The Club(74)

Personally, if one more member assumed he was his brother and slapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him on his party, he was inclined to ditch the bloody mask entirely. Even Annie, as they filed into the ballroom, had sidled up to him to pass him an Old Fashioned, whispering as she did so something about it being a shame for the man of the hour to be without a drink on a night like this, or something equally obsequious. It occurred to him she’d not yet realized Ned was nowhere to be seen.

He drained the dregs of it through his straw, placed the glass down on an oak console table, then hurried down the corridor after Jackson Crane.

Jackson turned to face him as he entered the room.

‘Right, then,’ he said, in what appeared to be an attempt at a British accent. Then, lapsing again into his normal voice: ‘Where’s Ned?’

Adam pushed his mask back on his head.

‘Listen, mate, I can understand why you’re upset. But rather than causing a big scene tonight I think you might actually be better off having a little lie-down, know what I mean?’

Adam indicated with a tilt of his head the big leather couch in the middle of the room.

Jackson took a finger and poked Adam with it, in the lapel, hard.

‘Listen, mate’ – again with the accent thing – ‘I’m not a guy you fuck with, understand. You try to fuck with me, you get fucked, you understand?’

Adam said he understood, half his brain wondering if it was an actual line from one of Jackson’s films or whether it just sounded like one. Something that had always worked in Ned’s favour, in situations like this, Adam suspected, was how rarely someone like Jackson Crane ever found themselves having to deal with anything like this on their own – without a team of people around them to convey ‘how Jackson feels’ or ‘what Jackson would like’, without someone else at the end of a line to make the calls to ensure something happens. It was no wonder, then, that without his supporting cast of yes-men and fixers, he seemed to be slipping into the language of characters he’d played, just as it was no wonder people like him always went along so meekly in the end with what Ned demanded of them – separated from their phones, their lackeys, presented with an ultimatum, faced with the consequences of their actions going public.

Naturally, they usually liked to let off a little steam first.

‘So where is your brother?’ Jackson demanded.

‘As far as I know? London. Can’t tell you any more than that I’m afraid – mainly because I don’t fucking know.’

Jackson narrowed his eyes – no mean feat, given the puffy slits they’d been to begin with.

Adam held his hands up.

‘Honestly, mate, as far as I can tell, he’s not on the island. He sent an email saying he’d been called away to London. That’s literally all I know.’

Jackson took a couple of steps forward and all at once his face was right in Adam’s, and when Adam jerked his head back, a nasty little smile crossed Jackson’s face, and he was spitting as he spoke and you could almost feel the waves of rage emanating from him as he hissed directly into Adam’s ear that he could tell his brother that he was a fucking dead man. That anyone who tried to blackmail Jackson Crane was a fucking dead man.

And with that, Jackson turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, although not without shoulder-barging the doorframe on the way out.

With a deep sigh, Adam sank for a moment onto the armchair that sat in the curved bay window, pausing only to lift his feet up and let them drop on the big Louis Vuitton trunk in front of it that served as a coffee table, resting his heels on the copies of Home’s in-house magazine, Home Truths, fantailed across it. He stared out at the pitch-black sea.

Suddenly he felt absolutely spent.

One of the windows of the room was ajar and from the lawn, down below, he could hear the sound of music, a breaking glass, laughter. All in all, apart from Ned’s absence and Jackson’s coked-up tantrum, it had been a pretty typical Home launch, so far. It was also going to be his last. That was what Adam had decided. Come what may. Even if it cost him his marriage, even if it broke Laura’s heart, he could no longer be part of this. He did not expect to be forgiven. Not by Laura, not by Ned, not by anyone. He did not deserve to be forgiven. He had let himself down and he had let his wife down, not once but over and over and over. He had allowed terrible things to be done at Home, and said nothing. He had done terrible things himself.

He had burned the original Home Club down. Torched the fucking place. Well, Adam and two other guys from the club, both of whom had been paid well for their work and their silence. Adam? He had done it for nothing. He had done it for love. All those family memories up in smoke. All those old signed photos from over the decades, all up the stairs. All that history. Adam would never forget how he’d felt the next morning, Ned waking him with a phone call to tell him: ‘Bad news, mate, I’m afraid. Turns out there was some old thesp fast asleep in the gents last night . . .’ And Adam had dropped the phone, it had literally slipped through his fingers, meaning it was not until he picked it up again that he could hear Ned at the other end of the line, howling with laughter. In the years since, he had wondered whether Ned might not have found it almost equally funny if it had been true. Sometimes, with a shudder, he thought about what else he might have done, in those days, if Ned had asked him to, or told him the future of their business depended on it.