we’d care? That Dad isn’t a hero any more? Do you think you’re a hero now? Maybe you imagined yourself rescuing terrified princesses from sex traders or saving stolen school kids from crazed warlords. You always were an overgrown boy scout and we loved you for it. But the truth is you’re just a bodyguard to the most selfish people on earth.
She’d been right of course. When Stanton had been approached by an old SAS comrade to join an international ‘security’ company, there’d been a lot of righteous talk about protecting the vulnerable from predators. Doing the tough jobs that the authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Fighting pirates, guarding crusading education ministers from fundamentalist assault.
But when Cassie’s emails had reached him he’d been leaning on the rail of a superyacht in the Aegean. Suit, dark glasses, earpiece. For all his big pay cheque, he was just another goon, riding shotgun for the Boss man. Working for the new master race in their floating world. The twenty-first-century boat people, that evergrowing flotilla of billionaires and trillionaires who had taken to living at sea where they could be isolated and protected from the rapid social breakdown their own activities had played a large part in causing. Climate-change refugees in the truest sense of the word.
I was proud of you when you risked your life on peacekeeping missions, saving children who were just like your own.
I was proud of you when you risked your life making your videos to help inspire kids who weren’t as fortunate as ours.
But risking your life for media moguls? Oil tycoons? Real-estate parasites? So they can fiddle about on their yachts while the rest of the world burns?
Forget it!
Bill and Tess deserve a dad who cares more about them than about dealing with his own stupid demons.
If ever you bump into the guy you used to be, get him to give us a call.
That last line had been the glimmer of hope. He hadn’t called. He’d run. Resigned his job that minute. Gone ashore and headed for the nearest airport. He was going straight to London. To get down on his knees and promise to be the man Cassie wanted him to be. The father Tess and Bill needed.
But he never got the chance to make those promises, let alone keep them. They never even knew he was coming home …
Stanton drained his second coffee and poured himself a glass of water.
Then he heard a voice. An English voice.
‘
Garçon!
Coffee and cognac, and be quick about it!’
His whole being froze.
He knew that voice.
7
THE MORNING RAIN and hail had long since turned again to snow as Stanton and McCluskey made their way across the Cam towards King’s College chapel, which rose up before them through the icy mist cloaked in white.
‘Did you ever
see
anything so fine?’ McCluskey remarked as they paused for a moment on the King’s Bridge. ‘Doesn’t it lift your soul just a little?’
‘Sorry,’ Stanton replied. ‘Just makes me think how much Cassie would have loved it.’
‘Ah yes.’ McCluskey sighed. ‘Such is the terrible irony of bereavement, turning every familiar joy to misery. Each smile a twisting knife. Each thing of beauty an added burden of pain.’
‘Thanks.’
The service was indeed agonizingly beautiful. Like a second funeral. The many flickering candles. The swelling voices of the choir. The readings in the mighty poetry of the King James Bible, strangely moving even to a non-believer. The unbearable majesty of a ritual that had remained almost unchanged for three hundred Christmas Eves.
After the service McCluskey didn’t take Stanton straight to the lodge at Trinity as he had expected but instead she put her arm in his and led him through the freezing wind across the quad to the Great Hall. Stanton noticed that quite a number of other members of the King’s congregation were heading in the same direction, all venerable College figures, stooped with age, holding their various forms of fringed and tasselled hats
She’d been right of course. When Stanton had been approached by an old SAS comrade to join an international ‘security’ company, there’d been a lot of righteous talk about protecting the vulnerable from predators. Doing the tough jobs that the authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Fighting pirates, guarding crusading education ministers from fundamentalist assault.
But when Cassie’s emails had reached him he’d been leaning on the rail of a superyacht in the Aegean. Suit, dark glasses, earpiece. For all his big pay cheque, he was just another goon, riding shotgun for the Boss man. Working for the new master race in their floating world. The twenty-first-century boat people, that evergrowing flotilla of billionaires and trillionaires who had taken to living at sea where they could be isolated and protected from the rapid social breakdown their own activities had played a large part in causing. Climate-change refugees in the truest sense of the word.
I was proud of you when you risked your life on peacekeeping missions, saving children who were just like your own.
I was proud of you when you risked your life making your videos to help inspire kids who weren’t as fortunate as ours.
But risking your life for media moguls? Oil tycoons? Real-estate parasites? So they can fiddle about on their yachts while the rest of the world burns?
Forget it!
Bill and Tess deserve a dad who cares more about them than about dealing with his own stupid demons.
If ever you bump into the guy you used to be, get him to give us a call.
That last line had been the glimmer of hope. He hadn’t called. He’d run. Resigned his job that minute. Gone ashore and headed for the nearest airport. He was going straight to London. To get down on his knees and promise to be the man Cassie wanted him to be. The father Tess and Bill needed.
But he never got the chance to make those promises, let alone keep them. They never even knew he was coming home …
Stanton drained his second coffee and poured himself a glass of water.
Then he heard a voice. An English voice.
‘
Garçon!
Coffee and cognac, and be quick about it!’
His whole being froze.
He knew that voice.
7
THE MORNING RAIN and hail had long since turned again to snow as Stanton and McCluskey made their way across the Cam towards King’s College chapel, which rose up before them through the icy mist cloaked in white.
‘Did you ever
see
anything so fine?’ McCluskey remarked as they paused for a moment on the King’s Bridge. ‘Doesn’t it lift your soul just a little?’
‘Sorry,’ Stanton replied. ‘Just makes me think how much Cassie would have loved it.’
‘Ah yes.’ McCluskey sighed. ‘Such is the terrible irony of bereavement, turning every familiar joy to misery. Each smile a twisting knife. Each thing of beauty an added burden of pain.’
‘Thanks.’
The service was indeed agonizingly beautiful. Like a second funeral. The many flickering candles. The swelling voices of the choir. The readings in the mighty poetry of the King James Bible, strangely moving even to a non-believer. The unbearable majesty of a ritual that had remained almost unchanged for three hundred Christmas Eves.
After the service McCluskey didn’t take Stanton straight to the lodge at Trinity as he had expected but instead she put her arm in his and led him through the freezing wind across the quad to the Great Hall. Stanton noticed that quite a number of other members of the King’s congregation were heading in the same direction, all venerable College figures, stooped with age, holding their various forms of fringed and tasselled hats
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