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Edward always had something to do. His head was always buried in a book, or some papers. Even when she’d chanced to see him in the street he was always deep in thought, and half the time he didn’t even acknowledge her, either because he hadn’t seen or didn’t want to see.
‘I don’t think so. In fact I’ve nothing to do today. It’s only fifteen minutes over to my place.’ He pursed his lips, as if he’d surprised himself by the invitation as much as he’d just surprised Charlotte. ‘We’ll get coffee on the way, and we can talk … privately. Perhaps I can help.’
She could have turned his help down for herself, but she had Isaac to think about, and Charlotte had no choice but to grab at any and every offer that came her way. And there was the matter of that nagging need at the back of her head, which wanted her to explain to Edward, tell him that she wasn’t the person that all of this made her seem. She was going to have to swallow her pride and go for coffee.
Edward had waited in the hallway while she dragged on a pair of jeans, shoved her feet into her sandals and splashed her face with water. Her eyes had looked puffy in the mirror, but she hadn’t wanted to keep him waiting for too long, so she’d dropped her make-up bag into a canvas holdall along with a few of Isaac’s favourite toys to keep him occupied.
They’d stopped at a coffee shop and Edward had ushered them in. Isaac had slipped his hand into Edward’s, tugging at his jacket until he’d lifted him up to see over the counter. He seemed to trust that if he stuck with his new friend no harm would come to them, and Charlotte hoped that her son was right.
Now they turned into a wide street, dappled by sunlight shining through the branches of the trees. Turned again into a short drive, behind a high wall hung with greenery, and came to a halt outside a double-fronted Georgian house, white-painted with slim, elegant lines.
It was quiet here. Far enough from the main road for them to be able to hear birdsong. Charlotte handed Edward the cardboard coffee holder and busied herself with getting Isaac out of the car.
The silence between them was oppressive. Edward seemed awkward as he opened the front door, walking inside without even asking them in, and Charlotte began to wish that she was anywhere but here. Apart from being at home, that was, waiting for the phone to ring again.
‘Well …’ He clapped his hands together awkwardly, like a man who was unused to guests. ‘Here we are.’
‘Yes.’ Charlotte stepped tentatively over the threshold, holding tightly onto Isaac’s hand. Inside the house it was tranquil—a cream-painted hallway, pictures on the walls, green plants everywhere.
‘Let’s go into the sitting room.’ Edward seemed to galvanise himself into action and opened a wide panelled door, ushering them through it.
Sunlight streamed through the front windows onto pale oatmeal-coloured sofas at the front. A TV, nestling unobtrusively in one corner, conceded pride of place to a state-of-the-art sound system. The room ran the full depth of the house, and next to the French windows at the back stood a grand piano.
‘What a lovely room.’ She gave her son’s hand a squeeze, although whether it was to give or receive confidence she wasn’t quite sure. ‘Isn’t it, Isaac?’
Isaac was too busy looking around to reply. At the lines of glass-fronted cabinets, heavy with books. The green plants, arching gracefully around the windows.
‘Come and meet Archie.’ Edward beckoned Isaac over towards the French windows, where a ginger cat lay stretched out on the carpet, basking in the warm sunlight.
‘Is he a lion?’ Isaac looked up at him gravely.
Edward laughed. ‘Well, he’s not very fierce. You won’t need that.’ He gestured towards Isaac’s plastic ray gun, which he’d insisted on bringing along with him.
Isaac stowed the ray gun in his pocket, just in case he’d need it later, and followed Edward over to where the cat lay. He watched solemnly as Edward tickled its ears and then its tummy as it rolled over, luxuriating in his touch.
‘Do you want to stroke him?’
Edward was letting Isaac approach the creature in his own time, and Charlotte smiled as Isaac slowly reached out.
‘He’s growling.’ Isaac snatched his hand away.
‘No, that’s purring. It means he likes you.’ Edward drew back a little, letting Isaac stroke Archie.
‘Be gentle with him, sweetie. Remember that he’s much smaller than you are.’ Charlotte stayed at her post by the door, still not sure whether to accept the quiet welcome of this place.
‘Would Isaac like to watch some TV? While we talk?’
