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“What’ll it be, hon?” Nev, the landlord, asked, and I finally let go of Finn so I could unbutton my coat and hang it on a stand by the door. ‘Brandy, please. A treble, preferably.” I had naively imagined this might be a day for celebration but instead I found myself craving anaesthetic.
“No problem.” To my relief he reached past the cheap bottom-shelf bilge and pulled down a bottle of Rémy Martin and poured two inches into a glass without using a measure. “There you go – on the house, hinny. Another Jameson, lad?”
“Please.” Finn picked up an empty glass from the nearest table and took it over to the bar, where Nev gave him a similar measure to mine.
“Hey, doll,” Jay called, from where he and Al had been watching the television at the other end of the bar, “You’re on the telly!”
Finn and I joined the twins for the breaking news that ‘Bloody Lady B’ – just one of her tabloid nicknames – had been found guilty. The footage showed me leaving the courthouse with Jay as my battering ram. As we watched, one unfortunate photographer appeared to trip and tumble backwards, and his camera was reduced to its constituent parts on the pavement.
Finn laughed. “Jesus, that was you, wasn’t it, you ninja?”
I took a demure sip of brandy. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“What the fuck did he say to you?”
“I can’t remember,” I lied. “It was all a little ‘heat of the moment’.”
“Anyway, reckon we’ve just seen the best bit,” Jay said, and changed the channel to some anodyne daytime chat show. “Oh, and before I forget – your costume change.” He pointed to two black holdalls on the banquette seat behind him.
Throughout the trials of both Blaine and Coyle, I had dressed as Lilith Bresson, Controversial British Artist; vintage Yves Saint Laurent, Dior and Chanel, bright red lipstick and sleek, freshly-bobbed black hair. Finn, who knew all too well how to wear a disguise, had alternated between Hermés and Versace suits, and had been completely bewildered to receive countless offers of Sunday supplement fashion shoots from the moment the first images of the ‘Prisoner of Albermarle’ attending court had been released. Hilary Silverman, my agent, had spent weeks declining every single invitation on his behalf, and being far too polite in advising against any further intrusion.
It meant that the internet sites and gutter press columns that critiqued every detail of our appearance could only ever judge two carefully designed constructs, and each evening we could shed these costumes as if they were diseased skins and become real again. It had been a largely successful strategy except for one horrendous day when Blaine’s defending counsel had been intent on laying bare every vile detail of Finn’s ordeal and accusing him of being a willing participant.
That night, he had got blind drunk, taken his suit out onto our hotel balcony, doused it in lighter fuel, and ceremonially torched it.
“Cheers for this,” Finn said, and turned to me. “Will you be okay if I disappear for a couple of minutes?”
“Sure I will,” I reassured him. He finished his whiskey, picked up the bag and left to get changed. If a stranger had been there to watch him walk across the room they might have guessed that he’d stepped straight off a Milan catwalk, but he still limped from an unhealed knee injury, his perfectly-cut suit hid a frame that was a full stone lighter than it had been at the start of the trial – weight he could ill-afford to lose – and the royal purple silk tie had already been loosened so that it no longer placed any pressure on his throat.
I had to acknowledge the bitter truth: Finn Strachan was currently held together by nothing more than temazepam, nicotine and sheer bloody-mindedness.
Finn
Whatever that unfortunate photographer had said, it had been about me. Lilith could no more forget a detail like that than she could fly. Some lowlife had made an ill-advised wisecrack, and Lilith Bresson had dispensed swift retribution.
I knew how much Lilith detested the paparazzi who’d circled the courthouse like starving jackals since the first day of Blaine’s trial, and I felt as guilty as all fuck for letting her draw fire long enough to give me the opportunity to run. I’d tried to talk her out of it – like that had ever worked for me – but we both knew that I was still in no state to face that kind of ruckus, and that gave me the opportunity to hate myself just that little bit more.
I pulled a chair into the toilets and jammed it under the handle, then stepped into the nearest cubicle. I stood in silence until I was satisfied I was alone and shrugged my jacket off my shoulders. I knew my actions were not those of a rational adult, but that knowledge didn’t help me any. There were currently four other people in the whole place. Jay and Al had guarded us through the whole fuckfest of a trial, and as for Lilith, she had held my entire soul in her hands for the last ten months without dropping it once. That left the landlord, and that’s when my mind began to unravel with the complexity of it all.
Apparently Nev was a friend and former colleague of Ed, the police officer who had saved my sorry-assed life not once but twice, and whose judgement could therefore be trusted, and so far he’d supplied me with a pint of Stella Artois and nearly a quarter of a bottle of very decent Irish whiskey, but I’d only just met him and I’d known men with the same genial exterior who’d left me bleeding from more than one orifice on a bedroom floor just for the sport.
So many variables, and I was too exhausted to work them all through. Easier by far to step into a cubicle and slide the lock across before I did as much as unfasten a single button.
*****
I swapped my suit for jeans, white t-shirt and a red and black plaid flannel shirt, slid my feet into a pair of battered Converse boots, then removed the makeshift barricade so that I could get back to Lilith’s side. I’d managed the entire transformation without looking in the mirror once.
Lilith was already back at the bar, dressed in her travelling outfit of trainers, a threadbare grey jersey sweatshirt, and a pair of black yoga pants that made her backside look pretty damn amazing. She was hugging a portly, middle-aged man, the last member of our little party to arrive. As I approached, Ed Newton gave me a broad, genuine smile, put his pint down and held out his hand for me to shake.
At least I was spared my usual pathetic, private trauma of touch, or don’t touch? Ed was one of perhaps half a dozen people on the planet who understood that particular game, and despite his recent retirement from the police force he had attended the trial each day, just to support me and Lilith. I let myself return the handshake.
Ed released his grip after no more than a second, with a contained, “Well done, lad.”
I frowned. “What the hell for?”
“You got her.”
“Nah, not me. It’s Lili’s victory if it’s anyone’s.”
