The Decision (90 page)

‘Matt, I – I want you to drop this divorce and this whole case. Or at least think about it, very hard.’

‘What!’ He wouldn’t have anticipated that, from her of all people; he pulled on his cigarette, inhaled hard.

‘Yes. Please, Matt. It’s not too late.’

‘It’s far too late.’

‘No, it isn’t. Just think about it, at least.’

‘Scarlett, you really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I do. I really do. Look, I’ve seen divorce, don’t forget. Very first hand. With David. The ugliness, the way it distorts and destroys whatever is left.’

‘Nothing’s left, Scarlett.’ He sighed and leaned forward, poured himself another glass of whiskey.

‘Yes, it is. Oh, it probably is too late to save the marriage. I can see that. Although I suspect a part of you still must love Eliza. You adored her, all those years. I’ll never forget your wedding day, ever, how you looked at her when the registrar said you were man and wife.’

‘Scarlett—’

‘Just – please, Matt – just think, really hard. You’ll make everyone so unhappy. Including Emmie. And everything you’ve had with Eliza, every good thing, and there has been so much good, you know there has, along with the bad, it will all be wiped out and – and made ugly and horrible. And Emmie will have to live with that, if you go down this road.’

‘Scarlett,’ he said, his voice very quiet, ‘it is too late. We’ve both changed, so much. Said and done the most dreadful things to one another … we can’t go back now. Can’t salvage it.’

‘Even for Emmie?’

‘It’s for Emmie I’m doing all this, as you know perfectly well.’

‘Matt! You’re not doing it for Emmie, you’re doing it for yourself, for that bloody great ego of yours.’

‘That’s an unbelievably filthy thing to say. Jesus, I can’t believe this. I was going to ask you if you’d speak up for me in court, I can see there’s no future in that one—’

‘No, there isn’t. I couldn’t.’

‘Great. Well, nothing like kicking a man when he’s down. Thanks for nothing. I can’t believe you’ve come up with all this claptrap.’

She struggled to keep calm.

‘Matt,’ she said, very quietly. ‘All right, divorce Eliza, if you must. But – this custody thing, it’s so awful, it has to hurt Emmie, much, much, more than the divorce, can’t you find some way round that?’

‘Of course not,’ he said, and he sounded genuinely astonished. ‘I told you, it needs to be settled, we have to sort something out.’

‘Yes, of course you do, but in this way? This hideous, public, mudslinging way? With every sordid detail thrashed out in court, possibly reported in the papers—’

‘Of course it won’t be reported in the papers!’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Exactly the sort of thing people like reading about over their cornflakes, two high-profile self-centred adults fighting over an innocent little girl. A very intelligent little girl, moreover, who loves both of you so much. It will be horrible for her, vile.’

‘It will not be horrible for her,’ he said, ‘she won’t know about it, not the bad stuff, you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about, Scarlett—’

‘Please don’t swear at me.’

‘I’ll swear if I want to, you brought this up and it’s fucking outrageous, it’s nothing to do with you, nothing whatsoever—’

‘Yes it is,’ she said, ‘it is to do with me, because I care about Emmie—’

‘And I don’t, I suppose?’

‘Not as much as you say you do, no, I just don’t understand how you can be putting her through this. She’s a little girl, she’s the completely innocent party, that’s the phrase isn’t it, and you’re just making her a pawn in this hideous game of revenge you’re playing—’

‘It is not revenge,’ he said and his voice was icily, terrifyingly calm, ‘I want her to be safe, I want to see that she’s properly looked after and safe—’

‘No! You don’t! You want to win her, and win this horrible fight, and you know something, Matt, win or lose you’ve lost anyway, because you’re ruining her life for her. Doesn’t matter about yours, doesn’t matter about Eliza’s, but it does matter about Emmie’s—’

‘You are totally out of order,’ he said, standing up, ‘and I’m going.’

‘Good. And don’t come back.’

Matt drove rather carefully home. He’d had at least one too many whiskeys; when he got there, it was late. The house was in darkness, apart from a light in the study.

