The Touch of Innocents Read online

  K.C.’s eyes begged apology. ‘You know the pressure he’s under. The money people have moved in, they’ve laid off another fifty staffers, the newsroom looks like the Alamo.’

  ‘Before or after Santa Anna arrived?’

  ‘Izzy, you’re the best we’ve got, even Grubby has to admit that, but it also means you’ve got one of the best foreign postings we have and there are fifty people sniffing around to see if they can take it from you.’

  ‘That’s a compliment.’

  ‘Even your little pimp of a producer has put in an official request to join the reporting staff, based on what he’s done in the weeks he’s been filling in for you.’

  ‘How long is it now?’ She furrowed her brow and tapped her forehead. ‘God, there are still things in here which simply don’t connect.’

  ‘We’re into December, Izzy. Nearly six weeks since you last had anything on air. And they’re building up for a civil war in Ukraine. Grubby wants you in Kiev not …’

  ‘Not flat on my back with my feet up in some part of the world he’s never heard of.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’ She hesitated. ‘You’ve also got this letter, Izzy.’ She reached inside her shoulder bag and retrieved an envelope. ‘It says three weeks. It says be back in three weeks, by Christmas, or they are terminating your contract. That taking off without letting anyone know where you were going was a hanging offence. That in the last three years you’ve clocked up more sick leave than anyone in the office.’

  ‘Being pregnant is not an illness,’ she replied testily.

  ‘Izzy, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘You’ll be back. Please say you’ll be back. Don’t let those miserable men with the clammy hands push you out.’

  The night was silent. The wind had dropped as the rain began to make itself known, the storm was almost upon them. They were back beneath the great oak, but the leaves had stopped falling. They were all gone. The tree stood stark and bare. Winter had arrived.

  ‘My baby. My husband. And now my job?’ Izzy replied at last. She shook her head. The words of her award-winning report from Gaza, unscripted, the camera no more than a blur through the tears, the blood of her friend still damp on her hands, were forcing their way back into her memory.

  ‘In this land there are no victors, only victims. No children who are not soldiers, no difference of view which does not make enemies, no freedom which does not mean the persecution of others, no justice. In this land the utmost barbarities are committed in the name of God and love by extremists on all sides. And tonight they have claimed one more innocent victim. His name was Dan Morrison. He was my friend.’

  In a green and pleasant land many miles away from Gaza, the tide of personal injustice seemed to have become a flood and about to carry her away as just another helpless victim. The rain began to fall, heavily, trickling down her face.

  ‘I’ll let Benjy decide. I’ve still got him. I’ll let Benjy decide.’

  But it was not to be.

  Michelini slammed full into the wall, the impact driving the breath from his lungs and forcing the taste of bile into the back of his throat. His heart hammered against his aching ribs, a searing pain like a razor-cut stretched from his left ankle all the way up to the back of his knee. He thought he might vomit. He was about to slump to his knees but knew that in doing so he would concede not only the game and the ten dollars but also his sense of virility. He would die standing up, not on his back. On second thoughts, dying on his back offered amusing prospects, but not during a game of squash. Instead of expiring, he settled for a slow and methodical retightening of his shoe lace. He had found himself retying his shoe laces a lot recently.

  ‘Can’t you afford new laces, Joe?’ his opponent enquired with a knowing smirk.

  ‘With what you lawyers charge? Gimme a break.’

  ‘OK. Last game. You win and I’ll buy lunch and new laces.’

  ‘Yeah. And charge it back to me in your bill with a goddamned mark-up. Creep.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s been creeping. You put on more weight or something?’

  ‘Screw you.’

  ‘We aim to please. But you know I charge by the full hour. Way out of your endurance league.’

  Michelini decided to save his breath and responded with a gesture involving his little finger and its pinky ring before retrieving the ball from a far corner of the court. So he was a pace slower today; he was as fit as ever – well, would be if he gave up smoking once again – but he’d not been in the mood since he had heard about Bella. He’d been home most evenings alone, brooding, trying to work out the anger which had been growing within.

