No Fooling Around
Beecroft's Boutique Hotel on Sydney Walk was located in a quiet street of Victorian townhouses. Sidney parked the Aston Martin right in front of the entrance, ignoring the no-parking-signs.
"Do we have a plan?" Charlotte asked. They had not spoken much since leaving the Pizza Express, even though there were a million questions between them.
"Yes," Sidney said, climbing out of the driver's seat. "You are staying here inside the car."
"That's not a plan," Charlotte said and followed him to the front door.
"I told you to…
"Honestly, Mr Parker, if you wish to order a woman around like a dog, I think you are at least one hundred years too late."
He gave an exasperated gasp and rang the bell. They were buzzed in immediately and welcomed by a middle-aged woman wearing too much make-up and a top with a very deep neckline. She looked at them with a knowing expression: a handsome man in cricket clothes and a slightly dishevelled girl in jeans and a t-shirt. No luggage.
"Looking for a room?" she said. "Can give you a special deal for tonight. Ten per cent off if you pay cash. That will be without breakfast, I presume?"
"We are not here for…" Sidney started, then with a gaze at Charlotte stopped. She blushed deeply. "We are looking for two of your guests," he continued. "Georgiana Lambe and Otis Molyneux. What's their room number?"
The receptionist shrugged her shoulders. "Sorry, luv. You might have heard about something called Data Protection Law. Can't give you details about guests just because you walk in and ask for them, Mr Handsome."
"I'm not asking questions," Sidney said, reached into his trouser pocket and put a fifty-pound note on the desk. "I'm buying answers."
The woman eyed the note for a second, then held it under the counterfeit detector, nodded, rolled it up and made it vanish under her sleeve. Charlotte gasped, unable to say if she was disgusted by Sidney's handling of the situation – or whether she admired him for it.
"You sure you don't need a room for yourself and your little lady?" the receptionist asked.
"I'm neither his little lady nor anyone else's," Charlotte said. "And you will be a miserable lady if anything happens to my friend Georgiana."
"You're a fiery one." The receptionist smiled suggestively at her, then turned to Sidney. "Better hold on to her before she flies away."
Sidney's fist went crashing down on the reception desk. "If you know something, I advise you to tell me right away. Because if you don't, this place will be crawling with police officers within ten minutes, and they will be looking for my foster daughter everywhere, including your cash register."
The receptionist stopped smiling suggestively and turned serious. "You missed them by about an hour. They were here, asking for a room. I remembered them from the last time they stayed. The room was a mess, the credit card was overdrawn and could not be charged for the empty minibar, and the police came sniffing around because one of the girls was underage. So when they asked for a room today, I claimed we were fully booked."
Sidney closed his eyes and with a deep groan, leaned against the reception desk, his head in his hands. Gigi was gone, a needle in the haystack. Charlotte felt the urge to extend her hand and stroke his head. Just to console him. And to find out what his hair would feel like under her touch. I long to explore a distant country… what? This was really not the right place and not the right moment to start fantasising about that cheesy poem again.
The receptionist reached for something under her desk and handed Charlotte a business card. "Try this place. I recommended it to them. - The owner is my ex, so I like to send him guests that are bound to make trouble."
"Thank you," Charlotte replied as Sidney snatched the card from her hand.
"Sam's Bar and Hotel," he read.
"It's across Fulham Road, then a few minutes' walk towards South Kensington station," the receptionist said. "You can leave your car here. I'll keep an eye on it."
Sidney looked at Charlotte. "I don't suppose there is any point in telling you to stay here as well."
Instead of a reply, she marched towards the entrance door and threw it open with a loud bang that made the windows rattle.
"Fiery one," she heard the receptionist say again, but Sidney was by her side already. He rushed down the street towards Fulham Road and ignored the traffic lights as well as the noise of the car horns around them. Charlotte found it difficult to keep up with his large strides, then suddenly nearly bumped into him. He had stopped dead. Maybe fifty yards ahead of them, a flashy red sign said "Sam's Bar and Hotel". Parked in front of it were two ambulances and at least five police cars.
Charlotte and Sidney started running at the same time.
"You can't fool around with Sam Siddaway." The proprietor and name sponsor of "Sam's Bar and Hotel" was leaning against the metal fence in front of his entrance, offering Sidney a cigarette.
