‘I know. It’s weird. It’s as if somebody’s told them something about you.’
He realised that he was in a trap, one he wouldn’t be able to escape, for he was being done down by a rumour no one would put to his face. If he had been accused of breaking some law – or even the rules of his company – he could have confronted the charges head on, been cleared or convicted. Instead he suffered from an insidious campaign that damned him sub rosa. His professional life, once a seeming succession of new opportunities, was becoming hemmed in. He felt he was operating in a room with shrinking walls, and sooner or later the lack of space would begin to pinch. He didn’t know what to do.
It had been Anna who proposed a solution. He had never told her about Latanya – in the past there hadn’t seemed any point, as he didn’t want the sheer sourness of his fling to infect his new relationship; later, it simply seemed pointless bringing it up. Yet she knew he wasn’t happy, even if she didn’t know quite why.
‘I think we need a change,’ she’d declared one night, when she came home late, exhausted from another futile case. ‘I barely see my daughter; you aren’t enjoying work – don’t deny it. We’re getting stale here.’
‘We could move to the country,’ he said, though he dreaded commuting.
‘No. That’s not what I had in mind. I meant a real change – like a different country kind of change.’
It was as simple as that. He’d put out feelers immediately for any job in any place that was far away. It had seemed unfortunate that the first significant opportunity had come from his native city, but when he flew out for an interview he found almost no reminders of a past he would rather forget.
There was a lot that could be done in the new job – he saw considerable potential that was going unrealised – and this without the grinding demands and ferocious politics of a large corporation. The trustees had not only been welcoming, they had seemed actively to want him. The press’s offices were modern, spacious, and located on the North Side; Hyde Park could have been in a different city altogether. Houses seemed incredibly inexpensive, moreover, which meant the sale of their small London home could buy a large Midwestern one in a pleasant suburb like Evanston – next door to the city and its culture, yet leafy, green and safe, and with a good school for Sophie. Anna had positively glowed during their three days in Chicago, and had leads already in place for work at the British Consulate.
In short, there was nothing stopping them from moving, and plenty of reasons to prod them westward ho. When the 747 had lifted off the ground, he had vowed to leave all thoughts of Latanya Darling behind him. He was making a fresh start.
IX
1
DUVAL ORDERED APPLE pie this time, with ice cream again, after eating a double cheeseburger with fries – all at Robert’s urging as they sat again in the coffee shop of the Marchese building. He had the sense that Duval didn’t take many meals with his cousin Jermaine and his family, and that he wasn’t particularly welcome there, a lodger foisted on them through a family tie they couldn’t quite bring themselves to sever.
Duval was dressed in black trousers with cuffs and a light blue, short-sleeved shirt that was at least one size too big for him – it made his arms look thin as sticks. Again, there was an anachronistic air about him, and as they sat under a large ceiling fan – ornamental rather than functional since the coffee shop was airconditioned – Robert felt they could have been in a 1950s movie.
Although quiet at first, Duval seemed in good spirits, which was more than Robert could say about his view of his old friend’s prospects. His own efforts at finding work for Duval had come to nothing – Flynn, the maintenance head in the building, had shaken his head unambiguously when Robert sounded him out about prospects of work for Duval. ‘Union’s got it all tied up,’ he said. ‘I even tried to get my nephew a few hours helping me paint the ground floor. Nothing doing. Sorry.’
When Robert related the bad news Duval looked unaffected, though not because he’d found anything much off his own bat –