‘It’s not going to end here, is it?’
‘No.’ Eve shakes her head. ‘Probably not.’
‘The nurse told me they’re keeping him in for observation for a couple more days. Do you think he’ll be safe there?’
‘He should be. Hospitals are pretty secure places. They’ll keep an eye on him.’
Philippa reaches across the cafeteria table and takes Eve’s hands in hers. ‘I’m really sorry you got dragged into this. I don’t know what I’d have done without you, I really don’t.’
Eve smiles. ‘It’s fine, honestly. I’m glad I was able to… you know.’
Philippa nods. ‘Can we just quickly go back up to the ward? I want to tell him that I know the whole story, and that everything’s OK… I mean, obviously everythingisn’tOK, but?—’
‘No more secrets?’
‘Exactly.’
I know all about this stuff. The drug routes. The county lines. The organised crime groups. It’s bad, it’s really bad, and the police frankly admit that they’re on the back foot. I haven’t told Philippa the worst of it, which is that people like this Finbarr Williams are attack dogs. They sink their teeth into these kids and they never, ever let go. What he wants is a terrified, compliant Tom, and through him, he wants Philippa’s house. A local base from which he can run his operation undisturbed. It’s called cuckooing, and it’s one of the main ways drug gangs infiltrate communities. I’ll tell Philippa this. I’ll tell her all of it. But now’s not the time. Her son’s been stabbed, he’s still in danger, and she’s in pieces.
And I’m involved. I can’t leave her to face this alone. In just over a week my life has been turned upside down. Philippa and Tom, obviously. But also running into Jack again. Is thiswhy I came here? For a reckoning with my past? A reckoning with who I used to be, and perhaps could become again? Since waking this morning, I’ve barely given Oxana a thought. She seems so distant. In every sense, so far away.
25
Oxana surveys the remains of the meal. The coffee cups, the fig-skins, the ashtray, the near-empty bottles of Cappadocian wine. The whole Yilmaz party is here, as well as Atlas and Captain Özdemir. The restaurant is small and unostentatious, a courtyard with candlelit tables set beneath ancient olive trees. A cocktail of scents infuses the warm air. Defne’s Amouage perfume, Inci’s cigarette smoke, the jasmine climbing the trellis overhead. The place is full, as Oxana guesses it must be throughout the season. There’s an American party at the next table, amongst whom she recognises the actress Phoebe Faull, holding court in a pink gown.
A statuesque young man, perhaps the restaurant manager, approaches Inci and murmurs in her ear. His words are greeted with a look of shy astonishment. ‘Some of the other guests have requested that I sing,’ Inci announces to the table in general. ‘Should I, do you think? Tahir? Girls?’
‘Yay!’ Buse yelps. ‘Go for it.’
‘You must, my love,’ Yilmaz murmurs.
‘Yeah, Inci.’ Defne forces a smile. ‘Go on.’
Inci looks up at the restaurant manager, or whoever he is, with wide-eyed deference, as if hesitant to impose herself. She looks round the table again. ‘Well, if you really think so…’ She rises to her feet, and there’s a spatter of applause. Somehow a group of musicians has assembled, and as Inci approaches them, there’s the sound of bouzouki music.
Taking the microphone that the keyboard player hands her, Inci starts to sing.
I’m fully prepared to hate every single note of it, but actually she’s amazing. Everything about her that’s annoying in close-up, her whole exaggeratedly feminine thing, suddenly snaps into focus and makes sense. There’s no stage or spotlight, but she’s absolutely in charge. She’s got a gorgeous, sweeping voice, and when she sings no one moves, no one lifts a glass or a fork, no one does anything but gaze at her. I glance at Phoebe Faull, and she’s rapt. Tahir’s watching with a kind of sleepy, half-hypnotised devotion. Even the ghostly Atlas is staring at the stage.