‘Oh. Yes, he might do. Thank you.’ Charlotte took the remote that Edward proffered and found a channel that Isaac liked, turning the sound down to a quiet murmur.
Edward set a low coffee table in front of the screen, put Isaac’s frothed milk onto it and opened a cupboard, drawing out the molecule modelling kit.
Charlotte grinned. ‘You’re going to let him play with your toys?’
‘If I share, then maybe he’ll let me have a go with his ray gun. Will he be all right here?’
‘He’ll be fine. Look, he’s already made a new friend.’ Charlotte nodded towards Isaac, who was talking confidingly to Archie, stroking him carefully.
‘Good. Well, we can talk through here.’
There was a door at the far end of the room, by the piano, and Edward disappeared through it, leaving Charlotte to get Isaac out of his jacket and settle him in front of the television.
She took one last look at Isaac, and then took a deep breath. Time to face Edward now. Now that keeping up appearances was no longer an option it was going to have to be the truth. She just hoped that he would understand.
He was sitting at a table in the large kitchen, studying the coffee in front of him as if there was some solution in there. She could tell him the answer to that. She’d tried it enough times herself. She mustered a smile, and sat down opposite him.
‘So who’s Archie named after? Archimedes?’ She pulled her own coffee towards her and peeled off the plastic lid. It was smooth and strong and the caffeine hit her straight between the eyes.
He looked up, suddenly aware of her presence. ‘Yes, actually. Although it’s a mispronunciation, of course. Am I that predictable?’
‘No. I thought of the most unlikely thing I could and suggested that—’ She broke off as he smiled at her. That smile did all kinds of things to her, none of which were going to be of much help at the moment.
‘So.’ His gaze dropped to his cup again. ‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I am.’ She should have realised that Edward would cut straight to the point. He wasn’t much for small talk. Charlotte hadn’t anticipated how much of a relief it would be. ‘It isn’t what you think.’
He looked up at her. Those deep blue eyes were almost irresistible. ‘I’m not thinking anything.’
‘You’re always thinking something, aren’t you?’
A trace of a grin tugged at his lips. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
Suddenly she wanted to defend herself from all the implications of what Edward had seen and from whatever conclusions that agile, razor-sharp mind of his was working its way towards. ‘The debts aren’t mine, Edward.’
‘I know. It was your husband they were looking for …’
‘He’ll be my ex-husband soon. Very soon, if everything goes as planned.’
Maybe she should have been a little less vehement about that. Said it a little more as if it was a matter of fact rather than an avowal of innocence. Edward seemed far more at home with facts than emotions.
‘Have you asserted your separation financially?’
‘Yes. There are no more joint accounts and credit cards. The house and the mortgage are in my name.’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about. As long as you’ve applied for a Deed of Separation, and you’re not jointly liable for any of his debts …’
‘How do you know all this?’ The question had occurred to Charlotte on her doorstep, but she’d pushed it to the back of her mind.
‘I have a degree in Law.’
‘As well as being a surgeon?’
‘I … um … I was advised to wait until I was eighteen to go to medical school. I was at a loose end.’
‘So …’ The gossip was correct, then. ‘You are a genius?’
‘They called it “gifted” when I was a kid. Now it’s called High Learning Potential.’
The twitch of his lips told Charlotte that they were just labels, which Edward didn’t set much store by.
‘I don’t need to be a genius to know that there’s more to your situation than what you’ve told me.’
There was a lot more. Charlotte grinned at him almost automatically, the way she did whenever anyone offered anything that sounded a bit too much like sympathy. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really. And you’re not going to convince me otherwise with that smile, either. Even if it is a very nice one.’
Stop now. One thing at a time. Having Edward as a concerned friend was already turning her universe upside down. It was a bit too soon for compliments.
‘You’re right, that’s not all. My husband had … I think it’s probably fair to say has … a gambling addiction.’
‘And that’s why you left him?’
‘I wasn’t that smart. I didn’t know about it until the bailiffs started calling. The first one was the day after Isaac’s second birthday.’ She sighed. She didn’t need to go into details; he was getting the gist. ‘I started out by paying his debts. He promised me that he’d stopped, and I believed him.’
‘But he lied?’ He was blunt, but there was no brutality there. Just the truth.
