Revenge

last eighty euros. He wasn’t exactly living on the breadline and it would come in useful. The driving license reminded her he was called Danny. She went back upstairs and had a quick shower. She poked her head back in the bedroom one last time. Danny was soundly sleeping.
She gathered up her bag and let herself out the front door. In three hours she would be in England and despite the mother of all headaches she knew it was the right thing to be doing. She knew with absolute certainty her brother would do the same for her.
Tom had spent the morning at the office of the highest paying tabloid newspaper. He had been a bit surprised at first they wanted to meet on a Sunday but the story was hot news and they were very eager to publish the story in Monday’s paper. The price agreed was one hundred thousand pounds for an exclusive story. Cliff Maxwell had done all the negotiating and definitely earned his ten per cent fee. He already knew everyone at the paper and had warned Tom before the meeting not to say anything. Tom was more than happy to keep quiet as he was definitely feeling outside his comfort zone.
One of the journalists showed him around the offices, explaining how everything worked, while Maxwell went off into an office with a couple of suits from the paper. By the time Tom returned, the price had been agreed and a contract was being produced for his signature. He was very pleased with the result as he would have been quite happy with half the sum.
Tom then spent three hours being interviewed by two reporters. There were photos taken and hands shaken and then he found himself standing on the icy pavement, wondering what to do with the rest of the day. He had left his betting shop in the capable hands of young Ben, who made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in experience. In truth Sundays were always relatively quiet in the shop. He remembered fondly when there was no racing on Sundays and shops weren’t even allowed to open. Now it was a seven day a week business. But opening longer hadn’t increased revenue. Punters only had so much money they could spend in a week. Now it was spread over seven days instead of six.
The advent of Internet betting had badly hurt turnover and he might get out the business altogether and invest his new wealth in a completely different line of work, perhaps a restaurant. People still went out to restaurants to eat. You couldn’t eat over the Internet.
The obvious thing for Tom to do was take the underground to Victoria and a fast train back to Brighton. He could be home within two hours. However, an idea had been gelling all morning that was much more enticing than the cold house that would await him. He telephoned the Imperial and asked for Melanie Adams’s room. The operator responded in a slightly irritated voice, which suggested he was far from the first to want to speak to her, that Miss Adams wasn’t taking any calls. He left a simple message saying he’d called and asking her to call him back on his mobile. As he put his phone back in his jacket, he felt the need to pinch himself to check he was awake. He had just telephoned Melanie Adams and he’d actually expected her to take his call. Was he completely bonkers! Certainly a couple of days earlier the idea would have been absurd.
Tom decided to go for yet another coffee and hang around for an hour in the warmth, on the off chance she did return his call. He found a branch of his favourite coffee chain and chose a large skinny Latte and a small Pannetone. The choice of a skinny Latte was a habit developed some years earlier when he had dallied for a short time with a health nut of a girlfriend, who found it abhorrent he had full fat milk. The girlfriend hadn’t survived long but he still drank skinny Lattes.
He recognized it was yet another anomaly in his life, as he made no other attempt to watch the calories he consumed. He received a funny look from the girl serving which he put down to the swelling and bruise on his face. He tried his sweetest smile and made a joke of his appearance, which elicited a friendly response that she’d seen worse.
He found a seat looking out onto the road. As he drank the Latte, he remembered his brief fling all those years ago and realized there had actually been quite a few girlfriends, who had just had walk-on parts in his life. At times it seemed he had made some spectacularly bad choices. He knew a number of people who had turned to the internet dating sights but felt that was a sign of desperation and he wasn’t yet desperate. Or at least he wasn’t going to openly admit to being so. Anyway, if he went on the internet his first inclination would always be to play poker rather than search for a woman.
He reckoned the cold weather was partially responsible for the place not being very busy and he passed some time calling his brother and updating him on events, alleviating the risk of his suffering a heart attack reading the next day’s newspaper. Maxwell had warned Tom that he had one day left of anonymity and then his life would never be the same again. Even sitting having a quiet cup of coffee would be difficult, as the press and public were likely to intrude in every aspect of his life for the next few weeks.
Colin had been completely flummoxed by the news and thought Tom was joking at first but once he realized he was being serious, then he wanted to meet for dinner, so he could hear all the gory details, as he put it. Normally Tom met