  He felt cheated. He had scarcely seen Bella for more than a few weeks during her short life and then only at nights when he wasn’t travelling or working late. There had always seemed to be plenty of tomorrows for catching up. He was too used to not seeing her; he scarcely knew her, his own baby. Couldn’t even focus on what she looked like. And because he also felt ashamed that he did not feel her loss so very much more, he turned the sense of shame into anger aimed at his wife.

  Then, last night, there had been a knock at his apartment door. A neighbour, a woman newly arrived in the Watergate complex with whom he’d exchanged pleasantries in the elevator about the turning of the leaves and the previous weekend had lent a hand with some bulky shopping. She had knocked about half eight, thanked him once again for his help and asked if he’d had dinner, would he fancy a hamburger and bottle of wine? He was about to explain that he’d already eaten and anyway was on a diet and didn’t want to be disturbed when he noticed she was already carrying the McDonald’s and Montrachet. She meant business.

  He had stuffed two quarter-pounders and finished most of the bottle himself while, in between hamburgers, she had satisfied some of her own appetites. They hadn’t even left the sitting-room floor and he could still feel the carpet burns. When it became apparent that she’d be going for more, both before and after apple pie dessert, he’d had to fake it, and he wasn’t as good at that as he used to be.

  This morning he’d felt like one of last night’s french fries; no wonder he was a pace slower. And he still didn’t know her name. Better ask the concierge.

  It had been the first time he’d done it in the family home. He had a sense of family ethics that you didn’t cheat on your wife in her bed or on her living-room rug, you kept that for elsewhere, separate from the family. But he felt that she – it was ‘she’, not ‘Izzy’, he’d already embarked upon the mental process of divorce – that she had cheated him far more fundamentally than he had ever cheated on her. He was not even two full generations away from the old country concepts of family and vendetta; somehow it passed through the blood that there were no situations in which no one was to blame. This had to be someone’s fault. Her fault.

  Usually he’d announce some of the more adventurous details of his conquests to his lawyer, Antonini, just before they played an important point so as to consume his opponent with titillation and second-hand lust just when he needed all his powers of concentration. He decided against it this time; it might seem inappropriate and even incriminating on the day they’d agreed to extend the game into lunch in order to discuss his matrimonial problems. In any event, he felt invigorated by the memory and once again set about persuading himself that he looked, felt and played younger than he was. He pummelled the ball and started the new game.

  They were towelling themselves dry when Antonini got down to business.

  ‘You sure, Joe? About this divorce?’

  ‘I’m sure. The marriage is going nowhere, doesn’t really exist. She’s never here, always off with God knows who doing God knows what.’

  ‘Double values, Joe? You’ve been no saint, either.’

  ‘All that counts is it’s over. One big, fat zero.’

  ‘Pity. I thought you two had such a good thing going. I’d hate to think you were – you know, simply going through one of those phases.’ He�
�d meant to say ‘patches’, but now it was out. ‘A lot of men do, Joe, and regret it like hell after.’

  Michelini’s eyes flared. ‘What? You think I’m going through the male menopause?’ His tone was aggressive; he was naked, suffering that feeling of inadequacy borne by many men in the locker room, and covered that inadequacy with belligerence. ‘Thanks, Toni, but my hormones are working great – good enough to give you another thrashing on the court any time you want. No, I’m not going through one of those phases, it simply that my marriage is down the pan and I want you to help me clean the mess up.’

  Antonini backed off, waving his hands. ‘Fine, Joe. I hear you loud and clear.’

  But Michelini was in gear, wanted to get it out of his system. ‘It’s never been much of a marriage. All she wanted was kids so she chose me as some form of farmyard stud. Rent-a-dick. “Is it your fertile time of the month, dear, or shall I roll over and reread yesterday’s newspaper?” I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning in her hormones. She goes on about motherhood yet there she is every day trying to prove to the entire fucking world she’s got bigger balls than the next man. I wanted a wife, a real woman, Toni, not some flak-jacketed Amazon who travels the world with a camera lens poking out of her knickers.’

