my feelings. And perhaps now you’ve seen the hopelessness of Jimmy’s case – Christ, he can’t even make himself understood – you’ll forget our stupid bet. Let’s call it quits and I’ll take you home.’
‘I wouldn’t think of it. I’m even more keen now to prove you wrong. And to show these people that Jimmy does have some worth. But you can go home. I’ll get a taxi when they’ve finished with him here.’
‘Rather you than me,’ said Claire, who was, with every passing moment, wishing that she hadn’t got caught up in this whole bet business.
‘I’ll wait and see you home. And I’ll try and find out how he is,’ said Jon insistently, getting up at the exact moment that Jimmy walked back through to the reception area. Apart from a nasty cut above his eye – which required three stitches – the rest of his injuries proved to be superficial. He looked dreadful though, his face bruised and pale and his clothes spattered with blood.
‘You’re coming home with me, Jimmy,’ said Hattie gently as she guided him through the door and back into Jon’s car.
‘Is Rex there?’ he asked.
‘Rex?’ Hattie replied blankly.
‘My dog, like. Rex …’
They had been in such a rush to get Jimmy to hospital that Hattie had scarcely paid any attention to the dog that had followed him into her flat.
‘Yes, I’m sure Rex is back at the flat with Toby,’ she said, although she rather doubted it. Toby hated dogs.
Toby was so angry that even when he was finally alone with Hattie and the prone figure on the sofa, he could barely speak.
‘You’re not leaving him and his bloody dog here?’ he said.
‘What else do you suggest,’ said Hattie, ‘that we carry him up and put him in our bed?’
‘That we carry them both to the door and throw them out,’ said Toby angrily.
‘I’d rather throw you out than him,’ she said with an unexpectedly hard edge to her voice.
‘You might have to. If they stay, I go,’ snapped back Toby.
At this Jimmy attempted to pull himself up as if to leave, but Hattie pushed him down, placing a crisp white pillow beneath his bruised and battered head.
‘Well then, you’d better go,’ said Hattie to Toby.
Shock took over from anger then as he realised that she meant it.
‘I can’t leave you alone with this man. He might do anything,’ said Toby.
‘I really don’t think, Toby, that he will do anything more tonight but sleep,’ said Hattie coldy.
‘I must say that was a great finale to the evening, Hattie. Something only you could have thought of.’
‘I didn’t organise it, Toby, it happened.’
‘Christ knows what Tom Charter thought,’ said Toby, running his hands through his hair in a gesture of despair.
‘I don’t give a damn what Tom Charter and his ghastly wife thought,’ said Hattie.
‘You don’t give a damn for anyone but yourself.’
‘That’s absurd, Toby. I spend my whole life bloody well thinking of others—’
‘Sad strangers maybe, but not the people you should be concerned with. Not the people who love you. Not me or your family. All you care about are social inadequates like that creature on the sofa. You are incapable of showing any affection or consideration to anyone that you might consider your own equal. You spend your whole life administering to the poor and needy and deluding yourself that in doing so you are escaping from your élitist roots when in fact all you are doing is being the lady of the manor, albeit a bloody great big manor like London,’ he said with disgust.
Hattie’s silence informed him that he had hurt her.
‘It isn’t just the disadvantaged that need warmth and emotional comfort, Hattie. Or support for that matter. It might not mean anything to you but tonight was very important to me. My success didn’t come easily to me; I was not born with your advantages. My daddy didn’t buy me a £300,000 flat, I don’t have a trust fund and no doors are opened for me at the mere mention of my father’s name. My parents worked hard to get me a future that was denied them. You might dismiss their values as misplaced and middle class but, my God, you can afford to, can’t you? You have everything, Hattie, and you have the nerve to arrogantly deny me the chance of achieving what I want. Which, compared to what you already have, is bloody nothing.’
But Hattie, partly because she didn’t want to hear any more and partly because she was so absolutely exhausted, had turned away and was watching the now sleeping body of Jimmy.
‘I’m tired, Toby, you’re tired. Let’s leave this now. We can talk tomorrow,’ she said softly.
Hattie woke just before nine to sounds of distress from somewhere below their bedroom. Leaving Toby sleeping soundly she pulled on a wrap and made her way down the stairs. Jimmy was standing in the kitchen with a blanket pulled around his shoulders.
‘Is anything wrong? Are you in a great deal of pain?’ asked Hattie anxiously, noting the bruises that had emerged across his face during the night.
‘Nh, pet,’ he said, looking round the steel kitchen as if it were the futuristic galley of some strange space craft. ‘Rex needed to go out and I thought I’d make meself some tea, like.’
‘Peppermint, Camomile, Lapsang Souchong, Earl Grey, Darjeeling?’ Hattie responded, helpfully pulling open one of the cunningly disguised cupboards to reveal the wide selection of specialist teas and coffees that she and Toby had accumulated. Jimmy looked so confused. She made a pot of her normal breakfast tea gestured to him to sit on one of the stools while it brewed.
‘Owt for Rex?’ he asked, indicating his dog, skulking beneath the table, and who was, Hattie thought, in very nearly as dreadful a state as his master. His coat – short and coarse-haired – was a salt-and-pepper grey through which you could clearly see the outline of his ribcage. Here and there across his body were sections of hard skin and small round patches of baldness.
‘I’m not sure what I’ve got that he’d like. There are a few scraps from last night but it’s not quite Pedigree Chum,’ she said as she took from the fridge a plate of sushi and a bowl of linguine con cozze and scraped them together into a dish.
‘Here, Rex,’ she said.
Rex took one look at her, growled savagely and then retreated back beneath the table, whimpering pathetically and looking up appealing at Jimmy.
‘Eee, man, I’d better give it to him,’ said Jimmy, taking the dish from Hattie and placing it close to Rex under the table.
The dog cautiously sniffed at the offering and, with one wary eye on Hattie, eventually decided to eat.
‘Now, breakfast for you, Jimmy? I think I’ve got pain au chocolat, brioche, pain au raisin and croissants,’ Hattie said, eager to make him feel welcome.
He looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language which, she realised with some embarrassment, she was.
‘Ee, I’ll just have a tab,’ he said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one.
Toby would be horrified. He didn’t allow anyone to smoke in the flat. In fact, smoking had been a major issue in their relationship. When they had first met, Hattie had a twenty-a-day habit that Toby had insisted she give up. Now and again, when Toby wasn’t around, she would sneak a cigarette – she kept a packet hidden at the bottom of her underwear drawer – but she had always been too anxious to smoke here. The only time Toby had relaxed his no smoking rule had been the previous night when his odious client had lit a fat cigar. Lord knows what he would say when he saw Jimmy smoking.