One Plus One(24)
Author: Jojo Moyes

But the number was dead.

Ed sat in a layby, his phone in his hand, feeling his rage dissipate. He hesitated, then rang Ronan’s number. It was one of only a handful he knew off by heart.

It rang several times before he answered.

‘Ronan –’

‘I’m not allowed to talk to you, Ed.’ He sounded weary.

‘Yeah. I know. I just – I just wanted to say –’

‘Say what? What do you want to say, Ed?’

The anger in his voice was a silencer.

‘You know what? I don’t actually care so much about the insider-trading thing. Although obviously it’s a bloody disaster for the company. But you were my mate. My oldest friend. I would never have done that to you.’

A click, and the phone went dead.

Ed sat there and allowed his head to drop onto the wheel for a few minutes. He waited until the humming in his mind leached away to nothing, and then he indicated, pulled out slowly and drove towards Beachfront.

The phone rang just as he was coming off the dual carriageway. He looked at the glowing screen, sighed, and pressed a button on the hands-free set.

‘What do you want, Lara.’ He didn’t say it like a question.

‘Hey, baby. How are you?’

‘Uh … not so good.’

‘Oh, no! What is the matter?’

He never knew if it was an Italian thing, but she had a way, his ex-wife, of making you feel better. She would cradle your head, run her fingers through your hair, fuss around you, cluck maternally. By the end it had irritated him, but now, on the empty road at dead of night, he felt nostalgic for it.

‘It’s … a work thing.’

‘Oh. A werk thing.’ That instinctive bristle in her voice. Ed wondered if she had thought he was going to say he missed her.

He had known marrying Lara wasn’t a good idea. You know that thing where people say, ‘Even as we stood at the altar I knew in my gut that it wasn’t right,’ and you think, You idiot! Why the hell did you go ahead with it, then? Well, that was him. He had been that man. They had got married because he knew Lara really, really wanted it and he’d thought it would make her happy. It had taken him about two weeks to realize marriage wasn’t going to make her happy at all. Or, at least, marriage to him.

‘It’s fine, Lara. How are you?’

‘Mamma is driving me crazy. And there is a problem with the roof at home.’

‘Any jobs?’

She made a sound with her teeth against her lips. ‘I got a call-back for a West End show and then they say I look too old. Too old!’

‘You don’t look too old.’

‘I know! I can look sixteen! Baby, I need to talk to you about the roof.’

‘Lara, it’s your place. You got a settlement.’

‘But they say it’s going to cost lots of money. Lots of money. I have nothing.’

He kept his voice steady. ‘What happened to the settlement?’

‘There is nothing. My brother needed some money for his business, and you know Papi’s health is not good. And then I had some credit cards …’

‘All of it?’

‘I don’t have enough for the roof. It’s going to leak this winter, they said. Eduardo …’

‘Well, you could always sell the print you took from my apartment in December.’ His solicitor had implied it was his own fault for not changing the locks on the doors. Everyone else did, apparently.

‘I was sad, Eduardo. I miss you. I just wanted a reminder of you.’

‘Right. Of the man you said you couldn’t stand to even look at any more.’

‘I was angry when I said that.’ She pronounced it engry. By the end she was always engry. He rubbed at his eyes, flicked the indicator to signal his exit onto the coast road.

‘I just wanted some reminders of when we were heppy.’

‘You know, maybe the next time you miss me you could take away, like, a framed photo of us, not a fourteen-thousand-pound limited-edition print of Mao Tse-tung.’

Her voice dropped to a whisper. It filled the dark confines of the car, almost unbearably intimate. ‘Don’t you care that I have no one to turn to?’

Her voice was feline, a soft, sad growl. It made his balls tighten reflexively. And she knew it.

Ed glanced in his rear-view mirror. ‘Well, why don’t you ask Jim Leonards?’

‘What?’

‘His wife called me. She’s not very happy, funnily enough.’

‘It was only once! Once I went out with him. And it is nobody’s business who I date!’ He heard her roar of outrage. Could picture her, one perfectly manicured hand raised, fingers splayed in frustration at having to deal with ‘the most annoying man on earth’. ‘You left me! Am I supposed to be a nun my whole life?’

‘You left me, Lara. On the twenty-seventh of May, on the way back from Paris. Remember?’

‘Details! You always twist my words with details! This is exactly why I had to leave you!’

‘I thought it was because I only loved my work and didn’t understand human emotions.’

‘I left you because you have a tiny dick! Tiny, TINY dick! Like a pawn!’

‘You mean prawn.’

‘PRAWN. CRAYFISH. Whatever is smallest thing! Tiny!’

‘Then I think you actually mean shrimp. You know, given you just walked off with a valuable limited-edition print, I think you could at least have granted me “lobster”. But sure. Whatever.’

He heard the Italian curse, the clumsy slamming down of her phone. He drove for several miles that later he would not recall driving. And then he sighed, turned on the radio, and fixed his gaze on the seemingly endless black road ahead.

Gemma rang just as he was turning down the coast road. Her name flashed up on the hands-free and Ed answered before he’d had time to think about why he shouldn’t. It felt like every time his phone rang it was just so that somebody could yell at him.

‘Don’t tell me. You’re really busy.’

‘I’m driving.’

‘And you have a hands-free thing. Mum wanted to know if you’re going to be there for their anniversary lunch.’

‘What anniversary lunch?’

‘Oh, come on, Ed. I told you about it months ago.’

‘I’m sorry. I haven’t got access to my diary right now.’

He could hear her taking a breath.

‘They’re going to let Dad out next Tuesday. So Mum’s doing a special lunch at home for them. She wanted us to be there. You said you’d be able to come.’