  He threw his damp towel bitterly across the room where it flopped into a large hamper. ‘She wouldn’t even call herself Mrs Joe Michelini. What’s wrong with that, for Chrissake?’

  The lawyer’s tone was smooth, professional, but pressing. And once more inappropriate. ‘Have you thought about the kids?’

  ‘Kid, Toni. Kid. We’ve only got one now. She killed Bella, remember?’

  Michelini, completely naked, squared up to the lawyer with his arms hanging stiffly at his side and his fists clenched. He felt guilty about Bella, wanted to take a swing at someone. He was beginning to attract the attention of others in the locker room.

  ‘Easy, Joe. I’m only doing my job, I have to ask these questions. You’ll thank me for it later.’

  ‘The kids should never have been dragged halfway round the world by a mother who even then would take off at the drop of a hat and disappear for a week or more. Kids need a mother, not to be dumped with a string of agency nannies who don’t even speak proper English.’ His chest heaved as he fought to control his own passion. ‘They also need a father, yet because of her I scarcely knew them. Now with Bella I’m never going to get the chance.’ He jammed a college ring back on his finger with a violence that must have hurt, but he did not flinch. Rather his voice grew quieter, more disciplined, the words like ice.

  ‘She is a completely irresponsible mother, Toni, and in a million years I’ll never forgive her.’

  ‘Try not to make it all too bitter, Joe. That’s the way things get messy. Expensive.’

  ‘No worries. My company’s backing me on this one, it’s agreed to pay every cent of my legal costs. No expense spared this time around. Don’t let it go to your head, you bastard. Just make sure I win.’

  ‘If it can’t be done neatly and cleanly, she’ll fight. She’s got to protect her professional image as Miss Clean, won’t accept being pilloried as an unfit mother.’

  ‘But she is an unfit mother. That’s the whole point. And she may find it more difficult to contest than she thought.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Michelini turned to look into the mirror as he adjusted his silk tie. He was all control now. ‘Because she’s away so much she left it to me to sort out the bills and family finances, that sort of thing. Gave me power of attorney in case anything happened to her.’ He finished the knot with a flourish and turned to face the lawyer. ‘I have control of her bank accounts.’ He paused. ‘Sadly, we hit a lot of unusual family expenses recently. When she gets round to looking into her accounts, she’ll find nothing but a rainstorm of red ink.’

  ‘You cleaned her out? But she can sue the pants off you for that.’

  ‘If she wants all her dirty underwear spread out in public, sure. And if she can find a lawyer to work for her for love and no money. So I’ll be reasonable, we’ll compromise. I shall let her have a clean and quiet divorce. I won’t drag her reputation through the mud. I’ll even replenish her bank accounts. All on one condition.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘She killed my baby girl. I’m not going to let her have that chance with my only son, Toni, not if I have to fight her in every court in the land.’ He slipped into his jacket, flexing his shoulders as though the well-tailored suit was his armour and he was once again ready to do war with the world. ‘I want custody.’

  She stared without comprehension at the face at the foot of the bed. Too much had collided in her mind that day and it had left her drained and disorientated. Shortly after breakfast she’d heard he was looking not just for a divorce but custody. War, with Benjy as the battlefield and her fresh out of ammunition.

  There was physical pain, as though someone were wrenching out a tree which had its roots growing deep within her. She saw life through a haze of unreality, the sterile and polite conversations around her bed echoing like the hollow laughter of a cocktail bar, the walls drawing in, closing down her world, stifling her. While she was there, idle, they would be plotting to grab Benjy. She had to get out.