I’m as much caught up in the whole thing as everyone else. The song makes me think of Eve. I miss her dreadfully. Why did she have to behave as she did? Walking out like that. I don’t like her calling me out on my bullshit, obviously, but I’d prefer the worst fight in the world to this deathly, terminal silence. Johnny fucking well better find her. I don’t care how stupid I look. I may have made my bed, but I’m not going to lie in it. Not alone. Where are you,lyubov’ moya? Where are you? God, I’m fucking crying. If Defne and Buse see me like this, it’s game over.
The nightclub, Nyx, is a ten-minute walk away along the seafront. Oxana lets the two girls draw ahead of her and stands for a moment, listening to their laughter and watching the easy swing of their limbs. The way the pair carry themselves is revealing. Buse is definitely the queen bee. Her Khaite minidress wraps around her as delicately as a breeze, her honey-blonde hair falls just so, and she moves with the entitlement of someone to whom nothing painful has ever happened. Except, possibly, waking up from surgery, because it’s clear that where nature has failed Buse, endowing her with insufficiently bee-stung lips and merely average teardrop breasts, the necessary corrections have been made.
Defne’s taller and darker. She hasn’t quite grown into her broad shoulders and long limbs or fully accepted the fierce looks that she’s inherited from her father, and the result is a kind of awkwardness. Like Buse, she’s gone for a black minidress, a show-stopping Zimmerman creation with a subtle sixties vibe, but unlike Buse, she doesn’t have quite the panache to carry it off. The dress is wearing her.
Are the two of them really friends? Oxana wonders. Do they share their most secret joys and fears? Or are they just strategic allies, with Defne’s family wealthy and their connections opening doors that might otherwise be closed to Buse, and Buse’s breezy confidence leading them where the shyer, more self-conscious Defne might fear to tread?
It’s something Oxana’s noticed before: a tendency for female relationships established in childhood to be carried over into adult life. She can imagine Defne as a gawky sixth-former, hurrying in the wake of pretty, popular Buse, desperate foradmission to her inner circle. And she can imagine Buse sensing that, for all the Yilmaz girl’s awkwardness and lack of cool-girl credentials, there was an aura of wealth and class about her that could prove very useful.
Taking a last breath of salt-edged air, Oxana follows them into the club. The place is packed. Lissom girls, gym-toned young men, gold-accessorised older women, and the leathery-faced older guys who, one way or another, are paying for it all. All of them swaying to pulsing anthems dispensed by a brooding young DJ.
Oxana’s wearing no make-up, comfortably low heels, and a midnight-blue halter-top dress. She establishes herself at the bar between a chattering flock of fashion models, all as tall and slender as flamingos, and a group of twenty-something guys who are grinning and bantering and checking out the women. They try to catch Oxana’s eye, but she blanks them.
Defne and Buse are dancing opposite each other to a remix of Declan McKenna’s ‘Brazil’. The distance between the two girls suggests that they’re friends, just here to have fun, and Oxana guesses that this is a carefully choreographed ploy by Buse to attract the attention of the DJ. He darts appreciative glances at her from time to time, but Buse seems to sense when this is about to happen and looks away. At the same time, she’s inching closer and closer to him, her hips swaying, her lips parted, and her eyes half-closed, until she’s barely a metre away. Defne plays her part in this game, mirroring Buse, but her tight smile tells its own story. It’s not the first time, Oxana guesses, that she’s been used as camouflage while the other girl stalks her prey.
Placing a hand on the booth, Buse bends down to adjust her strappy, stiletto-heeled shoe, affording the DJ a long look down the front of her dress. Standing, she gives him a cool, unhurried stare. He grins back, professionally friendly, but as soon as thenext track is cued, he steps from behind the booth and speaks to her, and Buse laughs and touches her hair.
Defne stands, momentarily lost, as the music and the dancers swirl around her. Oxana watches her for a moment, then moves purposefully across the floor and leads her to the bar. ‘How’s it going?’ she asks.