First Born(52)

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Full and final, Molly. You understand what that means, right?’

‘I do.’

‘Make sure you do. Because if this goes any further, or any of the project details are ever disclosed, it won’t be me dealing with you, you know that, right?’

‘Sure.’

‘This will go over my head, Molly. Outsourced to someone specifically trained to erase problems. Got it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll meet you outside the Pierre hotel at eleven tomorrow morning. Come alone and ensure you’re not followed. I’m going to stand up now and walk. You head in the opposite direction in no less than five minutes. You got that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

He walks away and I watch him. No moustache. A different style of clothes and a different gait, but it’s him. Bogart or Peter, it’s him.

This is a fair deal, all in all. I stay seated on the bench for a full eight minutes trying to square off all the angles in my head, all the risk factors. I haven’t written these details down, or typed them into an email, or saved them in a supposedly unhackable app. They’re in my head. I can access them whenever I like and I know it’s all cast-iron secure.

James Kandee was nothing to me.

And then, for a while, he was everything.

When KT was awarded her sponsorship, which she called a scholarship because that sounds so much more worthy and academic and above-board, it took me a good while to figure out who was behind it. Took me six weeks, in fact. She wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t even hint at his identity. Said that the offer and the paperwork all came via a third party. But by cross-referencing Instagram stories with Snapchat posts, diligently photographed by me before they auto-deleted, and making myself aware of his public schedule, meetings with NGOs and UN ambassadors, video footage of him bidding at Patek Philippe auctions in Geneva and Hong Kong, details gleaned from KT’s social media and our conversations, I could tell they were in the same place from time to time. By the end of last year I had calculated it was approximately eighty per cent likely that James Kandee, and his foundation, was indeed the sponsor of KT’s lavish New York student experience. It’s not like me to confront someone, so I had to make sure of my facts. It wasn’t until I had reached ninety-five-per-cent probability that I ambushed James Kandee, gently, subtly, professionally, outside his townhouse in Onslow Gardens, South Kensington. I dressed in the exact outfit KT had worn the month before, with him, to Aspen. I worked on my make-up techniques to look more like her, even plucking a line of eyebrow hairs with tweezers to mimic her scar. And it worked. He thought I was KT. By the time I was inside his house and he’d worked out I was not actually KT, it was too late. I had access. I had his ear. I told him everything I had worked out and I told him I’d communicate my evidence to the Guardian, the New York Times and the South China Morning Post. Details of the young women he’d sponsored over the years, and the trips he expected them to accompany him on. He pleaded his innocence, maintaining the trips were optional, and that he’d never crossed the line, he’d never slept with any of the students he sponsored. He was actually very open about the arrangement. He also claimed he was asexual. A virgin by choice. He flew beautiful young students with him, all for his public image. For his Instagram profile and to ensure he never lacked company when dining at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes or at the French Laundry outside Napa. He wanted their faces next to his and he wanted their conversation. I didn’t believe a word of it at first, but later, after finding some of his boarding school friends from Rolle, Switzerland, and talking to them through a proxy, I worked out he was most likely telling the truth. Or part of the truth. I still suspected dark forces were at play somehow but even my research couldn’t uncover exactly what they were. He asked me what I needed to guarantee my silence. He knew the public would never believe the sponsorship deals were a hundred per cent platonic. He said he realised the ‘optics were dreadful’. He asked what I wanted.

So I told him.

The YMCA is busy when I return, international students trying to use some kind of translation app to communicate with the receptionist.

I pick out my best clothes, an H&M top and a pair of jeans that fit tight to my hips. I clean my ballet pumps with wet wipes. And then I hit the showers.

On this floor I don’t get a public shower room with three showers, each with a clingy curtain. I get an individual shower room down the hall. As soon as I open the door and find clean tiles, a toilet, a sink, a shower, a lockable door, the relief washes over me. Lockable. I take my time under the jet of water, and my mind wanders. To Scott in his training gear. To how his arms and shoulders would look heaving back the oar of his boat. To how he and I walking around Chelsea later on tonight will look exactly like the way he and KT might have walked around Chelsea a month ago. There isn’t a person alive on the planet, save for Mum and Dad, who could spot the difference.

I let my hair dry wavy, more like KT’s, and then I blow-dry it and apply my make-up. I spray perfume on to the insides of my wrists and rub them and dab behind my ears, just as she did. I never normally wear perfume. It irritates my eyes.

The walk down Ninth Avenue is a dream. I understand this city now. The noise and the way the sunbeams cut between the tall buildings. The fire trucks and the steam rising from pipes in the middle of intersections. People hustling and people kissing. The metropolis is starting to grow on me.