Faith

by Peter James

Genres: Financial Thrillers

Synopsis

How perfect is too perfect?
Ross Ransome is at the top of his profession; one of the most successful, and certainly one of the richest, plastic surgeons in the business. Such a man would expect his wife to be perfect – and why not? After all, he has spent enough hours in surgery to get her that way. But when his wife falls ill she turns her back on conventional medicine, and her arid marriage, and seeks help from the world of alternative medicine and a charismatic therapist who promises not just medical salvation. For Ransome, this is the ultimate betrayal. It defies logic, and Ross Ransome is a profoundly logical man. Logically, he can see no reason why any man should have his wife when he can't. It's all completely rational...

Read more from the multi-million copy bestselling author of the Roy Grace novels:

Possession, Dreamer, Sweet Heart, Twilight, Prophecy, Host, Alchemist, Denial, The Truth, Faith

* Each Peter James novel can be read as a standalone*

Release date: October 7, 2010

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 480

Sample

Someone told Maddy Williams that people always knew when they were going to die. Or maybe she’d read it somewhere. A newspaper? Magazine? She read a lot of women’s magazines – particularly the problem pages and stories of human angst, about people like herself who had complexes about the way they looked. Noses too big, breasts too floppy, pointy ears, ratty lips.

There were faulty cars known as Friday cars, and maybe there were Friday people – people who had bits of code missing from their genes, or error messages that manifested by placing their eyes too close together, or giving them too few fingers or a hare-lip, or, like herself, a port-wine stain birthmark the shape of Texas, covering half of her face. Defects that the victims had to display for the rest of their lives, as if they were carrying a banner that said, My genes did this to me.

But not any more for Maddy Williams. She’d been saving since she was ten years old, when she first heard about plastic surgery in a television documentary. Ever since Danny Burton and every other classmate, and just about every stranger she’d ever encountered, had stared at her in a way that made her feel like a freak, she had been saving for this series of operations that was going to transform her life. And one of the most famous plastic surgeons in Britain was performing them.

Some months back he’d sketched on paper and shown her on the computer in his consulting room how she was going to look with her new face, and three weeks ago he had started on her. It wasn’t just Texas that was going: that hooked beak of a nose was morphing into a Cameron Diaz snub, her lips would be filled out, her cheekbones reshaped. After thirty-one years of hell she was going to be transformed!

And now on the operating table, woozy from the premed, her thoughts rambling, she hardly dared believe it was all happening . . . that it was really happening! Because nothing good ever did happen to her, that was the pattern of her life. Always, when she was on the edge of something going her way for once, the wheels would fall off. She’d read about this too, people who were dogged by bad luck. Maybe there was a bad-luck gene?

In truth the two operations she’d had so far weren’t quite as great as she’d hoped. She was disappointed with her nose, the arches were too flared, but the surgeon was going to correct that now. Just a tiny op today, pre-med and local anaesthetic, a little bit of tweaking and hey presto!

When I come round I’m going to have a nose like Cameron Diaz.

Soon I’m going to be everything I ever wanted to be. Normal. I’m going to be an ordinary human being. Just like everyone else.

The ceiling above her was cream plaster; it looked tired, the kind of ceiling where spiders hang out and bugs crawl. I’m a pupa curled up inside a chrysalis and I’m going to emerge as a beautiful butterfly.

The table shook slightly beneath her, a faint rumbling sound – wheels? Like a drum roll. Now she was under bright lights. She could feel their warmth. Get a suntan! she thought.

Two figures in green surgical scrubs stood over her, their faces anonymous behind their masks and beneath hats like scrunched J-cloths. The nurse and the surgeon. His eyes locked on hers. Last time they had been sparkling with warmth and humour, but now they were different: cold, devoid of any emotion. An icy wind squalled through her, and the faint apprehension of a few minutes ago now turned into mounting terror that she was not going to survive this operation.

People know when they are going to die.

But there was no need to be afraid. Hey, this surgeon was Mr Nice Guy! This was the man who’d shown her how beautiful he could make her, who’d held her hand to reassure her, who had even done his best to convince her that she looked fine as she was, that she did not need surgery, that the blotch on her face and the kink in her nose all added to her character . . .

But this surgeon was in a strange space today – or was it just in her imagination? She looked for reassurance at the nurse. Warm concerned eyes stared back. She wasn’t aware of anything wrong. But . . .

