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“Don’t you have a lunch to go to?”
“Ah, Will, this is...”
He turned to Darcy, let his eyes rake her from head to foot and back again. As cold and predatory a look as he could muster while his stomach was clenched tight and his throat closed over. They were both waiting to see if he recognised her.
“Didn’t think you had it in you, Pete. She’s high class.”
“Will, this is, not...”
He nearly laughed at how easily Pete got flustered at the suggestion Darcy was for hire. “She’s not? Shame. I’d have put in a bid. She’s very fine.”
“This is Darcy Campbell.”
Darcy took her sunglasses off and held out her hand. Will wanted to haul her into his arms and bury himself in her fragile loveliness. He ignored her hand and reached passed her for his shirt. He flicked it over his shoulder, gave Pete a salute. “Three days,” then stepped around them to go. Over his shoulder he said, “Real nice to meet you, Daisy,” and headed towards the pool.
At the door to the pool complex he snuck a look over his shoulder. She had her head down and Pete was trying to comfort her. Was she crying? Fuck.
The scream inside him was back; frustration, pain, and regret. He took a swing at the door and connected. A large crack sounded, glass shattered under his knuckles, fragmenting into crystallised shards, but it held in the frame. Not like him; his frame, his sense of self had no centre, no hold, and no integrity. He hit it again and again until he punched through it, until his knuckles split and ran with blood, until he knew he’d broken his hand.
He heard feet running towards him, looked up and saw a flash of white in the other sheet of glass. Saw the shocked looks on Pete and Darcy’s faces, and wanted to take another swing at the next pane; knock it all out, but they were coming for him.
He shook his hand and stepped through the doorway, and it was a more painful transition from sunlight to darkness than any he’d ever made.
34. What if
“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” — Confucius
Darcy sat across from Peter on the terrace of M on the Bund and wished he was the old Will for the third time since they’d got here.
She’d had time to partially digest the shock of seeing the new Will that morning, and deal with the awful realisation he didn’t know her. It was a harder thing to swallow than that she didn’t know him. For all the times she’d daydreamed him into existence, he was always reined in strength, slow spreading smiles, and the quiet confidence he had you right where he wanted you.
He looked different, younger, sharper, more angular, more heavily muscled. His face was perfectly symmetrical now, no scarring around his eye or cheekbone. He was more rakish con man out of the pages of a mystery novel than swaggering pirate. He limped a little, a slight favouring of his left leg, the one they didn’t shatter, and his body was even more scarred than before. Pete said he’d wanted to do more plastic surgery but Will would only allow them to fix his face.
He sounded different too. His voice was deeper, smoother. There was little trace of the slow country cadence he’d had. Even his eyes were different. Still that deep, vibrant blue but cold, distant, calculating, without a trace of humour.
Peter poured the wine. “The chances of him coming out of this at all were slim. But I’m having trouble accepting this new hard Will. Dr Yang warned us the anger Will showed earlier might be a new feature of his personality, but I always hoped it was temporary. Hell, I’d be furious too. It’s hard to deny him that emotion, but if the last couple of days are anything to go by he’s lost something that...I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”
“He’s lost something that made him Will. He had a dashing quality, despite the roughed-up appearance. He was charming and charismatic.”
“He was—you’re right. The whole ‘men wanted to be him, women wanted to be with him’ thing. Oh shit sorry, I didn’t mean to...”
Darcy laughed. “It’s all right, Peter. I did want to be with him, so much so that when I discovered his duplicity I slugged him one, remember. I’ve never hit anyone or anything in my life.”
Peter lifted his glass, swirled the contents. He got a faraway look on his face. “I’ve always wanted to be him. I had the education, but he had the guts and the street smarts. It’s as though he’s lost his humanity. I know that sounds harsh, but this new Will has no compassion. I don’t think he likes people very much, and he was always such a good a study of them. Now he just wants to be left alone.”
Darcy lifted her glass too. She needed this alcohol if she was going to sleep tonight. “Is that so bad?” It was terrible, but it was what they were left
with, and she needed to get used to it.
“Given what we might have been discussing tonight, no, but Lord I’m going to miss him. I have to get accustomed to the idea I’m not allowed to need him anymore.”
Darcy’s breath out was a sigh to empathise with Peter’s loss. “You’ve done fine.”
“Not really. I’m struggling. I don’t have Will’s knack of seeing to the heart of things. Of knowing what battles to pick and getting knocked down and shaping back up again. I’m the politician. He was the strategist, the general, the visionary. He made the business in his image. Oh, he knew eventually he had to put in stronger systems and processes that depended less on his influence, but he was having too much fun to step back yet.”
Darcy watched Peter trying to be nonchalant as he studied the menu. She’d long since stopped thinking about him as an evil Spiderman. He was a friend. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked thinner and paler. He was hurting almost as much as Will. To make it worse, she knew more about his troubles than he suspected. But did it cross the line, shift her from friend to journalist on the lookout for a lead news item, if she told him?
Peter looked up. “The lamb is superb here, and leave room for the pavlova. Just because he didn’t know you today doesn’t mean he won’t remember. I keep forgetting he’s only been back for a few days. In one way it’s like he’s never been missing. You should go see him again. Bo will take you out there.”
