Jack Morgan 02 - Private London Read Free

handle.
    ‘Dan will take care of you now, but if you ever need to speak to me you’ve got my number, right?’ said Jack Morgan to the girl, who still seemed more interested in her feet than in anything else.
    ‘Yeah, Jack,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ Then she looked up and smiled. She had a nice smile.
    ‘Anytime, night or day.’ Jack slapped me on the back. ‘Take good care of her, Dan. I’m counting on you.’
    ‘You got it,’ I said, falling into the native lingo. I turned to the young woman. ‘We good to go?’
    See.
    ‘Sure,’ she replied. I didn’t get a smile but figured it was just a matter of time. A six-hour flight is plenty of time to get to know people. I’d break her in under four, I reckoned. The old Dan Carter charm. They should put it in a bottle.

Chapter 6
    A COUPLE OF hours later I sighed an inward breath of relief and undid my seat belt.
    It took a couple of tugs. I turned to look at the young woman next to me who was effortlessly undoing hers, her attention never wavering from the e-book she was reading.
    I had let Hannah Shapiro have the window seat and she had pulled the blind down, which had suited me just fine. A little bit of turbulence had been predicted and the fasten-seat-belt sign had lit up. I had got mine on a lot quicker than it took to get it off. Luckily the threatened turbulence hadn’t arrived!
    I craned my head to look at the book that Hannah was engrossed in. ‘What are you reading?’ I asked her.
    She didn’t look up. ‘The Beautiful and the Damned,’ she said.
    ‘Tender is the Night is my favourite novel,’ I said.
    She looked up then, surprised. ‘Really?’
    ‘Really. And I know what you’re thinking.’
    ‘And what’s that?’
    ‘That a big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.’
    There was a slight crack in the corner of her mouth. It might even have been a smile.
    ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald?’
    ‘The same.’
    ‘Tender is the Night – my mother’s favourite book.’
    ‘Are you going to miss her?’
    ‘I already do. She died, Mister Carter.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
    ‘It was a long time ago. I was a child.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘I grew up.’
    I decided not to press the point – Hannah clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Looking at her it seemed to me that whatever had happened it hadn’t been so long ago. She might have been nineteen but she still looked like a child to me.
    ‘Losing a parent is never easy,’ I said gently. ‘No matter how old you are.’
    ‘Are your parents alive, Mister Carter?’
    ‘My father died a few years back. My mother is still with us, thank God.’
    She looked at me unblinking for a moment, as if searching for something in my eyes.
    ‘You should thank God indeed. You must cherish her, Mister Carter,’ she said finally. ‘There is nothing in life more precious than your mother.’
    ‘I do,’ I said, feeling a little guilty. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in over a week.
    Hannah nodded as if my answer satisfied her.
    ‘It was cancer,’ she said quietly. ‘There was nothing they could do.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
    She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault, was it?’
    I didn’t reply.
    ‘My father is a scientist, did you know? Extremely rich. Extremely clever. He couldn’t do anything, either.’
    I nodded. She was right. Death just came at you sometimes. Sideways, from behind, head-on like a high speed train. And whichever way it came at you there was nothing you could do about it. I knew that better than most.
    ‘My father gave Mom a first-edition copy of Tender is the Night on their twentieth wedding anniversary. She treasured it like it was the most valuable thing in the world to her.’
    ‘Maybe it was …’ I paused for a moment. ‘After you, I should imagine.’
    And got a smile this time. A sad one, though.
    ‘When she went it was like the light had gone out of the world, Mister Carter. All the warmth.’
    ‘Call me Dan,