People know when they are going to die.

The words were screaming inside her now. She was not going to make it through this operation, she needed to get out, now, this minute, cancel, forget about it.

Maddy attempted to speak, but as she did so the surgeon leaned over her, holding a cotton bud in his gloved hand, and began to work it around the inside of first her left nostril, then her right. She wanted to move, to shake her head, to shout, but it was as if someone had disconnected her body from her brain.

Please help me! Oh, God, one of you please help me!

Darkness was descending, swabbing up her remaining thoughts before they were fully formed, before they could turn into words. And now, as she stared back into the surgeon’s eyes, she could see a smile in them, as if he had been holding something back from her and now he didn’t need to hold it back.

And she knew for certain that she was going to die today.

Late on a wet May afternoon, Faith Ransome, walking around the downstairs rooms of her house, checking for errant bits of Lego, thought, Is this it? Is this my life? Is this all there is?

Alec, in the kitchen, called, ‘Mummy, Muummeeeee! Come and watch!’

She stooped to recover a bright yellow corner piece from behind the sofa, relieved. Ross would have seen it for sure. And then . . .

She shivered, feeling a little queasy. It was cold in England after three weeks of hot, dry sun in Thailand. They’d been home four days and it felt much longer. Four centuries.

‘Muummmeeeee!’

Tuning out his voice, she walked upstairs, the ritual, checking each of the stairs for marks, mud, paw prints, and the walls for any new blemish, the lights for blown bulbs. Her eyes scanned the landing carpet and she recovered another Lego brick, went into Alec’s room, and put the two pieces in the box on the table. She looked around carefully, picked up a robot space-walker, crammed Alec’s trainers into the cupboard and closed the door, rearranged the Star Wars bedcover and straightened the row of fluffy heads on the pillow.

Spike, Alec’s hamster, as fat as its Rugrat namesake was skinny, was trundling around inside the treadmill in his cage. She scooped up a few spilled grains from the table-top and dropped them in the waste-bin.

As she finished she heard the drumroll bark of Rasputin, their black Labrador, b-woof . . . b-woof . . . b-woof . . .

A rush of adrenaline. Then the unmistakable mashing of tyres on gravel.

Not good adrenaline this – like seaweed-laden storm waves breaking inside her. Barking steadily, Rasputin lumbered from the kitchen, through the hall, into the drawing room where, Faith knew, he had leaped on to his chair in front of the bay window so that he could see his master.

He was home early.

‘Alec! Daddy’s home!’ She sprinted for the bedroom, peered in, checked. Bed neat inside the four-poster oak frame. Shoes, slippers, stray clothes, already put away. En-suite bathroom. Basin spotless. Towels hung the way Ross liked them.

Hastily she pulled off the jeans, sweatshirt and trainers that were her habitual daytime clothes. It wasn’t that she felt like dressing up to greet her husband, she just wanted to avoid criticism.

In the bathroom she stared at her face in the mirror. In the cabinet was a plastic vial of pills. Her happy pills. It had been over a month since she had taken one and she was determined to stay off them. Determined to beat the depression that had dogged her on and off for the past six years since her son had been born – to kill it dead!

She put on some eye-shadow, fresh mascara, a dash of rouge, dabbed a little powder on her perfect snub nose (her husband’s craftsmanship, not her genes) pulled on black Karen Millen slacks, a white blouse, a pale green Betty Barclay cardigan and black mules.

Then she checked her hair in the mirror. She was a natural blonde, and favoured classic styles. Right now it was parted to one side, cut just short of her shoulders at the back and slanted down across her forehead at the front.

You don’t look bad, girl, not for a thirty-two-year-old mum.

Although, of course, she had Ross to thank for a lot of that.

The key was rattling in the front door.

And now she hurried down the stairs, as it opened in a flurry of leaping dog, swirling Burberry raincoat, swinging black case and distressed-looking Ross.

She took the case and the raincoat, thrust at her as if she was a hat-check girl, and proffered her cheek for a perfunctory kiss. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How was your day?’

‘Total hell. I lost someone. Died on me.’ Anger and pain in his voice as he slammed the door behind him.

Ross, six foot four, black hair gelled back in high-gloss waves, reeking of soap, looked like some handsome gangster: starched white shirt, red and gold silk tie, tailored navy suit, trousers with creases to slice cheese, black brogues flossed to military perfection. He seemed close to tears.

