ Emma said. ‘How many of my other friends have a Ph.D.?’

Ian leant towards Harmony. ‘Of course, we’ve got to remember who her other friends are. Not too many Ph.D.s required to book a spa day.’ He sat back in his chair and snorted loudly.

Emma ignored him. ‘Pudding?’

Everybody nodded and Emma picked up the pile of stacked plates and cutlery then started towards the French windows.

Harmony stood and reached for the bowl of salad.

‘No, you stay there,’ said Ian with dramatised weariness. ‘I’ll go. If I don’t I’ll get it in the neck for being lazy.’ He winked at Will again.

‘So, Dr English—’ Luke began.

‘Dr Hanney,’ Harmony corrected, raising her eyebrows and smiling.

‘My apologies. Dr Hanney. What was your Ph.D.?’

‘Functional genomics.’

Will reached across the table for the bottle of sparkling water and poured himself a glass.

‘And what area are you currently involved in?’ She laughed. ‘Are you sure you’re interested?’

‘Yes, I am. Very.’

‘Pharmacogenomics, the bit of pharmacology that deals with genetics and drug efficacy.’

Will watched her run her fingers through her hair then lightly touch the corner of her shirt collar. He turned away and looked across the lawn. Luke’s presence was impossible to ignore, impossible to laugh away, and with it came a rush of self-loathing and shame, as familiar as old toys found in an attic after decades of gathering dust. It didn’t matter how well Luke looked, it didn’t matter how in control of his life he seemed, how undamaged, Will couldn’t control the sudden twinges of shame and guilt.

‘We’re looking at the use of gene type to optimise the potency of a drug while minimising its side-effects.’

‘Personalised medicine?’

‘Exactly.’

A bird screeched above them. Will looked up. It was a circling crow, cawing high in the sky. It wheeled then flew over the house, its wings flapping strongly, with purpose. As it disappeared out of sight he heard his mother’s voice warning him about a single black crow flying overhead. She loved her superstitions and had an impressive catalogue of ominous rhymes for almost everything she encountered. He searched his memory for the one about a lone crow but couldn’t recall it.

‘… what you do sounds incredibly interesting,’ Luke was saying to Harmony.

‘It is. And, sadly, very poorly paid,’ she laughed. ‘But you can’t have everything, can you?’

‘Unless you’re Will, it seems,’ he said.

Will saw her lower her eyes as a slight smile passed over her lips.

‘Yes, I’m very lucky,’ Will said.

Luke and Will locked eyes then, like dogs assessing each other, uncertain and wary. Will gently stroked his thumb over the scar that crossed his palm. He had a vivid image of his blood falling unchecked onto the sun-speckled grass, felt again the tingle of exhilaration as Luke dragged the blade across his hand, remembered the pale skin parting, his blood flowing. A tremor shot through him as he recalled them pressing their hands together, blood and pain combining, wide eyes bolted on to each other, their hold tight.

‘We’re blood brothers now,’ Luke had said to Will with a trembling voice. ‘That means we’re joined. By blood. Like real brothers.’

‘You watch my back. I’ll watch yours,’ Will replied. ‘That’s what it means. We’ll be there for each other, forever.’

And then they smiled and tightened their grip as their mingled blood ran down their wrists and fell like tears on the earth.

C H A P T E R    F I V E

By five o’clock the terrace had fallen into shade and a chill had descended.

‘I think we should head off,’ Will said. ‘If we leave now we might miss the worst of the traffic.’

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘I should also go.You’re right, the Sunday traffic into London is dreadful.’

They walked through the living room and into the hallway. Luke picked up his car keys from the circular table in the centre. The spectacular red and orange flowers from the party still held pride of place despite their fading beauty, a handful of petals fallen like the first leaves of autumn.

At the front door Harmony kissed Emma and Ian goodbye and then looked at Luke. She offered her hand. He shook it and she felt herself blush.

Stop it, she thought. You’re behaving like a teenage girl. ‘It was good to meet you again, Luke,’ she said. ‘And amazing that you and Will were at school together.’

He smiled. ‘Well, I hope now Will and I have made contact we’ll be able to stay in touch.’

Harmony nodded. ‘That would be nice.’

Ian clapped Luke on the back. ‘Thanks for the game. Shame you played so damn well. I’ll give you more of a run for your money next time.’

Luke shook Ian’s hand then turned to Emma and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Lunch was delicious. Your children are charming, and you’re right, they certainly have a passion for Pavlova.’

Emma laughed. ‘They do.’ She paused and smiled at them all.

‘Perhaps we should do this again soon.’

Luke looked directly at Harmony. ‘I’d like that.’

She reached for Will’s hand and took hold of it before nodding.

‘We would too.’

The three of them walked out of the house and across the driveway towards the cars, their feet crunching over the silence. They paused beside Luke’s dark grey convertible Audi, its alloy wheels shining like polished silver medals. He pointed his key at the car and it flashed its lights in greeting.

Luke and Will faced each other and Harmony felt the tension between them return. Luke held out his hand. Will stared at it and for a moment Harmony worried he might not respond. But at last he reached out and took hold of it, their two scarred palms clasped.

‘It’s good to see you, Luke.’ Will seemed to hesitate, then he reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet. ‘Here’s my number,’ he said, handing him one of the shop’s business cards. ‘Why don’t you give me a call? Maybe we could meet for a beer?’