He went in very quietly, opened the door; Eliza was asleep, on the sofa with the TV still on. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt; her face in repose looked younger, more vulnerable. He stood looking down at her, and it hurt, even that, seeing her as she had been, when they were happy. Happy and hopeful. He had removed all the pictures of her from his desk, for the same reason. He just couldn’t bear to look at the past. At the happiness.

She woke up suddenly, and saw him, and just for a moment, she stayed there, held in what had been, her eyes soft, pleased to see him. And then she was back, back in the present, and so was he; and she turned away from him, picking up her coffee cup, standing up, walking to the door, brushing past him.

‘You all right?’ he said, and then, ‘how’s Emmie?’

‘We’re both fine,’ she said. ‘Please excuse me. I want to go up to bed.’

‘Fine. But at some point, we have to have a conversation about Summercourt. You’ll remember the terms of the trust no doubt—’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘I wonder if it will be possible for you to pay me your share of the value, which would now be something in the region of twenty-five thousand pounds.’

‘Matt, you know perfectly well I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t give you five thousand. Or five pounds, probably.’

‘Right. Well in that case, I shall have to buy your share. When the divorce is final.’

‘I will never let you do that,’ she said, ‘never.’

‘I shall go to court and get an order for sale and I shall win.’

‘Matt, you can’t do that, take Summercourt away from me, it’s not yours, it belongs to our family.’

‘Well, unfortunately your family was unable to afford it. Oh, don’t worry, your mother wouldn’t be homeless. I’m very fond of her, as you know. I’d buy her a nice little cottage nearby. So that she could stay in touch with her friends. But I’m very seriously considering selling the place.’

‘Selling it!!’

‘Yes, I don’t think I want it any more. I bought it for – for—’ He stopped. Looked at her. And the years rolled away, just for a moment, and they were both back there, back at that day, laughing over the sky-blue-pink door and the modern windows, and her realisation that he had bought it for her, and she remembered kissing him in the lawyers’ boardroom and telling him she loved him. And they remembered too, each knowing the other was remembering, the night in the orangery when he had taken formal possession of the house – and of her. And they stared at one another quite shocked at the vividness and the happiness of that memory: and then it was gone and the bitterness and the anger and the power games were back.

‘Well, it’s worth a lot, and—’

‘Matt, you’ve got so much money—’

‘Not quite as much as I did have. Times are becoming harder in my business. In every business, you should read the papers occasionally, it’s all to do with the price of oil. And anyway, I always really rather fancied Surrey, so much more convenient and easy to get to on Friday nights …’

‘Matt, you couldn’t,’ she said and her voice was little more than a whisper, ‘you couldn’t sell Summercourt, even to hurt me.’

He said nothing; she sighed heavily and stood up.

‘I’m going up to bed,’ she said, ‘I’ve had enough.’

He watched her as she went up the stairs, a skinny, almost childish figure, and that was like the past again too, and he closed his eyes against the pain and sat down in the study, on the sofa where she had been, and fought down the grief.

Scarlett was wrong; he didn’t still love Eliza. And nor did she love him. The love they had felt for one another, so strong, so joyful, so good, was gone, it had died; they had killed it between them, and it had become a still, cold thing, quite lifeless, with no shreds of warmth or happiness left, and there was no hope for it, no hope of bringing it back, of reviving it, and all they had left of it were memories, and they were not enough.

And the pity of it, the dreadful sadness overwhelmed him entirely, and he sat there, not even weeping, just filled with a terrible remorse for what he had done not only to Eliza, but to himself as well, remorse and shame and an equally terrible bitterness for what she had done to herself and him.

All that he had left now was Emmie; and with every day he became determined to keep her.

‘Eliza Shaw, Toby Gilmour.’

‘How do you do?’ said Eliza.

She had been wondering, to the exclusion of almost everything else, what he would be like, this person who would quite possibly hold her future, and indeed Emmie’s future, in his hands. A person of infinite importance to her. Her initial impression was not overwhelmingly good: primarily of someone who was not going to be very sympathetic. But then – was she looking for sympathy? Probably not.