At the sight of his son his face lit up.

‘Daddy, Daddy!’

Alec, face brown from Thailand, was leaping through the air into his arms.

‘Hey, big guy!’ Ross held his son tightly to his chest, as if in this animated bundle of child he was holding every hope and dream in the world. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘What’s been happening? How was your day?’

Faith smiled. No matter how low she felt, seeing the love between her husband and her son was the one thing that gave her strength and the resolve to make her marriage work.

She hung up his coat, set down the case, and went into the kitchen. On the television, Homer Simpson was being berated by his boss. She poured a three-finger measure of Macallan into the glass, then pressed the tumbler up against the ice arm of the Maytag fridge. Four cubes clinked into it.

Ross followed her in and set Alec down. The boy’s attention returned to the television.

‘Who died?’ Faith said, handing her husband the glass. ‘A patient?’

He held up the rim to the window, checking for dirt, lipstick, and God-knew-what-else he checked the rims of glasses for before committing them to his sacred lips.

One finger of whisky went down. She reached up, loosened his tie, half-heartedly put a comforting arm around him, which was the most she could do, and the most she wanted to do, then withdrew it.

‘I scored two goals today, Daddy!’

‘He did!’ Faith confirmed proudly.

‘That’s terrific!’ Ross stood behind his son and wrapped his arms around him again. ‘Two goals?’

Alec nodded, torn between accepting praise and watching the show.

Then the smile faded from Ross’s face. He said again, ‘Two goals!’ but the sparkle had gone from his eyes. He patted Alec’s head, said, ‘Just great!’ then went down the hall to his study and sat down in his leather Parker Knoll, still, unusually, with his jacket on. He levered the chair to its furthest back-reclined, footrest-up position, and closed his eyes.

Faith watched him. He was suffering, but she could feel nothing for him. Part of her still wanted everything between them to be as it once was, although now it was more for Alec’s sake, than her own.

‘Died. I can’t believe she did that to me.’

Quietly, ‘A patient?’

‘Yes, a fucking patient. Why the hell did she have to go and die on me?’

‘What happened?’

‘Allergic reaction to the anaesthetic. That’s the second this year. Jesus.’

‘Same anaesthetist? Tommy?’

‘No, Tommy’s away. I didn’t use anyone. It was only a tiny correction, for God’s sake – just the flare of the arches. I used a local anaesthetic – don’t need an anaesthetist to do that. Could you get me a cigar?’

Faith went to the humidor in the dining room, took out a Montecristo No. 3, clipped the end the way Ross liked it, and brought it back into the room. Then she held the flame of the Dupont lighter as he drew several deep puffs, rotating the end until it was burning evenly.

He blew a long jet of smoke at the ceiling, then, eyes closed, asked, ‘How was your day?’

She wanted to say, Actually, it was a shitty day, the way most of my days are, but she didn’t. She said, ‘It was OK. Fine.’

He nodded, silently. Then, after some moments, said, ‘I love you, Faith. I couldn’t live without you. You know that, don’t you?’

Yes, she thought. And that’s a big problem.

Ross’s semen trickled between her legs. Faith lay still, listening to the stream of his urine, grey daylight through the open curtains, stark shapes of the beeches in rich green leaf framing the horizon. News drizzled from the clock radio, slightly off tune, across the far side of the bed, gloomy Kosovan war-dead news. Then a time check: 6.25 on Wednesday, 12 May.

She reached for her contact lenses, picked up the container and unscrewed the top. Twenty minutes and she would have to get Alec up, fed, to school, and then . . . ?

The queasiness she’d been feeling for the past few days seemed worse this morning, and a thought struck her.

Pregnant?

Oh, God, please no.

A year after Alec was born they’d begun trying for a second child but nothing had happened. After a year, Ross had arranged tests, but they’d shown everything was working fine. The problem, it seemed, was with him, but he would not accept that and refused flatly to go to any specialist.

At first this had angered Faith, but increasingly she’d seen it as a blessing. She loved Alec to death but he was hard work, all the time, and her energy levels had been so low she didn’t know how she could have coped with another child.

And she knew that a big part of the reason she had stayed in her marriage was that she couldn’t imagine life without Alec. There was no way, in her depressed state, that Ross would have let her keep him if she had left, nor, in that state, could she have coped very well with him on her own. And there was no questioning the intensity of Ross’s love for Alec. But from that love would come influence. Alec carried Ross’s genes and she couldn’t do anything about that. But with love and guidance she could maybe bring out in him all the good things he had inherited from Ross and try to damp down the bad.

