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Chapter 20
CAROLINE, DUBAI, THIRTY-EIGHT HOURS AFTER HARRY’S DEATH
Dave’s Rolls-Royce is pulling up outside my hotel when Patrick calls.
“Thank God you answered. I’m about to be charged. There’s a hearing today when they’ll either grant bail or transfer me to a different jail to await trial.”
He is speaking fast, so fast I am having to struggle to keep up.
“Will you have a lawyer with you? A translator? Is there anything I can do?” I take a deep breath. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you. I’m in the car on the way back from—”
“I can’t speak long, my phone is almost dead and once that happens, that’s it,” he says. “Sarah is coming to the hearing. My lawyer says the optics of that are important for the judge. I am so sorry to ask, but I didn’t even know what day it was until they confirmed the hearing... I need someone to speak to Dad.”
“Your father? Sure thing. I can call him and explain what’s going on,” I said, although I was puzzled why he was asking me.
“Jesus Christ, no. Don’t tell him anything. He knows I was selling a painting for Harry, but he has no idea what’s happened since. Dad doesn’t read the news. He watches black-and-white films all day and tells the nurses the same three stories on repeat. I’m accused of the murder of his late best friend’s son and if I’m convicted he’ll never see me again. He screams the care home down when someone moves his slippers. He can’t know about all this, until he absolutely has to. It would probably kill him, and I’m honestly not exaggerating.”
“Tell me how I can help.”
“We speak at the same time every Sunday. Dad really isn’t well now. The dementia is quite advanced. He remembers things from decades ago, but he couldn’t tell you what happened yesterday. He also gets extremely agitated if anything doesn’t run the way he expects it to, and then he kicks off and lashes out and sometimes has to be sedated. If I’d remembered earlier, the nurses could have distracted him, but Sundays are a whole performance, getting him dressed and into his chair, setting up the iPad. He’ll be sitting there right now on Zoom, waiting for me.”
“Alright,” I say, walking through the hotel lobby, wondering if Patrick’s dad was not going to find it a bit confusing when his son’s ex-wife popped up on the screen. “Send me the link.”
My heart aches at the thought of Patrick, alone and scared in a prison cell and yet still so worried about upsetting a man who had never put his own son first. Their relationship had always been like this—Patrick’s desperate desire to earn his father’s love and approval, his obvious adulation and attempts at emulation. Quentin uncomfortably invested in Patrick’s career but taking little interest in his son’s personal life unless it involved a country house or a public-school friend.
I race up to the seventh floor to set up the call in the quiet of my room, logging on to find Quentin waiting. A nurse leans over the screen, fiddling with the volume, jaw clenching in irritation as he barks orders at her. “Oh look, Quentin! You have a different virtual visitor today,” she says.
He shoos her out of the way, adjusts the angle of his screen, and runs a slightly shaky hand over his silver hair. I fiddle with the contrast on my laptop before realizing that it is Quentin himself who is ghostly pale. He seems to have aged two decades in the five years since I last saw him.
“Hello, Quentin. It’s Caroline. Do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you,” he says defensively. “You’re Patrick’s wife.”
“Well, I was,” I say, although I am not sure this registers. The room looks cozy, comfortable. Behind him, I can see a window with a view of trees and a reproduction of Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. The nurse suggests he tell me all about what he has been up to this week. He shoos her away.
“Tell me about the painting, Sarah. I want to hear about Harry’s painting.” I talk him through the details of the sale as he leans in excitedly, nose almost touching the screen.
“They sold it,” he is telling the nurse. “My son—he’s an art dealer, you know—just sold a very valuable painting. Chip off the old block.”
He turns his attention back to me. “For how much?”
“Forty-two million pounds,” I tell him.
“I expect he’ll be able to afford to come and visit you now,” says the nurse to Quentin.
“Visit? He’ll be able to move back. He’ll be able to set up a gallery over here again. That will be the plan, won’t it, Sarah? You don’t want to be in that awful place forever, eh?”
“This is Caroline,” the nurse corrects Quentin gently. “Caroline, not Sarah.”
“Nonsense,” he says, sharply. “Caroline was Patrick’s first wife.” He rolls his eyes conspiratorially at the screen. He claps his hands and then rubs them together.
“Tell me again,” he says. “How did Harry find the painting?”
“Well,” I say. “Harry found it in a wardrobe, in a bedroom at Longhurst—”
He turns to the nurse, starts to tell her at length about Longhurst, how often he stayed there, in the Green Room, describing the four-poster bed, the hand-painted wallpaper, reveling in all the details.
And I can picture it exactly, too, because I suddenly realize he is describing the room that Harry showed me, with its peeling leaf-print walls. And suddenly I remember, crystal clear, Harry’s mother apologizing that Patrick couldn’t stay there as usual on the night of the party because of a burst pipe.