As I flicked listlessly through the notebook, I had a sudden urge to apologise to Nick. He hardly deserved to be punished for my personal issues, especially when they involved his best mate. And he had been spectacularly decent today. I walked barefoot up the hallway to his room and was about to knock when I heard his voice. He was obviously speaking to someone on the phone, and he sounded angry.
‘What you’re doing isn’t fair,’ he was saying. ‘You’ve ignored her for the last few months, you haven’t called anyone—not even me, who’s supposed to be your mate—and you left her to pay a mortgage you knew she couldn’t afford.’
The wave of disbelief almost knocked me over. I knew I shouldn’t, but I put my ear up to the door so I could listen to the conversation.
‘I don’t care, dude. I don’t care. You don’t just take off like that. How could you not tell her you’d lost your job? Ashamed? What are you, some fifties troglodyte who can’t handle his woman earning more than him? I didn’t fucking sleep with her, all right? Yeah, I do expect you to believe me! When have I ever not told you about my conquests? OK, I shagged a French chick last night. Happy?’
I pressed my knuckles into the door until it hurt. He told me he hadn’t slept with the French girl. He’d lied to me, and then he’d taken me out for lunch as if we were a couple.
‘No, I couldn’t care less about Sarah!’
Jesus, Nick, you really know how to make a girl feel good.
‘You’re being an arsehole about this. You buy a house with her and then you walk out on her. You decide you want her back and then you crack the shits because you think she’s sleeping with me. She tries to talk to you and you try to sell the house out from under her. You’re fucking with her head, man.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘OK, well maybe I do care about her!’
My breath caught in my throat. What the hell?
‘As a friend, dickhead.’
Relief—or was it disappointment?—swept through me.
‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you went after her as soon as I told you I’d messed things up with her. But I got over it, didn’t I? I don’t like seeing you treat her this way. And you can take that however you want to.’
The door swung inward and I toppled forward straight into Nick. He grasped my upper arms to right me. It was hard to tell who was more surprised.
‘Were you listening to that?’
‘No! Well, yeah.’
He released my arms. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘What doesn’t?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You said you didn’t sleep with her.’
‘Who?’
‘The French chick. You said you didn’t sleep with her.’
‘Well, we didn’t exactly sleep.’
‘Fucking bastard.’
I turned away, but he grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him. ‘What the hell, Burrowes? One minute you hate me and the next you’re jealous. What am I supposed to think?’
‘What am I supposed to think? You insult me, you fuck anything that moves, then you take my side against my ex, who’s meant to be your best mate!’
‘I didn’t sleep with her. I just told James that so he wouldn’t know what was really going on here.’
I was torn between relief and indignation. ‘Yeah? And what’s that?’
‘Do I really need to spell it out?’
There was a long, awkward silence. I concentrated on my feet. ‘I’m not in a position to make any decisions right now.’
‘What decisions? Maybe if you just relax and go with the flow for once, you might actually enjoy yourself.’
‘That’s what I did the first time and look how that turned out,’ I said bitterly.
For a second Nick looked taken aback. ‘That was different.’
‘Was it?’
Our gazes locked. Neither of us spoke for a long time.
‘I have to go,’ I said finally.
I felt his eyes following me as I walked away, but I didn’t look back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I didn’t sleep for hours that night. Listlessly, I moved from reading and re-reading Ford’s notebook to staring unseeingly at the TV and thinking about Nick and whatever this thing was between us.
The details he’d remembered from our first conversations about the things that were important to me… that parting comment to James about ‘messing things up’… did they reveal a deeper part of Nick that I hadn’t known was there? Part of me wanted to go back to his room and ‘go with the flow’ as he’d suggested, but the other more sensible part knew it’d be a mistake.
No. I couldn’t let it happen again. And I couldn’t let it get in the way of my goal. I had to find Ford so I could get the story and save my house.
I switched off the TV and opened the notebook again. There had to be something in here besides inane lyrics.
I ask him what he’s got to hide
He just tells me to abide
He never thought beyond his next meal
Now he’s doing another dodgy deal
It used to be about the music
And now I’m just about to lose it.
Bloody hell. This stuff was just embarrassing. Since when did ‘music’ rhyme with ‘lose it’ anyway?
Because the spirit of the band
Is in a warehouse in Amsterdam.
You know a band’s going to shit when it becomes self-referential.
I would’ve put the notebook on eBay right then and there except for the words ‘dodgy deal’ and ‘warehouse in Amsterdam’. Maybe this wasn’t just a lame song. What if ‘he’ was Angus Bright, and the warehouse was a reference to the drug ring Jack had mentioned this morning? That reminded me of yesterday’s research on Grady, and I opened up the laptop and connected to the hotel’s wireless network to check my email. In between spam messages offering me cheap Viagra or a miracle drug to enlarge my penis, there was a reply from Angela:
Hi Sarah, I think I’ve found your guy: William Grady, originally from Manchester, now based in London. He’s been The Fords’ manager for the