From the bathroom, Ross called out, ‘What are you wearing tonight, darling?’

Brain into gear, fast. ‘I thought the dark blue – the Vivienne Westwood you bought me.’

‘Slip it on for me?’

She put it on. He came out of the bathroom, stood naked, hair wet, toothbrush in mouth, staring at her. ‘No. It’s not right. Too frivolous for tonight.’

‘My black Donna Karan – the taffeta?’

‘See it.’

He went back into the bathroom then reappeared, shaving foam on his face, one strip razored clean.

She turned around for him.

‘No – that’s more suitable for a ball. This is just a dinner.’ He marched across to her wardrobe, flicked through the hangers, pulled out a dress, tossed it on the chaise-longue, then another, then another.

‘I have to get Alec up.’

‘Just pop these on. You need to look right – it’s really important tonight.’

Turning away, she mouthed a silent curse. It was always really important. But she put the dress on. And another. None of her reflections pleased her. Bad hair day today, it was a tangle, and the lousy wet weather of the past three weeks had bleached away most of the remains of her tan, returning her complexion to its usual early-morning just-risen-from-the-grave pallor. Her friend, Sammy Harrison, had told her a couple of years back that on a good day she looked like Meg Ryan on a bad day. And today was not a good day.

‘Need to see it with shoes,’ he called, watching her in the mirror, razoring away the last of the foam. ‘And your bag.’

Ten to seven and he was dressed, dabbing at a fleck of blood on his chin. On the bed were laid out the dress, the shoes, the bag, the necklace, the earrings. Alec was still asleep.

‘OK, fine, good. Wear your hair up.’ He cupped her face in his hands, kissed her lips lightly, and was gone.

Life’s a bitch, and then, thought Faith, it’s not that you die, you just start, without even noticing it, to become someone you never wanted to be.

All those dreams you had at school, all those glossy lives you looked at in magazines, of people who seemed to have it all. But she had never minded that, never envied them. Her father, a gentle, uncomplaining man, had been bedridden throughout her childhood, and she’d worked since as far back as she could remember to help her mother keep the family. Weekends had been spent on the living-room floor stitching thumbs to mittens for the local glove factory where her mother worked part-time, and every morning, from the age of twelve, she’d left home at a quarter to six to do a paper round.

Faith had never been ambitious for wealth. All she had ever sought to do with her life was to be a caring person, and to try to make a difference to the world. There was no Grand Plan, it was just her simple philosophy. She had always hoped that when she had children, she could teach them to respect the world around them, try to give them a happier childhood than she’d had, and to make them decent people.

But now, at thirty-two, her life was as remote from her modest origins as it was from her dreams. She was married to a plastic surgeon who was a seriously wealthy perfectionist, and they lived in a house that was absurdly grand. She knew she ought to count her blessings, as her mother told her. But she and her mother would always see things differently – she hoped.

She decided to avoid the chemist in the village, and drove instead to Burgess Hill, the nearest town, where there was a large Boots.

As she waited in the queue at the car-park barrier, she stared out at the cloud-laden sky, could almost feel it pressing down on her. She tapped a fingernail against her front teeth, aware that she was shaking slightly, her nerves jangling. That indefinable dark fear that was part of her depression, along with slack energy and the occasional, very frightening sensation that she wasn’t quite inside her body, never stayed away for long. She was glad she kept the Prozac capsules in the bathroom cabinet. If she had had them in her bag she would have taken one now.

There was just one car in front of her, driven by an old woman who had pulled up too far from the machine and was having to open her door to reach out and get the ticket. Faith glanced at the Range Rover’s mileometer: 8.2. She mentally doubled it for the return home. Then doubled it again for the return trip to the station this evening, to catch the train to London for the medical dinner with Ross: 32.8 miles that would have to be accounted for – Ross checked the mileage every day.

To justify this trip to him, she stopped at Waitrose and did a major groceries shop. It was easier this way – best to find ways to sidestep the mines and booby traps Ross planted in her daily life. That way there was some kind of peace, at least in her waking consciousness if not in her troubled dreams. Dreams in which the same theme recurred endlessly.

When did my life with Ross start to change?

