Page 99 of Duke It Out
“Never going to happen,” I cut her off.
“Oh please,” she laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re still hungup on that podgy writer girl. I assumed you’d fucked her out of your system.”
I take a step backwards and look at her – really look at her – for the first time. “You know what I’ve realised? My father spent his whole life collecting power like it was some sort of game. And for what? He died alone.” I put down the glass of champagne untouched. “I don’t want influence for its own sake. I want to leave something better as my legacy.”
I walk out of the room, not looking back. I message Pippa when I get into the car.
I have a plan. We’re going to have to move quickly.
Whatever it is, I assume it’s insane, given the hour.
I need you to pull every string we have. And I’ll need to speak to Jonny at The Telegraph.
As the car winds back through the roads towards Loch Morven, I realise that even if Edie is never going to forgive me, I’m going to make things right. I owe it to her and to the estate, and to myself.
I don’t rememberthe house ever being this still. Even in the depths of winter when the heating pipes groan and the wind howls around the turrets. It feels hollow, like something’s been carved out of it.
I’m in the library, alone. Outside the sky is a riot of pink and orange streaks but there’s a cold summer wind and thefire is burning low. A glass of whisky sits by my side, untouched.
Edie’s manuscript is in my hands. The pages are soft at the corners now. I’ve read it so many times – the scribbled notes she’s written in the margins, the questions marked in pencil. She wasn’t trying to expose me – she was trying to protect me, and I threw her out.
I flip to one of her flagged sections, the yellow Post-it note spinning to the floor.There’s something here, she’s written.
There is something here. There always was. But I was too bloody busy guarding ghosts and thinking about the past to notice it.
I look up at the creak of the door. Jamie wanders in and hitches his hip up to sit back against the edge of the sofa, looking at me with narrowed eyes.
“What are you still doing here?”
He gives a half smile. “Just checking up on you.”
I frown and put the papers down on the table in front of me.
“You’re not sleeping,” he says.
“No.”
He nods, not pushing. He walks to the fireplace, grabs the poker, and stirs the embers the way he’s done ever since he was a child, watching the sparks rise and disappear up the chimney with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Pippa told me Anna got in touch.”
I shake my head, still marvelling at the rhinoceros hide of the woman.
“Yeah. She’s in ‘strategic comms’, apparently. Wanted to ‘reach out and offer her support’.”
Jamie puts a hand up. “I know, I know. I can’t believe I fell for it.”
“You can’t even blame alcohol.” I glare at him. “Anyway, Pippa told her where she could stick her crisis management bullshit.”
“Well, if you ever need someone to professionally twist the truth, I guess you know who to call.”
I grimace and reach for the whisky. “I’ve got someone better. She tells it exactly as it is. Well?—”
“You did,” Jamie finishes my sentence. “She’s not going to come back just because you feel bad,” he says after a long moment.
“I know that.”
“She’s not like them. She never was.”