Sidney accepted. He had quit smoking years ago, but this was a situation that justified a relapse. Sam Siddaway gave him a light. "I know the ex-wife over at Beecroft's ist holding a grudge against me. Always sends me the foul eggs. But I have a nose…" He tipped on it. "I can sniff them out."
"And I'm glad you did," Sidney said, and that was the understatement of the century. He looked over to the ambulance where Charlotte sat, holding a shivering and sobbing Gigi in her arms. A paramedic was placing an orange blanket on their shoulders.
And he was glad that Charlotte was there. That she had insisted and stayed by his side.
He was glad, despite all the infuriating things she said to him, despite the fact that she was too short and too big all at the same time, despite the horrified look on her face when Sam Siddaway's ex-wife had called her a fiery one. She probably was. No. He stopped that thought immediately. Not appropriate. Absolutely not appropriate, especially as right at this moment, two policewomen were leading a handcuffed Otis out of the hotel and to a police car.
Otis held her head high but stopped when she saw Sidney. For a moment, their eyes met. He saw defiance and disdain, but no regret. Over in the ambulance, Gigi wailed as Charlotte turned her friend's head away from the scene.
She was right, of course, no one should see their lover in such a situation. Sidney drew deeply on the cigarette. Had he ever called Charlotte Heywood a „girl of little understanding"? She must be the most knowledgeable women of his acquaintance, at least when it came to emotions. Such a stark contrast to himself.
"I knew they were fishy the moment they walked in," Sam Siddaway said. "And when the young duchess claimed to be eighteen but had no identification on her… well. Old trick. You smile and give them a special rate, and once they are upstairs, you call the police. – Though I had no idea we'd caught such a big fish."
"No," Sidney said wrily. "Neither had I." For that was the worst of it all. He had mistrusted Gigi's flamboyant new art teacher from the very first moment his foster daughter had uttered her name with that admiring gleam in her eyes. Yet neither he nor the headmistress at Gigi's boarding school nor Gigi herself had suspected that the woman presenting herself as Otis Molyneux was called neither Otis nor Molyneux. Nothing about her was real, probably not even the colour of her hair: she was not American but Canadian, she was not twenty-seven but twenty-five, and finally, she was not an artist or a teacher, but an impostor, specialised in fleecing rich kids in posh boarding schools. She was well known to Interpol and wanted in half a dozen American federal states for forgery, fraud, blackmail and several other offences.
The mere thought of her so close to George Lambe's fortune made Sidney feel sick. He watched the police car with Otis drive off, the siren ringing through the empty street.
And yet, there was one thing about her that was real. Why had she been so reckless? Why had she run away with Gigi despite the risk of the police becoming involved? Earlier in the evening, Charlotte had said something about misguided love. Was that what it was? He looked over to the ambulance again. Charlotte was holding Gigi's hands now, stroking them softly.
Charlotte. They really had to stop this Mr-Parker-Miss-Heywood-nonsense. Though maybe not tonight. Tonight it was wiser to keep that boundary of formality between them.
"Mr Parker?" A plainclothes policeman came walking up to him, showing his identification. Sidney dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. "Sergeant Khan, Scotland Yard. I understand you are Miss Lambe's… foster father?"
"I am her foster father," Sidney confirmed, and for the first time, it felt real.
By the time all questions were answered, it was well past midnight. Sidney left the Aston Martin where it was, thinking that there were worse things than a penalty charge or being towed out of the way. He joined Charlotte and Gigi in a cab to Bedford Place. Gigi, red-eyed, had stopped crying but would not meet his gaze, staring out of the window at the city lights and holding on to Charlotte's hand as if her life depended on it.
Charlotte did not say anything either. Sidney could tell how much the events of the day had worn her out. This morning, they had not been on speaking terms. This afternoon, they had enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) the most remarkable inning of his entire cricket career, and this evening, they had witnessed the arrest of a criminal and the undoing of Gigi's world. He longed to say something encouraging, but he could not think of anything, and in the end, he just kept staring out of the window as well.
Despite the late hour, Tom was expecting them at the family's London apartment, being kept awake from Sidney's urgent messages to prepare the guest room and two beds for a late arrival.
"Whatever's the matter?" he asked when he saw his brother still in his sports gear, followed by his own invaluable trainee who was supporting a teary Gigi.
"Later, Tom," Sidney said, seeing the girls to their room. Gigi sank down on one of the beds, looking up to him and opening her mouth for the first time since he had seen her again.
"What will become of her now?"