Had there been a point in the past twelve years at which Ross, the kind, caring, fun-loving young houseman she had loved to death had turned into the vile-tempered monster whose arrival home she dreaded? Had that side of him always been there? And, in those early, heady days, had her love for him, or the prospect of a glamorous life, blinded her to it?

Or had he masked it?

And why was it only she who could see it? Why couldn’t her mother, or her friends? But she already knew the answer to that. Ross never gave them the chance – he could charm the birds out of the trees. Even though the medical world had been able to do nothing to ease her father’s slow, painful and undignified descent into death over twenty wretched years, her mother had remained in awe of doctors. She adored Ross – was even perhaps a little in love with him herself.

Sometimes Faith wondered if the fault lay with her. Did she expect too much of her husband? Did her depression cause her to see only the bad and ignore the good? Because even now there were happy moments and good days with him, although in the end his temper or his criticism usually soured them. She had tried on this recent holiday in Thailand, as if it had been a last attempt at salvaging their marriage and getting back to how they had once been. She’d given it her best shot, but in the end could feel nothing for him.

There was a borderline in life. You could push people up to it, but then no further. Beyond that everything changed irrevocably. Airline pilots called it the point of no return: that critical moment when you were too short of runway to abort take-off, when you had no choice but to become airborne. That or crash. And that was where she was now. That was how far Ross had pushed her.

In those early days Faith had loved him so much she’d let him do anything. She had believed in him so completely that she’d endured the pain and discomfort of six operations, and he had transformed her from being plain into someone, well, less plain. And in a way it was flattering. As his reputation began its rapid ascent, she had enjoyed being taken to conventions where he had pointed out the reshaping he had done on her lips, eyes, mouth, nose, cheeks, chin and breasts. That, at least, was one of the bonuses to have come out of twelve years of marriage, the huge boost to her confidence, which was now being almost as thoroughly undermined.

Hidden in an attic bedroom they rarely used, she kept a pile of books and magazine articles about marital problems. She’d read and reread Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, and even left it lying around the house in the hope – or, more likely, delusion – that Ross would pick it up and read it. Also, recently, she’d discovered an Internet chatline for abused wives. Her head was full of advice. And plans.

Life can be good again, she thought. Somehow I’m going to find a way to make it good – for Alec and for myself.

In a sudden fit of extravagance in the supermarket, she bought a couple of frozen lobsters – Ross’s favourite – for their dinner tomorrow, some spicy chicken wings, for which Alec had acquired a taste in Thailand, as well as his favourite caramel-crunch ice-cream. Then she remembered to buy a couple of tins of Ambrosia rice pudding with sultanas for her mother, who was coming to babysit tonight.

Oh, Ross, why do I still keep trying to please you? Is it just to buy a few moments of peace? Or do I delude myself that if I’m sufficiently nice to you, you’ll release me from this marriage, and allow me to take my son with me?

She turned the Range Rover into the drive, past the grand stone balls topping the pillars and the smart brass sign, Little Scaynes Manor. The approach to the Elizabethan house was stunning, down the tree-and-rhododendron-lined gravel drive, up to the gabled, ivy-clad facade – her heart used to flip with excitement each time she drove in.

It was a grand place, no question, in a beautiful location, close to the foot of the soft, rolling hills of the South Downs. Ten bedrooms, drawing room, library, billiards room, a dining room that would seat thirty, a study, a huge kitchen with oak planks on the floor, and an acre of utility rooms. Yet none of the rooms – except perhaps the dining room – felt too big when it was just the two of them on their own. The house was just small enough to be homely, but large enough to impress Ross’s colleagues and the occasional reporter or television crew.

There were fourteen acres of garden and grounds. Once, when it had been a true manor house, several hundred acres of farm and downland had belonged to it, but over the past couple of centuries previous owners had gradually sold off outbuildings and parcels of land. What remained was more than enough, though: fine lawns, a mature orchard filled with apple, pear, plum and cherry trees, a lake and dense woodland badly in need of coppicing. To visitors who came for an evening, or a weekend, it was idyllic.

