Page 12 of You Can't Hurt Me

“Come in. Your photographer left around an hour ago, they spent most of the time in the garden,” she says, turning, and I follow her down a dark paneled hallway completely at odds with the bright white galleried atrium at the end of it. A balcony runs around its edges with a floor above and, at the top, a ceiling of glazed glass throws off a pale mint light the color of swimming pools. It’s a bit like stepping inside a giant glacier mint.

“Nice place,” I say, affecting polite indifference. Maybe it’s journalistic instinct to avoid too much excessive enthusiasm when it comes to wealth, a fear we have of appearing too sycophantic, or worse, envious.

I’m well-aware of that nasty scratch of longing whenever I visit homes like this, the reflex to find my own lifestyle lacking. It goes with the territory this, nose pressed to the window, an invitation to observe but never belong. Amira started out as a travel writer, one of the reasons that she clicked with Tony early on when I introduced them, but after a while she couldn’t hack the press trips. “You’re chauffeured to a ski lodge in St. Moritz for a few days, then dumped back at Gatwick, and it’s a bus home to your apartment-share. Sometimes it’s better not to know how other people live.” Soon after, she took a desk job instead.

My show of mild indifference becomes more of a challenge as we walk into the open-plan living room with double-height windows. The floor is gray slate scattered with bright Moroccan rugs in electric pinks and reds. Two low sleek sofas in turquoise velvet face each other. Every blank space is an opportunity for color; bold abstract canvases hang alongside bright decorative collages. No surface is unadorned, all wrestle for space and attention. There are floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books, arranged by color. It is cluttered but also highly ordered and obsessively arranged.

Beyond that is a dining space with an oval marble table like a sculpted egg. Over it hangs a crystal candelabra complete with fuchsia pink candles. The dining space is framed by a wall of glass sliding doors that are open with a view of manicured lawn that runs straight down to the river. At the end, where the grass slopes down a little, there is a row of cypress trees and through it I can see Eva’s studio, a cube of slatted wood-and-glass windows that gleam back at me. I stand transfixed by it, her inner sanctum, the place where she took her last breath. For so long I’ve been an outsider staring in and I am here, at last, an insider looking out. So, this is what it feels like.

“Are you okay?” Jade’s voice makes me jump.

“Sure, yes. Sorry.” I turn around to face her.

“Well, I think Nate wants to do the interview in his study,” she says, sliding the glass doors firmly shut and directing me back toward the kitchen area. “I’m Nate’s niece, by the way. You’ve probably seen my aunt in photos?” The lilt in her voice is brittle rather than friendly. Kath’s daughter, of course. I wonder why I’ve never read about her before.

“So you’re working for Nate?”

“Not exactly working for him. I get lab credits for helping out with his research until I go back to uni next term.”

“Sounds like a good arrangement,” I say, noticing her worried expression. “I guess it’s been pretty tough for you all, with the new inquest and everything?”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs. “Hopefully it’s happening in a few months’ time, if my mom gets her way. It’s pretty much all she talks about.”

“I don’t blame her.” I think back to the pictures of Kath in the papers after the first inquest. Standing on the courtroom steps, Nate had looked gaunt and quietly devastated while his sister-in-law had appeared undefeated, fighting for Eva’s name.

“You must be proud of your mom still campaigning after two years. Is Nate behind it all too?” I say, watching a subtle shift in her features. She folds her arms, raises her chin. I can’t help noticing the family resemblance in Jade’s wide-set eyes framed by black bangs.

“Of course, he wants justice as much as she does.”

“I’m sure, yes. It’s only that I saw your mom’s name in the papers and not Nate’s. I wondered...”

“He prefers to stay out of the media, and I don’t blame him for that.” She gives me a fierce look and I’m not sure what to ask next without causing offence. I turn away from her for a moment, step closer to the pictures above the sofa as if I’m admiring them, feel her eyes bore into my back.

“You’re not going to quote me, are you? About this, I mean.”

“About what you’ve told me so far?”Maybe if you said something remotely interesting, I might, I say inwardly. “Of course not, it’s completely off-the-record and I’d always ask your consent first. Anyway, it’s not that kind of piece. Just a profile, an interview with Nate. I’m sure he probably told you about it?” I find myself mirroring her defensive tic, making answers sound more like questions.

She shakes her head.

“I wouldn’t worry. It’s a really positive take on Nate’s resilience, what he’s drawn on to get through his grief and his tireless commitment to work, of course.” I repeat the soothing phrases I have perfected over the years, designed to reassure angsty interviewees and PRs. “And of course there’s his new—”

“Good. The press has been pretty awful to Nate so far,” she interrupts. “But I suppose you know about that already.”

I know Jade’s right about the press. When the story broke, they were brutal, camping on the pavement outside, asking him intrusive questions. At first, they were generous to Nate, casting him as the grieving scientist devoted to curing his wife’s condition. But others were more vicious, preferring to portray him as overly absorbed in his work, remote, imperious. I remember thinking there was something in his manner that had been unlikable, an arrogance that didn’t inspire much sympathy. One particularly bad scuffle with a photographer hadn’t helped his cause.

“Okay. I’ll check and see if he’s off his call.” She hesitates, glancing down at my feet. “Shit, sorry, I should have said earlier, would you mind taking your shoes off? It’s a Nate thing.”

“A Nate thing?” I repeat. “Are there any other Nate things you want to tell me about?”

She shrugs. “Well, he doesn’t do small talk but I guess you know that already.” She picks up a sleek silver gray cat, who purrs in her arms, surveying me placidly with its burnished orange eyes.

“He’s pretty obsessional about this one too.”

“Really? He doesn’t strike me as an animal person.” I reach out to stroke it.

“You’d be surprised. Her name’s Nico.” Jade smiles, barely. “She belonged to Eva. A present from him for her last birthday. She must never go outside, or upstairs in the bedrooms. Welcome to Nate’s world.”

I look around their kitchen area next to the living space, all gleaming surfaces, pristine if not a little soulless. I run my finger along the smooth gray marble of the kitchen island and peer into a bin—empty. Even their rubbish is nonexistent. I wonder if it’s Nate’s fastidiousness, or the design itself that dictates this way of living. Perhaps it makes sense. When something unpredictable happens in your life, you’ll do anything to take control, create a veneer for yourself of stifling perfection where nothing bad can ever happen again.

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