‘How do you do,’ said Toby Gilmour. His voice was at once clipped and quite deep; it would be liable to sound impatient, that voice, she thought.

He was tall and dark and extremely slim, with brilliant dark eyes, and heavy dark eyebrows, and a smile that came and went so fleetingly that it would have been easy to miss it. She would have put his age at early forties.

He was dressed very well, she noticed – was she ever going to stop thinking clothes mattered so much? – in a beautifully tailored dark grey suit, a slightly surprising pink-and-white striped shirt, and even more surprisingly, Gucci loafers rather than the obligatory lace-ups. Clearly he too thought clothes mattered. Absurdly that seemed a point in his favour.

‘Coffee?’ asked Philip Gordon.

‘Yes, please,’ said Toby Gilmour.

His voice was very nice actually, she decided. A bit like Jeremy’s but heavier. A sort of actor-y voice. Well, barristers were supposed to be actors manqué.

They sat down at Philip Gordon’s low table and Toby Gilmour started immediately spreading notes and papers across it, not waiting for any further niceties; he had good hands, she noticed then, and on his wrist was a very beautiful, classic gold Cartier watch, the sort of watch she most liked, clearly decades old, and the cuffs of his shirt were fastened with heavy gold, plain cufflinks.

‘That would be lovely,’ said Eliza.

‘Right. All well with you, Toby?’

‘Yes, yes, fine, thank you. Busy, of course. Tristram keeps us up to the mark. But that’s good.’

‘Indeed,’ said Philip and then, turning to Eliza, ‘Tristram Selbourne is the senior QC in Mr Gilmour’s chambers.’

‘Oh,’ said Eliza, ‘oh yes, I see.’ For God’s sake, she thought, say something half intelligent, you sound completely witless. And managed, ‘What a wonderful name.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? It’s said if it hadn’t been his real name he would have made it up,’ said Toby Gilmour.

‘Yours isn’t too bad,’ said Eliza, surprising herself. ‘For a barrister, I mean.’

‘Well – that’s good to know,’ said Gilmour briskly, with one of his fleeting smiles; she felt immediately silly. ‘Now, if we could just review your case so far—’

Concentrate, Eliza, for heaven’s sake, concentrate. This is your future at stake, not a party. And he was obviously not keen on small talk …

‘So I think that’s about the size of it,’ said Philip Gordon, ‘any questions for us, Toby?’

‘A few, yes. Do we have a date for the preliminary hearing?’

‘I got it just this morning. I haven’t had time to tell you yet, Eliza. A fortnight’s time. I checked with your clerk, Toby, and you’re free. Eliza, all right with you? Your husband can make it.’

‘Oh – yes, of course. It will have to be, won’t it?’

‘Not absolutely essential, but wise,’ said Toby Gilmour briskly. He managed another fleeting smile. ‘Now, Mrs Shaw—’

‘Please call me Eliza. Mrs Shaw makes me feel old.’

‘Eliza then. Now, you’re not defending your adultery, I see.’

‘No.’

‘Probably wise, under the circumstances. And that makes the custody case at least a little more clear-cut. Now your witnesses – you have, let’s see – well, your mother, not too good, I mean, forgive me, I’m sure she’s a delightful woman—’

‘She is actually, yes,’ said Eliza defensively.

‘I’m sorry. I was going on to say that a mother is not an ideal defence witness. As you must see. A tendency towards bias.’

‘Well – yes.’

‘Now, your friend Mariella Crespi. Tell me about her. What does she do?’

‘She lives in Milan. She’s married to a very rich man, she – she doesn’t do a lot, she’s a sort of – of society lady, she just hit the best-dressed list.’ She stopped. Aware that Mariella didn’t sound hugely impressive. ‘I’ve known her for a long time though,’ she said lamely, ‘and she knows everything that really took place in Milan, how I was looking after Emmie properly, how she was never left with strangers, not the pack of lies my husband claims.’