8. Natalie

8

NATALIE

I was eight when Stephen was attacked. Instead of a full picture, I have blurry snapshots. I’d been at my primary school for almost a year, and I still missed my former prep school. The prep school I had to give up when the successful private wealth firm Dad managed with his oldest friend, Bob, went under, courtesy of a Ponzi scheme good old Bob had concocted.

Bob went to prison, while my parents and lots of their friends lost their life savings. Dad was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, but the financial regulator found that his lack of awareness and failure to ask questions of his partner amounted to gross negligence and struck him off. He was no longer permitted to work in finance.

Obviously, my full understanding of these details came much later, just as my full understanding of the atrocities Adam Wright inflicted on my brother came much later. I was young, and I was shielded from the worst of both events.

All I knew was that we couldn’t pay for private school anymore, so Stephen and I were uprooted from our friends and thrust into the local state schools. We couldn’t afford our mortgage anymore, either, so the bank foreclosed on our comfortable, stylish home in a quiet cul-de-sac and we found ourselves in a squalid eight-hundred-square-foot council flat in Croydon. I traded in my beautiful pink bedroom for a tiny box room.

That was the worst part, by far.

I think Mum cried for a solid six months.

That’s one of the things I remember most clearly, even before Stephen’s attack.

But back to the attack itself. I clearly remember my teacher telling me gently that I was going to the after-school club that day because my mummy couldn’t come to pick me up just yet. Auntie Jan came eventually and took me back to her house, where she explained that Stephen was in hospital.

When I was allowed to go visit him, he looked like a mummy, his head and body all bandaged up, with plasters over his nose and just one big black eye peeking out.

I screamed when I saw him. I remember that much.

They couldn’t get me me stop.

The man standing before me in Alchemy’s airy meeting room is immaculate.

That strikes me as the most unfair part.

He’s tall and golden-skinned and wonderfully proportioned, so much so that the designer in me can’t help but marvel at how perfectly his frame was built to wear a suit. Rather than look at his face, I focus on his jacket. I swear that’s Brioni. It’s got to be. Those lapels are definitely hand rolled. Hand stitched. The perfect way it moulds to his body suggests there’s a layer of canvas adding structure under that super-fine wool exterior.

Exquisite.

The workmanship, that is.

Guessing the label behind each outfit is a game I play with myself most evenings when I’m welcoming guests at Alchemy. If the people-watching is good here, then the clothes-watching is off the charts. But usually it’s a diversion.

Right now, it’s a coping mechanism to stop myself from spiralling into all-out panic.

It’s my fault for turning up ten minutes late, right on his tail. If I’d been here on time, Gen might have been able to give me a quick low-down on what the fuck is going on. As it is, I only gave the London transport system five minutes’ margin for error when calculating my short bus journey from Soho, where our studio is, when I actually needed fifteen. But I was desperate to get that bloody fabric order in before I got changed and made up for this evening’s shift.

And now I’m here, and he’s here, and he’s looking at me, and I’m trying not to look at him, and Gen is standing in a sort of triangle with us, and the awkwardness is off the charts. I’m also conscious that, in my rush and in the face of the severe case of nerves I’ve had all afternoon, I haven’t consumed nearly enough food to match the insulin my pump has dispensed into my bloodstream, a situation I need to rectify and will, indeed, rectify just as soon as I’m done here.

I’ve got a chicken salad wrap in my bag, barely touched. I tried, but it turned to doughy stodge in my mouth. I’ll shove it down as soon as I get a chance, but not in front of him. Not while my stomach is churning with nerves and fear and revulsion, like simply being in the same room as him has me in danger for my life.

‘I realise a formal introduction may be unnecessary,’ Gen is saying with uncharacteristic stiffness. I don’t blame her awkwardness, because honestly, how do you make polite introductions between two people who are linked in the most horrifying way? ‘Nevertheless, Nat, this is Adam Wright, and Adam, this is Natalie Bennett, our host here.’

‘How do you do?’ he asks, and I swear there’s a tremor in his voice, but I’m too busy trying not to scoff at his—presumably rhetorical—question to marvel that he may actually be nervous.

Though I’m glad if he is. It would be an offence too far if he was cavalier about this meeting.

I don’t grace him with a reply, but I do risk a glance up at his tanned face. At the perfectly trimmed dark beard, the mop of dark curls. At the eyes that you’d expect to be brown but are, in fact, a pale, clear blue. Eyes that a person might find attractive if they didn’t know the rottenness of the soul they reflected.

I give him a curt nod. ‘Hi.’ He’s lucky to get that much, frankly. But happily for him, I’m feeling like crap, and I really need to eat, so I’m not going to make this meeting any more difficult than it already is. For any of us.

Gen hands me a clipboard with the NDA on it, which I sign before sitting and tugging the fabric of my dress over my thighs. I’m in my host’s uniform, wearing a sleeveless black minidress whose modest crew neck offsets the scandalously high hemline. It’s definitely not the best dress for sitting on such a low sofa, but I hope it doesn’t give Adam, or anyone else, an eyeful of the lace tops of my holdups or the insulin pump stuck to my outer thigh, plainly visible through the fishnets .

My continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, is on the back of my right upper arm this week, covered with one of the cute black patches I’ve customised for work, embellishing them with the ornate Alchemy A picked out in tiny crystals.

Adam unbuttons the single button closed on his lovely jacket, his fingers long and dextrous, their movements easy. He sits, his gaze sliding fleetingly to my thighs before jerking back up to Gen, who’s already started speaking.

‘I realise this is a difficult situation,’ she’s saying now, ‘and that last night must have been quite a shock for you, Nat, so I appreciate you both coming in today.’ She clears her throat. ‘And I apologise for having you sign an additional NDA on top of your standard employee one,’ she says to me. ‘But this one is a little different. You see, Adam is in talks with us currently about buying out Wolff’s stake in our joint venture.’

I stare at her in what feels like shock but is floatier, like I can’t quite work out what she means, and I suspect my face reflects my confusion pretty well, because she hurries on like she’s panicked.

‘The talks have been going on for a few weeks, and last night was supposed to be Adam’s chance to take a look around the club.’ She glances at him. ‘He tells me he’s still interested in having Wright Holdings acquire it. But, and this is a big but , I’ve been very clear with him that…’

She keeps talking, at least I think she does, but shit. Shit . I can’t quite work out what she’s saying, because I’m getting dizzy, and it feels like my brain is swelling, and my hands are getting weak.

Oh dear God, no.

The pinpricks of sweat over my forehead, down my back, are instant. They’re everywhere. I swallow, and I try to clasp my fingers together, but they’re all floppy and useless, and now they’re starting to shake.

Jesus fucking shit shit God no no no .

She says my name, and it’s all echoey and distant, like she’s not sitting next to me on the sofa at all, and then another noise cuts through it.

A shout.

A man’s voice, and then a huge, dark shape rising and hurling itself at me. My vision has narrowed to pin-pricks now, and this nausea and general awfulness is rolling over me and over me, but his shout cuts through it all.

‘Fuck!’