The Long Fall by Julia Crouch Read Free Book Online Page A

underneath the sofa. Mark hated coming home to disorder. She wasn’t a great fan of it herself.
    ‘Not great.’ Mark poured himself a generous measure of single malt. ‘The Corbetti Fund is looking decidedly dodgy. Dallas is not happy.’
    ‘Oh no.’
    Kate had no idea what Mark did at work, other than invest for clients, using his innate charm and an extraordinary ability to work money. Even when she had been his secretary at the big investment bank before they married and he left to set up his hedge fund, she never really understood what all the financial stuff was about, or why it was so important. Her role had been to deal with the soft side – arranging meetings, making sure Mark knew the names of clients’ children and wives, that sort of thing. Although she knew she had the intellect to grasp the bigger picture, she entirely lacked the motivation.
    But she liked to show him that she was on his side.
    Mark set her tea on the low table in front of her, and almost fell back onto the sofa, bringing with him the vetiver notes of the scent he had specially made for him by an Italian count in his Florentine perfumery.
    She moved round to face him, watching as he cradled his glass, warming the whisky with the palms of his hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and his skin, tanned from a recent skiing trip – with clients, of course, Mark never did just pure recreation – looked sallow in the pool of light from the lamp hanging just above them.
    ‘Poor you.’ Kate picked up her mug and took a sip of tea. Its grassy cleanliness chased away the stale taste of wine that had set in her mouth and furred up the back of her teeth.
    ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’ Mark ran his fingers through his short, silver hair, which she knew felt like velvet, and leaned back into the sofa, a little apart from her.
    She reached out and threaded her fingers through his. He held her hand tightly, as if she were somehow grounding him, when, in fact, the normal dynamic in their twenty-five-year marriage was the reverse. She felt grateful that he occasionally let the balance swing like that.
    ‘It’s been a good day for you, though,’ he said.
    Kate nodded. ‘Great for Martha’s Wish.’
    Mark was nothing if not supportive of the charity. He had been delighted when, a year after Martha’s death, Kate had told him about her plans. She suspected he was even rather relieved. He had seen how bad things had got for her when there was too much silence.
    ‘It’ll be cathartic for you,’ he had said.
    He didn’t know the half of it, though.
    His theory was that Kate blamed herself for Martha’s death. She had put the fact that her youngest daughter was falling over a lot down to her having grown so quickly that she didn’t know where she ended and the world began. By the time she got round to taking Martha to the doctor, the tumour was inoperable and the cancer had spread to her lungs, kidneys, liver.
    And yes, she did take on the guilt for that. But what he didn’t know was the deeper, karmic, sins-of-the-mother reasoning that Kate applied to Martha’s death. Because of the unthinkable thing she had done before she even met Mark, it had, in her view, been entirely inevitable. She had no right whatsoever to a happy motherhood.
    So the chance to do good through the charity went far beyond Mark’s notion of catharsis. It was an atonement. Partial, but enough – Kate hoped – to buy the continuing health and happiness of her remaining daughter.
    Mark had even provided her with twenty thousand pounds to seed the project. This was a symbolic gesture because he had always said the generous sums of money flowing from his business into the household were as much hers as his. Every account they owned was in joint names, and from there Kate was charged with the financial management, siphoning cash off into savings accounts and other schemes, paying bills and doing all the purchasing for the running of the household. She had no idea what