"I don't know, Gigi. I don't know which charges they will press against her here in Britain, or whether she will be extradited to the States." Silent tears returned to her eyes. "It's no longer your concern, Gigi."
She shook her head, a tiny ounce of her fighting spirit coming back. "I'm not you. I cannot cauterise my heart."
Sidney bit his lip. Right at this moment, his heart was anything but cauterised. He knew so well what she was going through, and he had not expected that the memory still had the power to hit him so brutally. Even after eight years.
He kneeled in front of his foster daughter, covered her slender fingers with his large hands and looked up to her. "Your world feels undone right now, Gigi," he gently said. "And it is undone. I know that. But you must get her from your mind." He tentatively reached out to touch her cheek with his thumb, but Gigi turned her head away. "You must get her from your mind," he repeated quietly. "Or else you'll go mad."
Only then did he remember that they were not alone, that Charlotte was also in the room, watching them. He came back to his feet.
"Good night, Miss Heywood."
"Good night, Mr Parker," she whispered.
He closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, wondering whether this day, emotional as it had been, might one day be looked back at as a turning point – for himself, for Gigi, for Charlotte Heywood… - and for his brother, who was still waiting for him with a nightcap.
He joined Tom in the living room, gratefully accepted the Chivas Regal his brother handed him and sank down on the uncomfortable ancient sofa that made "sinking down" practically impossible. One had to sit upright. It was a relic from the times when their family had owned not only a flat on the first floor but the whole building.
Sidney stretched his legs and took a good sip of liquid honey-coloured relief. "Today I have applied successfully for the title of worst foster father ever."
"I'm sure you've done your best," Tom said. Mercifully, at least he had regained some of his spirits after the disaster on the cricket pitch.
"No." Sidney sighed deeply, the pictures of the evening coming back to him. "Char… your invaluable Miss Heywood was right. I have abdicated my responsibility for Gigi. God knows how I am going to explain this to her father. The man saves my life, makes me come clean, mentors me to success … and I repay him by letting his underage daughter slip away with a criminal."
"But you couldn't know that she was a criminal. And it is just one girl you are responsible for, Sidney." Maybe, Tom's spirits were not that high after all. "I have let down my wife, my children, my siblings, my employees, and a throng of honest workmen. – I don't know how to pay them. I honestly don't know." .
"Come on, Tom." Sidney patted his shoulders. "There will be a banker in London willing to invest in a project like Regency Row."
"No. I've been trying to find buyers and investors for the last two months now. No one cares about our hotel or the golf course or Regency Row. They like the idea, but then it starts raining, and they remember the average water temperature of the Channel in summer, and they are off to the Mediterranean. If we were all forced by some supernatural power to stay in Britain for our holidays, we might be saved. But I can't think of such a scenario."
"Neither can I," Sidney admitted.
"So it's over for me."
"It's far from over." It was a quarter past one in the night after one of the most hellish evenings of his life, and Sidney was not going to bury his family's hotel along with Gigi's first love within just a couple of hours. "You've been talking to the wrong people. I will ask Babington tomorrow – he knows the right people. – As for your workmen: How much do you need?"
"Sidney, I could not ask …"
"I happen to have negotiated a very advantageous divorce deal for a client just a few weeks ago. The fee is due any day now. So how much do you need?"
"But that is your hard-earned money…"
"I drive a vintage Aston Martin. I have everything I want, Tom." (That was a lie, but a white lie, given the hour and the circumstances). "The question is: What does my brother need?"
Tom closed his eyes for a second. "One hundred-fifty thousand. That will fill the deepest holes and keep us in business."
"Very well." For a split second, the whiskey glass shook in Sidney's fingers. "You … or your competent trainee will email me a list of your most pressing creditors, and I will make sure they are honoured before the end of the week."
"That is too much, Sidney."
"No, it is not." He touched his brother's arm. "Remember what you did for me eight years ago? I did wrong by Gigi. Let me do right by you now. Please."
"My dear Sidney…" Tom's voice was shaking with emotion. Sidney quickly switched to another topic.
"Does Mary know about all this?"
"She knows since the cricket match. And she doesn't answer my calls and my messages."
"Now that is a matter I cannot help you with. The workings of a marriage are beyond me. The only thing I do know, Tom, is that …" He stopped himself. What he had wanted to say would have sounded incredibly cheesy and desperate. "Find a way to make it up with Mary, or all the money in the world will not help you," he said instead.