‘Yes, he just kept on racking up the debts. Internet gaming sites, card games … He maxed out our credit cards and I dipped into the money I’d inherited from my parents just to keep a roof over our heads.’ Charlotte gulped in a breath of air. This time she was going to do things better. She had to for Isaac’s sake.
‘But you couldn’t hold it together.’ Another flat, emotionless statement of the inevitable facts.
‘I did for a while. Then he left. That was eighteen months ago. I sold the house, paid off all the debts, and managed to scrape enough together for a deposit on a smaller house. Made a new start for Isaac and me.’
Edward just nodded.
Caught in the force of his concentration, Charlotte realised that Edward was not an absent-minded, otherworldly creature. He was thinking things through, his ruthless single-mindedness not allowing a single detail to escape.
‘Does your husband know where you are?’
‘Yes, he knows. I was hoping that he’d come and see Isaac but he never has.’
Charlotte heaved a sigh. She didn’t need to tell him about the thing that had damned her the most—it didn’t affect the problem at hand. Anyway, it was humiliating.
Even more so than having to admit she was being chased by her husband’s debtors.
She met those blue eyes again. Ever questioning, but not as judgemental as she’d feared.
‘And you said your divorce is in the pipeline?’
‘Yes. I have the Decree Nisi and I’m waiting for the Decree Absolute. I’m hoping that he won’t throw any spanners into the works and put in a last-minute objection.’
‘Do you have any reason to think he will?’
‘No … Maybe … I don’t know. Peter’s not exactly the most predictable of people.’ Charlotte sighed. ‘He’s not strong. He’ll do whatever gets him through the day and forget all about the consequences for tomorrow.’
‘You don’t trust him.’
Damn right she didn’t. She had very little reason to. ‘No, I don’t. The men who called this morning aren’t the only people looking to get paid. I had a telephone call last night from someone who said I owed money for a mobile phone bill.’
‘Do you?’
‘No!’ She was protesting too much again. ‘My phone’s a pay-as-you-go …’
Charlotte reached for her handbag to show him the phone and Edward stopped her, laying his hand on her wrist.
‘It’s okay.’
‘It isn’t. The divorce won’t protect me if he’s managed to raise a line of credit in my name, and I’ve no money to pay off any more of his debts.’
It was as if she and Isaac were being dragged back into the nightmare that she’d worked so hard to get out of, and there was nothing she could do about it. Charlotte gulped back the tears, pulling her hand away from his grasp.
‘What did you tell them?’ He was still calm, almost icy cool. Still focussed on the facts.
Charlotte took a deep breath. She should try to sound a little more grateful, Edward had already helped her more than he had any reason to. ‘I said that I had no knowledge of the account in question and asked them to put everything in writing and send it to me.’
‘Good. We can start making enquiries on Monday. In the meantime, is there anyone that you and Isaac can stay with?’
‘Not really. My parents are dead and I don’t have any brothers or sisters …’ She tried to smile, make light of it, but Charlotte had never felt so alone. ‘We’ll be okay. I’ll take the phone off the hook and lock the door …’
‘You’ll stay here.’ Even Edward seemed surprised at his uncompromising words.
‘No! I mean … Edward, it’s kind of you to offer, but I couldn’t think of it.’
‘What about Isaac? I gather that Sunday mornings are a favourite time for debt collectors to make their calls. He’s old enough to know what’s going on now.’
Low blow. He’d found the spot where her guilt was almost unbearable. ‘I thought he was too young to remember. But when those men called this morning …’
Isaac had understood exactly who they were and had launched himself at them, trying to drive them away, trying to protect her. Charlotte had managed to keep hold of him, and the men had smirked at each other as she bundled him back into the house.
She heard Edward sigh.
‘Look, you need to get yourself and Isaac out of the firing line for a few days, until you have a chance to sort this out. I’ve plenty of room here—there are two spare bedrooms upstairs—and you’ll both be safe.’
He didn’t mince his words, or dress it up to make it sound as if she had a choice, but he was right. She did need to get her son away from this nightmare, and she had nowhere to take him.
‘Charlotte.’
He reached out to her, his finger tipping her chin upwards. His shrewd blue eyes saw straight through her. There were no excuses, no way that she could just fob him off with something.
‘Where else are you going to go?’
