Page 94 of Unbind

‘Hi, Adelaide,’ I say, opting for full-wattage charm as a master stroke of deflection. ‘You look fantastic.’ I allow her to envelop me in a hug whose genuine warmth has my throat constricting with emotion. While I’ve never forgotten her kindness, it’s only now hitting me how much of her compassion and empathy she’s passed onto her daughter. (The origin of Nat’s impressive feistiness I’m still unclear on.)

‘Oh, stop it,’ she trills, hitting me playfully on the arm and drawing back so she can look at me. ‘Look atyou!So handsome! And looking so well! Goodness, it’s wonderful to see you thriving.’

We beam at each other for a moment while Nat stalks over to us. ‘Uh—doweknow each other? How about howyou twoknow each other?’

She crosses her arms and glares at us, and I hastily release her mother. A quick glance around tells me Evan and the rest of the team are staring at us with indecent interest and that a speedy migration of our little soap opera moment would be wise.

‘I’ll explain,’ I tell her, hastily swallowing thesweetheartI was about to tack onto the end. It seems both these women have a bombshell incoming, and I’d like to retain control of this rapidly unravelling situation to whatever extent is possible. ‘How about I take you both around the corner for some lunch?’

‘Mum and I were supposed to be going for lunch,’ Nat says, still glaring at me.

I’m wavering between apologising for messing up their lunch plans and pointing out to her that urgent disclosure by all parties is now more pressing when Adelaide speaks.

‘Let’s do as Adam suggests. I want to know how you two know each other.’

‘Ditto,’Nat growls with a death stare as she grabs her coat borderline violently off a nearby hanger.

The most expedient option available to us is Soho House on adjacent Greek Street. I usher the three of us into the club and request their most discreet table. Thankfully, the hosthas a small private room tucked away on the second floor. There’s a cosy fire crackling in the small grate, but the energy emanating from my beautiful girlfriend is positively arctic.

‘Talk,’ she says, shimmying out of her coat and throwing it on the sofa on one side of the room.

Adelaide and I exchange a glance, and I realise that, as the only party privy to both of these clandestine relationships, I should probably clarify with the broadest brushstrokes what the hell is actually going on here.

‘Adelaide, Nat and I are dating. We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks and I know she’s been wanting to talk to you about it.’ I turn to Nat and take her hand. ‘Sweetheart, I haven’t seen your mum for years, I swear, but she was very, very kind to me after I was sentenced.’

Both mother and daughter react in different ways, albeit with equal levels of emotion. Adelaide’s little laugh is one of utter delight and wonder, whereas Nat’s huge brown eyes fill instantly with tears.

‘Did you visit him?’ she asks her mum in a whisper. I’m vastly encouraged by the fact that she hasn’t tried to pull her hand away from mine.

Adelaide opens her mouth, and I sense she’s going to offer some justification or apology, but she doesn’t. She glances at our joined hands and gives a simple nod. ‘Yes, I did.’

I wait. I want to give Nat space to process. To ask her own questions. Her view of what happened two decades ago, of the man I am, is vastly different from what it was a few weeks ago, so I hope she can find it within herself to retrospectively forgive her mother for taking an action that might, until last month, have felt like a betrayal of their family.

‘More than once?’ she asks.

I remain silent and defer to Adelaide.

‘Yes,’ she says, looking at me now. ‘I visited Adam monthly, I think, for as long as he was in prison. Is that right?’

I nod. ‘Yeah. And then we kept in touch by email after I was released. She knew about the job with Anton,’ I tell Nat. ‘We had coffee years later, too—maybe five or six years later?’

A glance at Adelaide is all I need to know that she remembers. She needs no reminder of how the tables had turned by the time that overdue coffee rolled around, how much I was thriving under Anton’s tutelage, working my arse off for Wolff while I built OfficeScape.

She needs no reminder of her own intense concerns back then over Noel’s lack of meaningful work. Of how, days after our coffee, I emailed her to let her know that Anton and I had had an excellent lunch with one of the deans at the London School of Economics and extolled the virtues of Noel Bennett’s expertise in the very Financial Systems professorship he was looking to recruit for.

It was an inadequate gesture of thanks towards a woman who had shown me such forgiveness and compassion in the face of the most inhuman act of my life—towards her own son, no less.

‘It was just a quick catch up,’ I say lamely. ‘We haven’t really chatted much since then.’

‘Wow,’ Nat says, shaking her head.

‘Are you okay darling?’ Adelaide asks, leaning forward with concern.

‘Yeah.’ Nat’s voice is so low, so shaky, that her words are barely audible. ‘God, I had no idea. But I’m so, so glad he had you.’ Her bottom lip trembles on theyou, and shepresses her hand to her mouth. ‘Jesus, he had no one else. Thank God he had you.’

‘Oh, my darling,’ Adelaide says, her voice tremoring. ‘Don’t worry. He had me. He had his fabulous lawyer. And that lovely man, Anton. We looked out for him.’

‘But how?’ Nat says. ‘I mean, how come you ended up visiting him?’

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