Private London

Chapter 6

A couple of hours later I sighed an inward breath of relief and undid my seat belt.

It took a couple of tugs. I turned to look at the young woman next to me who was effortlessly undoing hers, her attention never wavering from the e-book she was reading.

I had let Hannah Shapiro have the window seat and she had pulled the blind down, which had suited me just fine. A little bit of turbulence had been predicted and the fasten-seat-belt sign had lit up. I had got mine on a lot quicker than it took to get it off. Luckily the threatened turbulence hadn’t arrived!

I craned my head to look at the book that Hannah was engrossed in. ‘What are you reading?’ I asked her.

She didn’t look up. ‘The Beautiful and the Damned,’ she said.

‘Tender is the Night is my favourite novel,’ I said.

She looked up then, surprised. ‘Really?’

‘Really. And I know what you’re thinking.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘That a big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.’

There was a slight crack in the corner of her mouth. It might even have been a smile.

‘F. Scott Fitzgerald?’

‘The same.’

‘Tender is the Night – my mother’s favourite book.’

‘Are you going to miss her?’

‘I already do. She died, Mister Carter.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It was a long time ago. I was a child.’

‘What happened?’

‘I grew up.’

I decided not to press the point – Hannah clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Looking at her it seemed to me that whatever had happened it hadn’t been so long ago. She might have been nineteen but she still looked like a child to me.

‘Losing a parent is never easy,’ I said gently. ‘No matter how old you are.’

‘Are your parents alive, Mister Carter?’

‘My father died a few years back. My mother is still with us, thank God.’

She looked at me unblinking for a moment, as if searching for something in my eyes.

‘You should thank God indeed. You must cherish her, Mister Carter,’ she said finally. ‘There is nothing in life more precious than your mother.’

‘I do,’ I said, feeling a little guilty. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in over a week.

Hannah nodded as if my answer satisfied her.

‘It was cancer,’ she said quietly. ‘There was nothing they could do.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault, was it?’

I didn’t reply.

‘My father is a scientist, did you know? Extremely rich. Extremely clever. He couldn’t do anything, either.’

I nodded. She was right. Death just came at you sometimes. Sideways, from behind, head-on like a high speed train. And whichever way it came at you there was nothing you could do about it. I knew that better than most.

‘My father gave Mom a first-edition copy of Tender is the Night on their twentieth wedding anniversary. She treasured it like it was the most valuable thing in the world to her.’

‘Maybe it was…’ I paused for a moment. ‘After you, I should imagine.’

And got a smile this time. A sad one, though.

‘When she went it was like the light had gone out of the world, Mister Carter. All the warmth.’

‘Call me Dan, please.’

Hannah didn’t seem to be listening, lost in her own memories. ‘I feel sometimes that I’m still walking in the shadows, waiting for dawn,’ she said.

I thought of my mother and my dear departed dad and I knew how she felt. ‘The dawn does come,’ I said. ‘Eventually it always does come.’

‘Hope is the feathered thing.’

‘Emily Dickinson.’

‘You are a man full of surprises, Mister Carter.’

I let the mister ride and held my hand out. ‘It’s Dan, remember?’ I said.

‘I certainly do,’ she replied, shaking my hand and meeting my eyes this time and holding the grin. I smiled back at her myself. I was ahead of schedule.

‘I shouldn’t have told you my dad was a scientist,’ she said.

‘That’s okay. I know how to keep a secret. Kind of goes with the job.’

‘I guess so. I didn’t know they had private detectives in England. I thought it was all bobbies and police boxes.’

‘And some of us.’

‘Are you ex-police?’

‘Royal Military Police. Redcaps, we call them.’

‘You served overseas, then?’

‘I did.’

‘Like Jack Morgan?’

‘Jack was in Afghanistan. I was in Iraq.’

‘So what made you leave the military?’

I looked at Hannah for a moment or two before replying.

‘It’s too long a story for this flight,’ I said. She seemed to accept that and returned to her novel.

I closed my eyes and leaned back, the memory of that day flashing into my mind as clearly as though it had been yesterday.

The pain every bit as fresh. Remembering.

I didn’t know it at the time but it turned out that Hannah and I had a lot more in common than I thought.