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‘You can’t blame me, Alex,’ she snapped. ‘Admit it, you weren’t even thinking about any sort of commitment.’
‘You could have been more patient.’
‘Would it have made any difference?’
Alex thought about his mother’s ring. How it felt in his hand. How he had felt seeing it in Lara’s hand.
It wasn’t true that he hadn’t thought about commitment. But she didn’t need to know that. He suddenly felt weary, all the anger replaced by sadness.
‘It’s her, you know,’ said Alicia as he turned to leave.
‘Lara. She’s the reason why it would have never worked between us. Do you think it’s any coincidence that Lara was the one who told you about this?’
Alicia saw that hit home, her mouth a twisted smile of triumph.
‘Things might be better for everyone if you two just admitted you are in love with each other.’
‘In love?’ said Alex, incredulously. ‘Alicia, Lara is my friend. There’s no need to feel jealous of her.’
She stopped him with a harsh laugh.
‘I’m not jealous of Lara Stone, Alex. A washed-up hack with an inflated sense of her own importance? I don’t think so.’
‘Alicia, all Lara did was catch you in your lie, you don’t need to go on the attack, she hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘See?’ she said, tossing her hair back. ‘Always defending poor Lara. Poor Lara born with a silver spoon in her mouth, poor Lara with her trust fund and her pretend down-to-earth canal barge. Poor little rich girl.’
He was about to point out that she had hardly chosen Charlie for his street cred, but he decided not to rise to the bait.
‘Alicia, I came here because you have been cheating on me – don’t make it about Lara.’
‘But it is, Alex,’ she said, with a fierce blink. ‘It has always been about her. Have you ever thought for one moment how it felt for me to see you together, to listen to your in-jokes, to see that stupid scarf she bought you or those trinkets around your flat that I know are from places you have been to with her? I feel like the other woman, not your girlfriend, Alex. I can’t get past your history with Lara and I don’t want to keep trying.’
He’d genuinely never considered that a girlfriend might find his friendship with Lara threatening. Perhaps there was something in it, perhaps he could have been more considerate. But then his eyes strayed towards Alicia’s mezzanine bedroom, picturing her leading Charlie up there by the hand, imagining them kissing and whispering and plotting before they pressed their hard bodies against one another.
‘Goodbye Alicia,’ he said. And he turned and walked back down the stairs.
Chapter 28
Lara walked home from The Mermaid. On warm days like today, she loved weaving down through the back streets of Chelsea, gorgeous little terraces with black railings and white pillars, steps running up to their grand doorways, miniature mansions with delusions of grandeur. Usually a long stroll along these wisteria-clad lanes would clear her head and give her perspective from her immediate problems, but today, her mind was a tangled knot. Alex. The look of utter dejection on his face when she had told him about Alicia and Charlie. Lara hadn’t expected him to turn cartwheels, but neither had she thought she would see him crumble. She had completely underestimated his depth of feeling for his girlfriend: such idiocy. Only days before, Alex had been waving around an engagement ring and talking about proposing; why on earth did Lara think he would just shrug his shoulders and mutter, ‘c’est la vie’?
But then what else could she have done? Should she have kept quiet about what she had seen? On the one hand, it was none of her business, but if Alex really was about to propose, to commit to one woman for the rest of his life, then he deserved that woman to be someone who loved him right back with all her heart.
‘What a mess,’ she whispered, feeling the weight of it all at once. She still hadn’t been home since arriving into Euston that morning and her bag was beginning to get heavy. She turned into a narrow walk, trying not to glance over her shoulder. Lara had done her best to shake off the paranoia she had felt in the Highlands, but she wasn’t entirely sure it was working. This part of London had always felt like home to Lara, all the hidden alleyways you couldn’t even see on Google Maps. Judge’s Walk was a particular favourite, with its shoulder-width passageway and peeling sign advertising a pub which had never existed. No one could follow you down there if they tried. But still… As she turned the corner into Cheyne Walk, a gust of wind blew a swirl of dust and grit into her eyes and Lara felt a chill, a shift in the atmosphere as she hurried across Embankment, the houseboats lined up down to her left.
She knew something was wrong before she even stepped into the boatyard, the squeaky gate squealing. Lara ran up the jetty, seeing with a lurch that the narrowboat’s door was open, the frame splintered. She took the gangway in two strides and ducked inside.
‘No… no, no.’
The boat had been trashed. Someone had torn it apart: crockery smashed, papers strewn about, cushions slashed. It was like a wrecking ball had passed through it. Lara’s hand pressed to her mouth in horror. This was her home, part of her. The place she felt safe. No, not anymore.
Anything that had been on a surface now lay on the floor. Books, notepads, plants, cups, and worst of all, her favourite a picture of her father, the one where he was standing proudly by his boat. She bent down to pick it up and saw that the frame’s glass shattered in a fractured crescent: the same shape as a heel of a boot.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Lara propped the picture back up on the table, then went to the spare room, where the mess was even more frenzied. The photos, notes and newspaper cuttings on the wall had been torn down, the book case had been upturned, her grandfather’s collection of leather-bound books face-down, pages deliberately torn out, spines broken: what kind of burglar would do that?
Instinctively Lara knew it was linked to her investigation into Sandrine, Meyer and Helen Groves. She had done plenty of investigations into dangerous people before: an Albanian drug gang, even an expose that had sent an East End crime lord to jail. She’d been threatened, once even physically, but never before had her work spilled over into her private life in this way.
She pushed through into her bedroom: ransacked. The duvet was leaking fluff, her wardrobe door and drawers were open, the arms and legs of jeans and shirts strewn like broken limbs across the floor.