  When she had raised her intention of discharging herself, they had not been unsympathetic. Her physical progress was excellent, her neurological signs improving, as long as she didn’t overdo it the change of scene and stimuli might do both her and the child good. They had suggested – firmly, to the point of insistence – that she spend ten days as an out-patient in the neurology department and then, with fortune and continued progress, she would be free. Another check-up in three months, again six months after that, and they could pronounce her recovered. A minor miracle of the medical profession on which they could congratulate themselves.

  It was only at the point when she began to focus on escape as reality rather than theory that she came to realize what a huge step it entailed. She was a woman in a strange land, penniless, with neither possessions nor friends, and a young child in her charge, lacking even a means of proving her identity. Such practicalities had seemed so unimportant – up to now. Where did she start trying to pull it all back together?

  She was stumbling through an undergrowth of tangled personal details when out of the blue he was there, waiting to catch her as she fell.

  ‘Hello. How are you getting on?’

  She gazed at him in some bewilderment. ‘I know you but …’

  A hand reached out. ‘Paul Devereux. Remember? You interviewed me, a few months ago.’

  ‘Of course …’ The soft, watery pale blue eyes, the clipped sentences. ‘I’m sorry. It’s as though you’ve stepped out of a past life. I don’t associate you with this world.’ She waved her hands around her, extending one to meet his greeting. The lights were beginning to switch on. ‘You gave me an exclusive.’

  ‘And you gave me a bloody hard time.’ His expression implied no hard feelings.

  ‘If I remember correctly,’ she replied, tenaciously but not unkindly, ‘you played the male politician and expected me to play the little lady. Foreigner, too. Easy meat, you thought.’

  He took the challenge in his stride. ‘Indeed, it hadn’t passed my attention that you were both a foreigner and an attractive woman – if one is allowed to remark on such things in these politically correct days of ours.’ He shrugged to indicate he was a hopeless case. ‘And by the time you’d finished I felt in need of a visit to one of my own casualty departments.’

  ‘Something like that,’ she nodded approvingly.

  ‘No need to worry. The scars have almost healed.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried, Mr Devereux,’ she assured him, rejecting with a smile his appeal for the sympathy vote.

  ‘No, I didn’t suppose you were. I see you are regaining your strength. Practically fighting fit, I’d say.’ He was enjoying the banter. ‘I’m delighted.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I
beg your pardon?’

  ‘Sorry. I mean, why are you here? It’s not every day a Government Minister drops in to check my vital signs.’

  He chuckled. ‘As Secretary of State for Health, hospitals were very much part of my world, and this hospital in particular. This is Weschester, my constituency, you see, and I make a point of dropping by every month.’

  ‘I don’t have a vote, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Voters hold sway perhaps once every four or five years, Miss Dean. Chickenfeed compared with the power wielded by you and your colleagues in the media. But this is merely a social call. Heard what a remarkable recovery you’ve staged. Wanted merely to find out how you were progressing.’

  She told him she was leaving hospital. He seemed dutifully concerned. She admitted that it was going to prove rather more complicated than she had realized. Should’ve asked K.C. for help, but hadn’t thought …

  ‘As your local Member of Parliament ad interim, perhaps I can help.’ His smile was warm, well practised. A political smile. To be ignored. Yet in those remarkable blue eyes, where feelings can rarely be hidden, she thought she could detect more than a merely professional interest. Not entirely avuncular, either.

  ‘I have nothing, absolutely nothing, but the hospital gown I am wearing.’

  Aware for the first time that she was a shade underdressed, she moved across the room to her dressing gown.

  As she put it on she couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. She hadn’t lost weight as quickly as she would have liked after the second birth, her breasts were heavier and she wasn’t wearing a bra, and the muscle tone she’d been building to lift and tuck everything back to its former shape had largely dissolved with the extended bed rest. It bothered her that he was looking, but only because she wasn’t at her best. The style in her dark red hair was gone and she felt dowdy, unattractive. Very post-maternity. Once again she was left wondering if there could be life after birth.