‘Sounds good.’ Luke took the card and smiled.

Will reached for Harmony’s hand as they turned to walk back to their car. She could feel Luke watching them. She glanced backwards and, sure enough, he was sitting in his car, door closed, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes locked on them. He didn’t move a muscle. There was no embarrassed look away. No smile. No reaction at all. He just sat there, impassive, watching.

Once in the car, Harmony expected Will to say something to her, but he was silent, his eyes distant, driving on autopilot. Every now and then his brow would furrow as if trying to work something out.

‘Seeing him again has thrown you, hasn’t it?’ she said at last, unable to keep quiet any longer.

He glanced at her and then nodded.

‘I spoke to him for quite a long time at Emma’s party. He’s … unusual.’ She paused, waiting for Will to reply. When he didn’t she pressed on. ‘And charismatic. Was he always like that? I mean, when you were friends at school?’

Still Will said nothing.

She turned to look out of her window. It was so frustrating how guarded he was when it came to his past. She loved to discuss things; she was a scientist, she liked answers. Her mother used to laugh at her when she was a young girl, always asking questions, determined to know why trees grew upwards and how clouds floated and why snowflakes looked like miniature paper doilies. Facts made life easier to understand. She’d asked Will so many questions over the years and had so many non-committal, one-word answers and dismissive shrugs in return. As far as he was concerned his past was irrelevant. It didn’t merit discussion; as unimportant, he said, as a lacklustre lover with a forgotten name. All that mattered was the present, was her, their life together. She’d accepted his secrecy because she’d had no choice, but now his past had been revealed like the tip of an ashen finger in the soil and she was desperate to uncover the rest. Especially about Luke. He fascinated her. There was something about him that brought to mind her father. Charismatic. It was a word she’d heard her mother use when describing him. Despite having spent night upon night dredging her memories for any recollection of the man that might be lurking in a corner of her mind, she had none. The image she carried was based entirely on a single photograph she had of him. She’d found it about a month after their mother’s death, when she and her sister finally mustered the courage to sort through her personal effects. They’d wedged a chair beneath the door handle of the new shared bedroom at their nan’s house. They’d put their mother’s beloved Ella Fitzgerald on the tape machine. Then they sat cross-legged on the floor, her sister holding a bottle of vodka and an expression of grim determination, their mother’s precious shoebox between them. They stared at it for a while then in one swift movement her sister tipped the bottle up to her lips, winced, and pulled the lid off the box. There were hundreds of letters inside. All written to their mother from their father. Harmony was staggered as she read them. They were beautiful; incredible expressions of love – poetic, ethereal, surreal even. They were written in curling handwriting with intricate doodles and motifs decorating the white space around words that struck Harmony as the most romantic ever written. As she picked up one of the letters a photograph fell from its fold.

Harmony gasped. ‘Is that him?’

He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He wore a loose white, unbuttoned shirt and stood on a table laden with wine surrounded by a group of people laughing and clapping along as he played a guitar. Her mother was amongst those at the table. She stared up at him with adoring eyes, her face sliced in two by the widest of smiles, love pouring out of every part of her.

‘Fuck him,’ her sister had spat as she snatched the picture off her. Harmony was about to protest but kept quiet when she saw the tears coursing down her sister’s cheeks. ‘I fucking hate him. I
hate
him.’ She grabbed the vodka and drank some more then scrabbled to collect the letters and shoved them back into the box with the photo.

‘We’re burning them all, the whole box of crappy, lying rubbish. He’s nothing, a ne’er-do-well and a wastrel, and I hate him.’

Harmony didn’t know what a ne’er-do-well or a wastrel was and wasn’t sure her sister did either. They were the words their nan used if she ever referred to him, but as the woman spent her spare time dressing Boris, her snappy pug, in miniature human clothes, Harmony had sense enough to know that not everything she said was necessarily the truth. While her sister swigged at the vodka again, Harmony inched her fingers towards the box, removed the photograph of her father and surreptitiously slipped it into her jeans pocket.

‘And I’m changing my name. I’m not having that stupid, hippy name he bloody chose a moment longer. I’m Sophie from now on, okay?’

Sophie was her sister’s middle name, the name their mother wanted to call her. The piercing look of anger in her sister’s eyes made her wonder if she was expected to change her name as well. The thing was she liked Harmony and wasn’t keen on Patricia – her own middle name – at all.

As she followed her sister downstairs, Harmony tried to work out why it was all her father’s fault anyway. Cancer was to blame for taking their mother away from them, not their absent father. He hadn’t been around for years and years. Why was her sister freaking out about him now? It didn’t make sense.

They found their nan sitting on the sofa reading the listings from the
Radio Times
aloud to the pug, who wore a hand-knitted pink cardigan with big blue buttons.

‘We’d like to burn this and everything in it,’ her sister announced. Her attempt to mask her vodka-slur made it sound as if she was pretending to be the Queen.

‘What’s in the box that you want to burn exactly, Starla?’ their nan asked sternly.

‘Letters from the wastrel.’

Their nan gestured sharply at the fire. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

‘And I’m not called Starla,’ her sister said, lifting her chin high.

‘I’m Sophie now.’

Their nan nodded and then the three of them watched in silence as the box went up in a rainbow of flames on the log fire.