Yet there was an atmosphere about the place that prevented Faith from feeling entirely comfortable, enhanced by the narrow, heavily leaded windows with glass that seemed black from the outside, the timbered exterior, the impossibly large and ornate chimneys – and the rumour that a woman had been bricked up inside one. She had been the mistress of the man who had built the place, and, as local village lore had it, could be heard hammering away at night, trying to get out. Faith had never heard her, although she had an open mind on ghosts, and felt bricked up in some way here herself. Sometimes, entering the house when it was empty, the large gloomy hallway, the sharp tick of the grandfather clock at the foot of the carved stairs, and the slits in the helmet visors of the armour Ross collected gave her the creeps big-time.

Today it was OK. It was Wednesday and the cleaning lady was here: Faith could hear the whine of the vacuum-cleaner up in one of the bedrooms. She was glad Mrs Fogg was in, but equally glad that she was upstairs: although the woman was an excellent cleaner, she could talk for England, mostly about how it was only a series of disasters that had led to her being forced to take this job, that she wasn’t really a cleaning lady, not by a long shot.

Speedily, Faith lugged the groceries into the kitchen then, before unpacking them, removed the pregnancy-testing kit from the Boots bag and squinted at the instructions.

Above, Mrs Fogg was still Hoovering.

Faith removed a small plastic pot, a pipette, and the plastic test disc from the box, carried them into the downstairs cloakroom, and locked the door. She urinated into the pot. Then she drew some urine into the pipette and, following the instructions carefully, released five drops of urine onto the indent in the disc.

The nausea was back and her head felt warm as if she were running a slight temperature.

A red minus sign.

She was praying for a red minus sign.

She looked everywhere except at her watch. She looked at the horse prints on the wall, the old-fashioned brass taps on the brilliant white sink, the emerald wallpaper, the pile of National Geographics on the shelf by the seat. She noticed a spider’s web up in a corner and made a mental note to tell Mrs Fogg. Then she looked down and raised the stick.

She had to look at it twice to make sure, then checked the instructions.

Minus!

A red minus sign filled the central window of the disc. And, with her relief, the nausea was gone.

Oliver Cabot was distracted by several things tonight, but principally by the woman at the next table, who had caught his eye twice and looked as bored with her companions as he was with his.

He had accepted the invitation to this dinner at the Royal Society of Medicine, hosted by the pharmaceutical giant Bendix Schere, not out of love for his profession, or admiration for his host’s company – an organisation that he despised. Rather, he was interested in keeping up to speed with every advance being made in medicine, and staying in the frame in a profession of which he was becoming daily more mistrustful. But right now this woman, on the far side of the round twelve-seater table behind a jagged skyline of wine bottles and water jugs, with her streaky blonde hair framing her face – a cute face, pretty rather than classically beautiful – was reminding him of someone and he couldn’t think who. Then at last he got it.

Meg Ryan!

‘You know, Oliver, it took us twelve years to develop Tyzolgastrine.’ Johnny Ying, Vice-President, Overseas Marketing, a Chinese-American with a Brooklyn accent and spiky hair, probed his meringue basket. ‘Six hundred million dollars of research. You know how many companies on earth can afford to spend that kind of dough?’

Tyzolgastrine was being hailed as a revolutionary ulcer treatment. It had recently been listed by the World Bureau of Ethical Medicine as one of the hundred most important medical advances of the twentieth century. Not many people knew that the World Bureau of Ethical Medicine was wholly funded by Bendix Schere.

‘You didn’t need to spend that kind of money,’ Oliver remarked.

‘How’s that?’

With a wry smile, he said, ‘You didn’t discover tyzolgastrine, you ripped it off. You only started marketing it after you’d wasted four hundred million dollars trying to bury the concept of an antibiotic ulcer treatment. You don’t have to bullshit me.’

Meg Ryan was listening to a lean, bald man who was talking enthusiastically while she nodded. Her body language told Cabot that she had not taken to this man one bit. He wondered what they were discussing. And as he did so she caught his eye again and immediately looked away.

‘Normally aspirated – normally aspirated, right? – she’ll give you two-eight-five BHP, but what I did, I took the heads to a firm in Tucson, had them polish them, skim an extra two thou . . .

Faith had to look at his place-card to remind herself of his name. Dighton Carver, Vice-President, Marketing. He had been talking about car engines for the past fifteen minutes. Before that he had talked about his divorce, his new wife, his old wife, his three kids, his house, his power-boat – more cubic inches of testosterone and grunt – and his workout programme. He had not yet asked her a single question about herself. Her companion on the right had introduced himself with a strong hand-pump at the start of the meal, and had then proceeded to tal