“Thank God,” Audrey replied. “By the way, did I tell you my agent says we’ve had four offers on the book already?”
“Are you serious?” Madison said.
“That’s great, right?” I replied. I could almost hear Madison’s eye roll.
“That’s better than great. It’s amazing. And remember, if they insist on another writer, that’s completely fine.”
“It’s not completely fine,” Audrey said. “You wrote the proposal, so the book is yours to write too. It will give me a focus. And a chance to tell my side of the story.” She squeezed our hands. “What would I do without you two?”
“You never need to find out,” I replied.
“I packed a case, because with the search and everything, I knew I couldn’t stay here,” Audrey said. “I’ll just go and get it. I hadn’t thought beyond hiding the case in my study. I didn’t think about where I was going to go. You’re a good man, Nathan.”
“You want me to come?” I asked.
Audrey shook her head. “No. I need to give the USB to my lawyer and . . . I just need to say a goodbye. Even if I come back, it won’t ever be the same. I need to close this chapter on my own.”
I nodded. She released our hands and headed inside.
“She looks tired,” Madison said.
“Like she hasn’t slept for months. He better bloody plead guilty and not put his wife through a trial. But knowing that selfish wanker, he’ll probably try to hold out to the end.”
“It’s good of you to look after her.” Madison slipped her hand into mine and rested her head against my arm.
“It’s the least I can do. Do you want to go home and I can take Audrey out?”
Madison shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s not like either of us have to get up for work in the morning. And you’ve still not told me what the chairman said when you handed in your resignation.”
After coming back from Norfolk, I’d gone straight to Astro’s office. I’d wanted to rip the plaster off and get it over with. “He just said that he was sorry to see me go but he understood and wished me well. I think he was relieved. And then he said if I ever needed anything, I should call him.
Madison looked up at me and grinned. “Well, that’s nice.”
“Yeah. It was. I’ve told Christine that I need help, so if she wants to stay on at Astro that’s fine, but if she wants to leave and come and work for me while I figure out the next thing, I’d be happy to have her.”
“You’re a good man,” she said. The way she looked up at me, the deep red of her hair lit up by the street lights, made it easy to believe her. “And if you take me back to your place after we take Audrey to the Savoy, I might show you how much I appreciate you.”
I sighed at the thought of Madison’s hot, warm body against mine. “You shouldn’t say things like that to me. Scratch that. You should say things like that to me a lot. Just not right now.”
She laughed and slid her hand around my waist. A picture flashed across my mind of us at ninety. I’d have lost all my hair and Madison’s red locks will have turned white, but there we were, together, holding hands like no time had passed at all.
“We have plenty of time,” she said. She was right. We had forever.
Epilogue
Six weeks later
Madison
I reached up to get the large dinner plates from the cupboard in Nathan’s kitchen as he came in.
“Did you order?” he asked.
“Yeah. I was hungry. Do you mind?”
“Nope. I would have been more shocked if you said you didn’t fancy dinner tonight.”
“How’s the research going?” I asked. Nathan might have resigned from a paid position but he worked every day, ten hours a day. He was researching his next move.
“Good. I set up some meetings today. Luckily for me, I have a lot of indirect contacts in healthcare.”
“I like the idea of merging your skills,” I said. Nathan had decided he could provide access to healthcare in emerging economies through health insurance, some of which could be funded through philanthropy. It sounded complicated. He assured me it would be. But he was passionate when he talked about it, and that was all that mattered to me. It was like a part of him I’d never seen before had lit up since he started working on his ideas.
“I don’t know if it will work. There are other people trying to do similar things but . . .”
“But they’re not you,” I said, grabbing his shirt and stealing a kiss. I could spend my life kissing Nathan. We had to have rules on when we got out of bed in the morning because it was too easy to stay naked and happy under the covers all day.